Started with HA automation's 4-5 years ago, YAML only. Then switched to Node-RED and I just love flexibility and options that I get with Node-RED. I did recently tried out HA automation's but for my use cases and complex automation's Node-RED is still way to go. In 3 years that I use Node-RED never had any issue with connection between HA and Node-RED, but that is maybe due to fact that I am using WM for both HA and Node-RED so hardware wise everything is much more stable and faster compared to rPi.
Agreed. I am actually surprised how little (none really) connection issues I have had between HA and Node-RED. If using the add-on then the comms is all internal really, so makes sense that it would be quite stable I guess.
My bigest mistake at home automatios had been that I even try make automations with HA. I have just one tip for all newbies. Dont waste your time with HA automations. Use NR and use HA only for autodiscovery and ui if even for that
Thanks for the Video, I was previously of the view that Node Red solved problems that I do not have, but I will say that the example Automation did seem more straightforward. As an aside, the Automation you used did - at least to me - show some innovative thinking, so I would be interested in other Videos about this.
Great video. Im pretty new to Home Automation and have been using Home Assistant for about 2 years now. I have a few automations for my bathrooms that are fairly complex and struggled to get them to work using the HA Automations. So I switched to Node-Red and got them working really well. So for now 99% of my automations are done through Node-Red instead of HA. I have only one HA automation that I have not been able to move to Node-Red using a Sonoff doorbell and RF hub. CAnt seem to capture the action in node-red. Other than that Node-Red is my goto for automations.
Thanks for sharing, I am learning a lot about Home Assistant with your videos. Just one comment: In the flow you could replace the "empty payload" for a junction (kind of a connecting dot). Node-Red is much clearer than YAML/HASS to me. Happy New Year!
Thanks for the comment! The empty payload thing was due to how Home Assistant nodes used to work in a really old version. The entity data used to get populated in a different part of the message, which would then sometimes corrupt the data used in the service node, making it fail or process the wrong data. So I created a node to clear out the payload data befote a service call so that the service call would succeed. This is no longer really an issue for the last few years. Hope that makes sense!
Yeah, that is a nice part of Node-RED. Grouping automations in Home Assistant has been a request for a long time and I do hope they implement a better way of being able to organise automations.
I still can't get myself to adopt node-red ... installed, working, but then the other day, I went to give it another try ... Uh, sunrise/sunset with an offset? I gave up after about 30 min of searching and fell back into my comfort zone. HA automations with the "choose" feature is so powerful and all the syntax is right in front of the user too. I'm still super interested in learning how to do the same in node-red, as I do have a couple of complex use cases that I think would benefit from it, but it's not been easy to adopt full time since I've been used to yaml for so long now.
Thanks for your comment! Yeah, the preference absolutely different between people. There is no doubting that the HA automations are now very easy to create. In relation to sunrise/sunset specifically I actually do still quite like Node-RED for this; the reason being is that the "Sun Events" node can emit messages automatically at the key times of the day, not just sunrise and sunset, e.g. Golden Hour and Dusk. In Home Assistant you have to play around with elevation and azimuth to achieve that. I heavily use the If/Else as well as the Choose actions in HA, really handy that you can add conditions to them.
Hello, just started to automate my solar usage with node red : got better control than with home assistant automations. One question : how do you create your empty payload to group connections ?
Hi there! You don't need to create an empty payload node anymore really, this is a hangover from old versions which caused issues in some situations. You can just drag multiple lines to a node without anything in the middle. However, if you right click on a node > Insert > Junction then this can be useful to join things together and tidy things up. Hope this helps!
I am confused: your example opens the blinds if there is no motion for 15 minutes on the second floor in the period 08:16- 11:30 ? What??? The lack of motion may be you are still sleeping!
I should have used the word "presence" as well as "motion". I use a Presence sensor in the bedroom so that it can detect when we are in bed and motion sensors in the other areas. The 2nd floor motion group includes the presence sensor.
Node-red is a solution for a problem I don't have. if you can create an automation in HA then you should do it there, don't add more complexity to your HA setup than strictly needed.
Totally agree, if you don't need it then best to have stuff in all one place. In my case, I certainly have some things that would be extremely difficult to achieve in HA. There is a lot of the stuff which used to be hard to do in HA, but I have now migrated most of those automations back from Node-RED into HA.
I like the view of node red, but what I don't think you take into consideration is that node red is very complicated for a beginner, it's ok to show that it's simply putting building blocks in order, but choosing which building block does what and filling in the fields within those blocks can be very confusing, stick with automations, it will save you a lot of heartache.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah, Node-RED is definitely confusing at first. I did a Beginner's Guide video and then a follow-up more recently to try and fill in some of the gaps that I missed in the first one. But still knowing what node to use at first is not always obvious. (Or doesn't exist and you have to add a new palette)
Meh no need for Node red, HA automations are very strait forward… its not 4 years ago, no need for another add on. Yaml is NOT difficult but the latest releases have made native automations almost non thinking. Use what your comfortable with is all anyone can say
Same for me, but for home assistant, the number of times I have tried it, i just find it a convoluted mess, click here, click there. I only run node-red, it can do the same plus more compared to home assistant. I see 1 advantage of home assistant; state management, but that's about it - at least for what I need, which is automation, I dont care about dashboards etc.
Started with HA automation's 4-5 years ago, YAML only. Then switched to Node-RED and I just love flexibility and options that I get with Node-RED. I did recently tried out HA automation's but for my use cases and complex automation's Node-RED is still way to go. In 3 years that I use Node-RED never had any issue with connection between HA and Node-RED, but that is maybe due to fact that I am using WM for both HA and Node-RED so hardware wise everything is much more stable and faster compared to rPi.
