Another great Resinchem Tech production! Excellent tutorial and breakdown of the different ways to make things easier in Home Assistant. I thought it was a great point to mention that everything is located in one place as opposed to finding all the automations that may contain that entity. Great job as always! Keep up the Excellent work!
Thanks! I think that scripts are one of the more underutilized and least understood tools for newer Home Assistant users. I hope this video provides a least a bit of introduction and shows some situations where they can be used to make automations and routines more manageable and maintainable. As always, thanks for watching and thanks for the comment!
Great video. Easily explains the differences. One flaw that is highlighted in HA in general though is the way multiple devices or entities are added. You skip on as its time consuming showing each device being added but it highlights that this process is silly. It should be a tick list or have the ability to select multiple devices at the one time. Adding one by one is so cumbersome when it needn't be.
You are very welcome. I think that scripts are probably underutilized and maybe a bit misunderstood by those first starting out with Home Assistant. But they can be invaluable for created reusable groups of actions that are easier to maintain as your Home Assistant grows. Thanks for watching and the kind comment! I do appreciate it!
@@ResinChemTech Indeed. I’ve done a lot of scripting in other areas - so they made the most sense to me - but the duplicity of then using automations was confusing to me. Same with Groups vs scenes. Im going to try this in just a bit - but can you create groups using templates? Can you create a “outdoor” light group let’s say and include all lights in the “Outdoor” Area? That could make for some very nice behavior to add new features automatically by changing name and area assignment for example.
Hmm... that's an interesting idea and not something that I've tried. It would probably require YAML. There was an older way of creating groups in YAML that would actually create a group entity (although this method isn't recommended anymore - and it could be removed in later releases, I still have a handful of groups created this way). So I'm not sure, but if you can template the entities list, then it should theoretically be possible. Let me know what you find out!
@@ResinChemTech And the more I think about it - the more I think it has to be possible. I created a helper-sensor using templating for my garage door state...
Scripts can definitely help you create reusable blocks of actions and make it much easier to maintain those as you add new automations and routines in the future. I do use a few groups, but actually I don't use too many scenes. Instead I often use automations and/or scripts so that my "scenes" can be customized based on other factors, such as time of day, etc. But scenes are a great way to get started with setting up something like a movie night, party night, etc. Thanks for watching and taking a moment to leave a comment. It is appreciated!
you know what I love... long videos where I just want to know how to make "assist" run scripts that will change my roku tv app with my voice. But everyone seems to gloss over how to set up the voice command part but not the making a script part.
I am just like the guy you mentioned. I'm just getting into scripts. I wasn't aware of the versatility of the different methods. Thank you for doing this video.
You are welcome! I do think that scripts are something that are probably underutilized, especially by those just starting out. But they can definitely make it easier to maintain and reuse sets of actions as your Home Assistant install grows over time. Thanks for watching... and taking a moment to leave a comment!
Off topic, but is that a Texas instruments 994a in display case at beginning. I taught myself basic language using it. I wrote many programs and remember using the cassettes to load and save. I also spent so much time fixing it. I used it so much that things wore out like keys, joysticks, cables and things. My father worked for TI and would bring parts home and I would fix it myself. This is how I got interested in computers and electronics. Thanks for the trip down memory lane and reminding me of time well spent with my father who is now gone.
Yep... a TI99/4A! Just like you, I taught myself BASIC on that machine and spent way too many hours writing my own games and applications (and yes... storing and loading from cassette!). I wish I would have kept the original, but I didn't. Luckily a college buddy remembered how fond I was of it and found one at a retro electronics fair and picked it up for me. It looks brand new and since I already have a TI99 emulator running on my arcade machine, I opted to turn that one into a display. I do have another video that shows a bit more about turning it into the display (as compared to the 'retail' tech-as-art display. To be honest, it is not a very good video, but if you do want to see a little bit more of the TI99 and how I did the display, you can check out that video if you want: ua-cam.com/video/Cmn-rtNKikY/v-deo.html But I did love my TI99/4A back in the day. Thanks for the comment!
@@ResinChemTech Similar stories to mine! I have a few TI-99/4A systems, including my original console and PEB. Taught myself BASIC with the great book it included and later Extended BASIC and some Assembly. It helped to form my career in the I.T. field later on. Nice job on the display video! (And this one as well!)