Agreed. I am actually surprised how little (none really) connection issues I have had between HA and Node-RED. If using the add-on then the comms is all internal really, so makes sense that it would be quite stable I guess.
My bigest mistake at home automatios had been that I even try make automations with HA. I have just one tip for all newbies. Dont waste your time with HA automations. Use NR and use HA only for autodiscovery and ui if even for that
Thanks for the Video, I was previously of the view that Node Red solved problems that I do not have, but I will say that the example Automation did seem more straightforward. As an aside, the Automation you used did - at least to me - show some innovative thinking, so I would be interested in other Videos about this.
Great video, would u do more nodered automations in home assistant? Such as climate control with time schedule, lights with motion.
Great video. Im pretty new to Home Automation and have been using Home Assistant for about 2 years now. I have a few automations for my bathrooms that are fairly complex and struggled to get them to work using the HA Automations. So I switched to Node-Red and got them working really well. So for now 99% of my automations are done through Node-Red instead of HA. I have only one HA automation that I have not been able to move to Node-Red using a Sonoff doorbell and RF hub. CAnt seem to capture the action in node-red. Other than that Node-Red is my goto for automations.
Great to hear. I plan to do a video on some more side-by-side automations in the coming weeks.
Thanks for sharing, I am learning a lot about Home Assistant with your videos.
Just one comment: In the flow you could replace the "empty payload" for a junction (kind of a connecting dot).
Node-Red is much clearer than YAML/HASS to me. Happy New Year!
Thanks for the comment!
The empty payload thing was due to how Home Assistant nodes used to work in a really old version.
The entity data used to get populated in a different part of the message, which would then sometimes corrupt the data used in the service node, making it fail or process the wrong data.
So I created a node to clear out the payload data befote a service call so that the service call would succeed.
This is no longer really an issue for the last few years. Hope that makes sense!
Node red for life. Easy to see all your automations on one page without clicking into each one.
Yeah, that is a nice part of Node-RED.
Grouping automations in Home Assistant has been a request for a long time and I do hope they implement a better way of being able to organise automations.
Thanks for the comparison, a tutorial on how to use function mode would be great
I like both tbh, HA automations are way easier on phone
I still can't get myself to adopt node-red ... installed, working, but then the other day, I went to give it another try ... Uh, sunrise/sunset with an offset? I gave up after about 30 min of searching and fell back into my comfort zone. HA automations with the "choose" feature is so powerful and all the syntax is right in front of the user too. I'm still super interested in learning how to do the same in node-red, as I do have a couple of complex use cases that I think would benefit from it, but it's not been easy to adopt full time since I've been used to yaml for so long now.
Thanks for your comment! Yeah, the preference absolutely different between people. There is no doubting that the HA automations are now very easy to create.
In relation to sunrise/sunset specifically I actually do still quite like Node-RED for this; the reason being is that the "Sun Events" node can emit messages automatically at the key times of the day, not just sunrise and sunset, e.g. Golden Hour and Dusk. In Home Assistant you have to play around with elevation and azimuth to achieve that.
I heavily use the If/Else as well as the Choose actions in HA, really handy that you can add conditions to them.
Hello, just started to automate my solar usage with node red : got better control than with home assistant automations. One question : how do you create your empty payload to group connections ?
Hi there! You don't need to create an empty payload node anymore really, this is a hangover from old versions which caused issues in some situations. You can just drag multiple lines to a node without anything in the middle. However, if you right click on a node > Insert > Junction then this can be useful to join things together and tidy things up. Hope this helps!
I am confused: your example opens the blinds if there is no motion for 15 minutes on the second floor in the period 08:16- 11:30 ? What??? The lack of motion may be you are still sleeping!
I should have used the word "presence" as well as "motion". I use a Presence sensor in the bedroom so that it can detect when we are in bed and motion sensors in the other areas.
The 2nd floor motion group includes the presence sensor.
Node-red is a solution for a problem I don't have. if you can create an automation in HA then you should do it there, don't add more complexity to your HA setup than strictly needed.
Totally agree, if you don't need it then best to have stuff in all one place. In my case, I certainly have some things that would be extremely difficult to achieve in HA. There is a lot of the stuff which used to be hard to do in HA, but I have now migrated most of those automations back from Node-RED into HA.
Thanks for video - useful!
I like the view of node red, but what I don't think you take into consideration is that node red is very complicated for a beginner, it's ok to show that it's simply putting building blocks in order, but choosing which building block does what and filling in the fields within those blocks can be very confusing, stick with automations, it will save you a lot of heartache.
Thanks for the comment!
Yeah, Node-RED is definitely confusing at first.
I did a Beginner's Guide video and then a follow-up more recently to try and fill in some of the gaps that I missed in the first one.
But still knowing what node to use at first is not always obvious. (Or doesn't exist and you have to add a new palette)
Meh no need for Node red, HA automations are very strait forward… its not 4 years ago, no need for another add on. Yaml is NOT difficult but the latest releases have made native automations almost non thinking. Use what your comfortable with is all anyone can say
Same for me, but for home assistant, the number of times I have tried it, i just find it a convoluted mess, click here, click there. I only run node-red, it can do the same plus more compared to home assistant. I see 1 advantage of home assistant; state management, but that's about it - at least for what I need, which is automation, I dont care about dashboards etc.