@richardneff Thanks! I never had the PEB... but wished I would have. Spent way too many hours in college writing code and playing games on the TI-99 when I should have been studying. But it was my introduction to writing code and probably played a big part in my eventual move over to the IT field/app developer later in my career. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Thanks! When the bar was originally built, it was before I knew about WLED or had started messing with microcontrollers. I paid a very large amount of money for "professional" bar lighting shelves. But these had very limited options in terms of effects and other features. Once I discovered WLED, I ripped out the old LED strips, replaced them with WS2812b and added a WLED controller. Much, much better with so many more options... all at about 1/20th the price of what I paid for the retail option. Thanks for watching... and taking the time to leave a comment!
Thanks for the breakdown! I am going to create a group for some of my WLED controllers and simplify a couple of the automations where everything is all discreet entities.
You are welcome! As I mentioned, you can group WLED controllers in Home Assistant, but it does work a bit differently than using the native WLED sync. But having options is always a great thing! Thanks, as always, for the comment!
How about a comparison between groups and rooms? You can turn on/off everything in a room together. And you are not restricted to one type like a group.
9:55 One side note to the light and switch not being able to be grouped. You can create a helper to 'Change Device Type of a Switch'. The entity created can then be grouped. I've done this to group dumb LED lights which are connected to Kasa plugs and switches.
Great tip! While it is no longer recommended (and why I didn't show it as an option), you can also create old style groups via YAML that allow you to combine different entity types like lights, switches, covers, etc. into a single group entity and control those different entity types as a group, albeit with some limitations on functionality (I still have a few of these original, old-style groups). As mentioned, Home Assistant provides a lot of flexibility and different ways to accomplish a given task. The ability to redefine a switch as another entity type is a great start. Unfortunately it currently only works for switches and you can't do the reverse... such as redefining something like a light, cover or lock as a switch. Well.. technically you can via YAML and templated entities, but not easily via just the UI editors and dropdowns. Still a great tip for those that want to group switches with other entity types. Thanks!
Just found your channel and do glad I have. I use SmartThings and Alexa but seriously looking into using HA. I have no experience with HA and after watching your video I wonder if you intend to do more basic “idiot guides” to HA. A basic beginners onwards overview would be helpful for I imagine for just more than myself. Great video and looking forward to seeing the next. Any recommendations on reference sources either literature or videos would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
Glad you found me too! I have a playlist of Home Assistant-related videos: ua-cam.com/play/PLqjDNeOVHOkflCfZDY2vJnVHud0m3n0Vz.html Many of these are "Home Assistant 101" videos target towards those just starting out with Home Assistant, others are for those with a little more experience. I try to vary my videos between Home Assistant videos and DIY electronics projects (many of which can also be used with Home Assistant). I do have video in the early planning stages targeting someone precisely in your situation... you've heard of Home Assistant but want to more about how it works and operates. Not sure when that video will be out as I have a couple of others in the works right now as well, but it should be in the next couple of months. Keep an eye out! Thanks for watching and taking a moment to leave a comment!
I'm not sure that I can point you at a source other than Googling for "YAML tutorial". Even then, Home Assistant often has particular "quirks" in how it implements some of its YAML. For that, you generally have to look at the official Home Assistant documentation for a particular task or integration (which can also be a bit spotty at best). Back when I first started with Home Assistant and struggled to learn YAML (despite having a programming background), I still got frustrated at times (but YAML was all we had 'back in the day' as there weren't any UI editors). For me, I spent a lot of time looking at others' Home Assistant YAML... many folks post their entire YAML configuration files via Github. Between that, online documentation and a lot of trial and error, I eventually got the hang of it. The biggest thing for me nowadays (other than remembering that dealing with indentation in YAML, a tab is NOT the same as spaces) is trying to determine if something is a list that uses hyphens vs. a dictionary that doesn't. Sorry I can't point you at a single "definitive" source for learning YAML. Like a lot of programming languages, part of it is is just digging in and trying it, learning as you go. Of course if you have questions, get stuck or just want clarification on some YAML code, don't hesitate to ask! I (and many others) are happy to try to help out those just getting started. I might try to put together a beginner's guide to Home Assistant YAML video or blog article at some point. I'm working one a few other things at the moment, so not sure when I might get to something like that.
Thanks for this. Where I got confused with scenes is, I wanted to capture the state of , in the process of running an automation. Whatever states, say, the lights were before turning on the TV, restore them to that state when the TVs turned off. I guess I'd use scene.create with the automation to capture the light states, change them in the automation to what I want, then use scene.turn_on to restore the prior lighting?
I think you can do what you want by using scene.create in the automation and using snapshot_entities to capture the current state of whatever entities you want (like the lights). You can then restore the state(s) with another automation. Do note that scenes created this way only persist until the next time the configuration is loaded. Check out the documentation here: www.home-assistant.io/integrations/scene Under the section "Deleting dynamically created scenes", there is actually an example doing exactly what you are looking for, except it is using the opening and closing of a window to save/restore states instead of a TV turning off/on. Hope that points you in the right direction.
Why can't I filter by tags or areas when I am creating a group/scene or anything? I might be missing something but it seems like a hassle to add tags/areas and not be able to use them to filter down when creating any of these objects.
Yes... seriously. It is much easier for her (and especially guests) to simply scan a card than to juggle three different remotes to power on the various home theater components, set everything to the right input and then launch a particular streaming service from the Roku. Simply scanning an NFC card takes care of all that. Not every automation is a fit for every household. But this one works for us and our guests. Much easier to explain to a visiting family member that they just have to scan the card for what they want to watch. Without it, I've found that visitors simply avoid watching anything, or call out to me to power everything one and set all the right inputs.
New home assistant user here and this definitely clarified a lot and eased my confusion. Thank you!
You're welcome! Glad the video was helpful. Thanks for watching and for the comment!
Great video and very well explained. Thank you from Argentina!
You are welcome. And thanks for the comment and kind words!
Another great Resinchem Tech production! Excellent tutorial and breakdown of the different ways to make things easier in Home Assistant. I thought it was a great point to mention that everything is located in one place as opposed to finding all the automations that may contain that entity. Great job as always! Keep up the Excellent work!
Thanks! I think that scripts are one of the more underutilized and least understood tools for newer Home Assistant users. I hope this video provides a least a bit of introduction and shows some situations where they can be used to make automations and routines more manageable and maintainable.
As always, thanks for watching and thanks for the comment!
Great explanation as always. Thanks.
Only 13 WLED projects in the basement. Get to work!! 😀
Yeah... it's a little over the top! Thanks for the comment.
Great video. Easily explains the differences. One flaw that is highlighted in HA in general though is the way multiple devices or entities are added. You skip on as its time consuming showing each device being added but it highlights that this process is silly. It should be a tick list or have the ability to select multiple devices at the one time. Adding one by one is so cumbersome when it needn't be.
This helped me understand the components much easier! Thanks for this one!
You are very welcome. I think that scripts are probably underutilized and maybe a bit misunderstood by those first starting out with Home Assistant. But they can be invaluable for created reusable groups of actions that are easier to maintain as your Home Assistant grows.
Thanks for watching and the kind comment! I do appreciate it!
@@ResinChemTech Indeed. I’ve done a lot of scripting in other areas - so they made the most sense to me - but the duplicity of then using automations was confusing to me. Same with Groups vs scenes.
Im going to try this in just a bit - but can you create groups using templates? Can you create a “outdoor” light group let’s say and include all lights in the “Outdoor” Area? That could make for some very nice behavior to add new features automatically by changing name and area assignment for example.
Hmm... that's an interesting idea and not something that I've tried. It would probably require YAML. There was an older way of creating groups in YAML that would actually create a group entity (although this method isn't recommended anymore - and it could be removed in later releases, I still have a handful of groups created this way). So I'm not sure, but if you can template the entities list, then it should theoretically be possible. Let me know what you find out!
@@ResinChemTech Will do - its now on my "List of things I want to try" ha!
@@ResinChemTech And the more I think about it - the more I think it has to be possible. I created a helper-sensor using templating for my garage door state...
Great video thank you! I've just started using scripts but haven't done groups or scenes yet. This will help me keep my HA organised!
Scripts can definitely help you create reusable blocks of actions and make it much easier to maintain those as you add new automations and routines in the future.
I do use a few groups, but actually I don't use too many scenes. Instead I often use automations and/or scripts so that my "scenes" can be customized based on other factors, such as time of day, etc. But scenes are a great way to get started with setting up something like a movie night, party night, etc.
Thanks for watching and taking a moment to leave a comment. It is appreciated!
you know what I love... long videos where I just want to know how to make "assist" run scripts that will change my roku tv app with my voice. But everyone seems to gloss over how to set up the voice command part but not the making a script part.
Perfect explanation! Opened my eyes for new ways to do things!
Fantastic! Glad you found it helpful. Thanks for watching and taking a moment to leave a comment.
I am just like the guy you mentioned. I'm just getting into scripts. I wasn't aware of the versatility of the different methods.
Thank you for doing this video.
You are welcome! I do think that scripts are something that are probably underutilized, especially by those just starting out. But they can definitely make it easier to maintain and reuse sets of actions as your Home Assistant install grows over time.
Thanks for watching... and taking a moment to leave a comment!
Wow. Insta sub. Exactly what I needed to grasp a few things. Thanks algorithm for feeding me this, thank you for taking the time to make this video!
Wow... thanks for the comment. I'm glad my video helped out a bit. Thanks for the sub... and welcome to the channel!
Off topic, but is that a Texas instruments 994a in display case at beginning. I taught myself basic language using it. I wrote many programs and remember using the cassettes to load and save. I also spent so much time fixing it. I used it so much that things wore out like keys, joysticks, cables and things. My father worked for TI and would bring parts home and I would fix it myself. This is how I got interested in computers and electronics. Thanks for the trip down memory lane and reminding me of time well spent with my father who is now gone.
Yep... a TI99/4A! Just like you, I taught myself BASIC on that machine and spent way too many hours writing my own games and applications (and yes... storing and loading from cassette!). I wish I would have kept the original, but I didn't. Luckily a college buddy remembered how fond I was of it and found one at a retro electronics fair and picked it up for me. It looks brand new and since I already have a TI99 emulator running on my arcade machine, I opted to turn that one into a display.
I do have another video that shows a bit more about turning it into the display (as compared to the 'retail' tech-as-art display. To be honest, it is not a very good video, but if you do want to see a little bit more of the TI99 and how I did the display, you can check out that video if you want: ua-cam.com/video/Cmn-rtNKikY/v-deo.html
But I did love my TI99/4A back in the day. Thanks for the comment!
@@ResinChemTech Similar stories to mine! I have a few TI-99/4A systems, including my original console and PEB. Taught myself BASIC with the great book it included and later Extended BASIC and some Assembly. It helped to form my career in the I.T. field later on.
Nice job on the display video! (And this one as well!)
@richardneff Thanks! I never had the PEB... but wished I would have. Spent way too many hours in college writing code and playing games on the TI-99 when I should have been studying. But it was my introduction to writing code and probably played a big part in my eventual move over to the IT field/app developer later in my career. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Holy crap! Can't believe I just found you! Subscribed.
Welcome to the channel!
very good video. Informative and well presented. BTW I think your bar is awesome! WLEDs really add to it.
Thanks! When the bar was originally built, it was before I knew about WLED or had started messing with microcontrollers. I paid a very large amount of money for "professional" bar lighting shelves. But these had very limited options in terms of effects and other features. Once I discovered WLED, I ripped out the old LED strips, replaced them with WS2812b and added a WLED controller. Much, much better with so many more options... all at about 1/20th the price of what I paid for the retail option.
Thanks for watching... and taking the time to leave a comment!
Thanks for the breakdown! I am going to create a group for some of my WLED controllers and simplify a couple of the automations where everything is all discreet entities.
You are welcome! As I mentioned, you can group WLED controllers in Home Assistant, but it does work a bit differently than using the native WLED sync. But having options is always a great thing!
Thanks, as always, for the comment!
Great video, definitely referring to this later!
Thanks! I appreciate it!
This was helpful. Thank you.
You are welcome! I'm glad you found it helpful. Thanks for the comment!
Great video. Thanks 🙌
You are welcome. Thanks for the comment!
Well done, useful info.
Thanks... and thanks for the comment!
Excellent explanations. 👍🏻
Thanks! And thanks for taking a moment to leave a comment.
How about a comparison between groups and rooms? You can turn on/off everything in a room together. And you are not restricted to one type like a group.
9:55 One side note to the light and switch not being able to be grouped. You can create a helper to 'Change Device Type of a Switch'. The entity created can then be grouped. I've done this to group dumb LED lights which are connected to Kasa plugs and switches.
Great tip! While it is no longer recommended (and why I didn't show it as an option), you can also create old style groups via YAML that allow you to combine different entity types like lights, switches, covers, etc. into a single group entity and control those different entity types as a group, albeit with some limitations on functionality (I still have a few of these original, old-style groups). As mentioned, Home Assistant provides a lot of flexibility and different ways to accomplish a given task.
The ability to redefine a switch as another entity type is a great start. Unfortunately it currently only works for switches and you can't do the reverse... such as redefining something like a light, cover or lock as a switch. Well.. technically you can via YAML and templated entities, but not easily via just the UI editors and dropdowns. Still a great tip for those that want to group switches with other entity types. Thanks!
Just found your channel and do glad I have. I use SmartThings and Alexa but seriously looking into using HA. I have no experience with HA and after watching your video I wonder if you intend to do more basic “idiot guides” to HA. A basic beginners onwards overview would be helpful for I imagine for just more than myself. Great video and looking forward to seeing the next. Any recommendations on reference sources either literature or videos would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
Glad you found me too! I have a playlist of Home Assistant-related videos: ua-cam.com/play/PLqjDNeOVHOkflCfZDY2vJnVHud0m3n0Vz.html
Many of these are "Home Assistant 101" videos target towards those just starting out with Home Assistant, others are for those with a little more experience. I try to vary my videos between Home Assistant videos and DIY electronics projects (many of which can also be used with Home Assistant). I do have video in the early planning stages targeting someone precisely in your situation... you've heard of Home Assistant but want to more about how it works and operates. Not sure when that video will be out as I have a couple of others in the works right now as well, but it should be in the next couple of months. Keep an eye out!
Thanks for watching and taking a moment to leave a comment!
@@ResinChemTech Thank you for getting back to me. Looking forward to going over your videos and getting into the HA family.
This was great, but can you recommend a comprehensive documentation on the YAML configs for automations, and/or the syntax for the scripting language?
I'm not sure that I can point you at a source other than Googling for "YAML tutorial". Even then, Home Assistant often has particular "quirks" in how it implements some of its YAML. For that, you generally have to look at the official Home Assistant documentation for a particular task or integration (which can also be a bit spotty at best).
Back when I first started with Home Assistant and struggled to learn YAML (despite having a programming background), I still got frustrated at times (but YAML was all we had 'back in the day' as there weren't any UI editors). For me, I spent a lot of time looking at others' Home Assistant YAML... many folks post their entire YAML configuration files via Github. Between that, online documentation and a lot of trial and error, I eventually got the hang of it. The biggest thing for me nowadays (other than remembering that dealing with indentation in YAML, a tab is NOT the same as spaces) is trying to determine if something is a list that uses hyphens vs. a dictionary that doesn't.
Sorry I can't point you at a single "definitive" source for learning YAML. Like a lot of programming languages, part of it is is just digging in and trying it, learning as you go. Of course if you have questions, get stuck or just want clarification on some YAML code, don't hesitate to ask! I (and many others) are happy to try to help out those just getting started.
I might try to put together a beginner's guide to Home Assistant YAML video or blog article at some point. I'm working one a few other things at the moment, so not sure when I might get to something like that.
Thanks for this. Where I got confused with scenes is, I wanted to capture the state of , in the process of running an automation. Whatever states, say, the lights were before turning on the TV, restore them to that state when the TVs turned off. I guess I'd use scene.create with the automation to capture the light states, change them in the automation to what I want, then use scene.turn_on to restore the prior lighting?
I think you can do what you want by using scene.create in the automation and using snapshot_entities to capture the current state of whatever entities you want (like the lights). You can then restore the state(s) with another automation. Do note that scenes created this way only persist until the next time the configuration is loaded. Check out the documentation here: www.home-assistant.io/integrations/scene
Under the section "Deleting dynamically created scenes", there is actually an example doing exactly what you are looking for, except it is using the opening and closing of a window to save/restore states instead of a TV turning off/on. Hope that points you in the right direction.
Why can't I filter by tags or areas when I am creating a group/scene or anything? I might be missing something but it seems like a hassle to add tags/areas and not be able to use them to filter down when creating any of these objects.
Seriously, you have a set of NFC cards for your wife to choose to scan to turn Netflix on?!?! 😂😂😂
Yes... seriously. It is much easier for her (and especially guests) to simply scan a card than to juggle three different remotes to power on the various home theater components, set everything to the right input and then launch a particular streaming service from the Roku. Simply scanning an NFC card takes care of all that. Not every automation is a fit for every household. But this one works for us and our guests. Much easier to explain to a visiting family member that they just have to scan the card for what they want to watch. Without it, I've found that visitors simply avoid watching anything, or call out to me to power everything one and set all the right inputs.