I think the developers of Home Assistant should take this video to heart, as it perfectly demonstrates how new users interact with it, it is so not intuitive. I tried it several times, it just feels clumsy and instead I did everything in node-red where stuff is predictable, everything that you can control in HA is also possible in node-red.
I think Home Assistant is an example of developers building something they want and not really listening to end users. I think it's great but I'm a developer and I often just write yaml files to do what I want. Not a very friendly solution to anyone that doesn't know the system. Now my SO just puts in feature requests 😂
Been using home assistant for years. It has come a LONG LONG way since the early years. More and more stuff is being brought into the GUI. I personally love the YAML style configuration but hey, I am a developer. It is really nice to be able to click through the GUI and only get into the YAML stuff when its required for advanced cases.
Same boat here.. Node-Red and mqtt are so flexible and easy to configure. I have bunch of wifi plugs and few 6 port extensions all configured just the way I want..
I'm using HA for quite a while now - and still frequently get stung by things like "what's that on/off value called again", or having to resort to templates to implement a missing brightness attribute of a lamp while the lamp is off. The YAML is nice and powerful - but the documentation makes learning it not easy. And somehow some actions got a lot of love - like the very magical service action, while others like setting lights directly are really cumbersome.
An _occupancy sensor_ might be more useful here than just a simple motion sensor. Motion sensors rely on (relatively) large motion, like walking, whereas an occupancy sensor also uses heat and sound so that if you're in the room and not moving much (like when you're at a computer), it'll still keep the lights on.
omg, this seems more like what Jeff started talking about at the beginning of the video, and why I decided to watch it, so it was a bit batey :P Could you give any examples/links on it? And @Jeff Geerling it would be amazing if you could get more into it please!
A mechanical switch under his seat or floor mat if he is not moving much might be better but I understand his pain at work on pc you don't move much all lights go out..
@@affieuk lol that would be fun :P but for real, there otta be a better/simpler way to do this. Incl. the same IR sensor but just measuring the amount of IR and sound in the room maybe.
Pretty fun (and also a little nerve wracking and frustrating), to see you run through everything for the first time as a novice. I found myself saying "no, no, no, YES!" a lot. I honestly think a video like this is super important because once you get familiar with HA it's hard to remember what it was like to be a novice. Cheers and good luck on your HA journey.
I often try (but don't always succeed) to document the first time using anything - that's basically how I ended up writing Ansible for DevOps, it started as a series of my own notes to help myself... then I polished them a bit and a book popped out after a while!
😆 I was doing the same Rob! Great to see you get on board Jeff, I feel you can add SO much value once you get your head around it. Thanks for your work!
I hope that the HA devs look at this video with the same eyes. It used to be a lot simpler for new people and I know it’s possible, I just think the devs have gotten too deep to remember what it’s like when you don’t already know how things work.
Oh YES ! this is a super useful video for the Home Assistant Usability team (assuming there is one). The video showed several occasions where a small change in the UI would provide great benefit for a (new) HA user. Excited to see Jeff, the RPI and YAML master, doing HA videos.... All the ingredients are here for super content in the future. Mark my words. @Paul Hibbert: take a look at this video. You will enjoy it as much as I do enjoy yours.... The HA, the HA, the HA... Oooh the HA
I admire Jeff with all his knowledge, but I too was like... no!!!! I'm more of an MQTT guy, now I see why more people don't use it. zigbee seems pretty easy to set up.
This is exactly what I have been waiting for after all home automation went cloud based and completely killed my desire to install these into my home. Have zero interest in granting massive companies unfettered access to my personal space. Looking forward to learning from your upcoming projects!
Normal switches aren't dumb, they're doing their job 99% right after installation. You know what's dumb? Needing internet connection to turn on your light. Smh
Me too I'm so hyped about this, I LOVE new tech and automation, but I will never willingly install listening devices and wireless cameras in my home lol anything that has an always on speaker MUST be local, or it's not an option. Ill finally be able to move beyond basic smart home crap
@@stellviahohenheim You know being wifi enabled doesn't somehow disable the physical switches right? Lol it ADDS functionality, it doesn't take any away. Idk exactly what you were talking about tho cuz OP edited the comment lol
@@stellviahohenheim private and local is offline it runs off the servers you have in your house you can connect to internet but you can do what I do and have it only connected between my own servers so I have full surveillance of my 20 acres in my hands only and i can connect everything and make it all automated like some tony stark shit and it would be all offline all in my hands with a solar system array all off grid data transfer through all my servers photos videos movies anything you can think of in a digital format will go on a server.
The thing that took me forever to figure out with Home Assistant is there's a big difference between "devices" and "entities". Devices contain entities, ideally one for each "thing" that it does or provides. So your motion sensor is a device, which contains entities for detecting motion, looks like it also does temperature, and probably an on/off status and battery level.
Jeff got the hang of things Way too easily for my liking, took me far longer than I'd care to mention. The penny only dropped regarding Devices & Entities, when I built my automatic gate opener. That thing has more entities than a 747 cockpit after I was done with it (Slight exaggeration there..... Obviously). But the "Device" at the gate, now has an entity for sensing if the gate is open or closed, the entity for a trigger to open or close the gate, a link to the doorbell in the kitchen (which was an awesome addition... Loudest doorbell in the southern hemisphere I think), an entity for the beams when there is a vehicle obstructing the gate and a few other nicknacks like the gate lights etc. My current project is the solar array I have for the battery bank I use to keep myself and the rest of the family connected to the internet, local network and wifi. Let's just say it's been more of a headache after it was set up than what it was doing the actual installation, as now you have graphs and stats that give you endless sleepless nights, worrying if you have enough battery storage, and wondering if there are enough hours in the day to get solar batteries charged before sundown :/
@@-Gadget- Used to work with a guy who hankered after a '30s motorbike where you took the cap off to see how much gas you had and if your knees burnt the back wheel was about to stop, no HA for him😅, cheers.
@@LabGecko Live-dead-live testing is a *very* good idea. Check the tester on a known-live source - nearby extension cord, outlet, whatever. Check the circuit or device to be worked on is dead. Check the tester again on known-live source to ensure that the tester is still functioning correctly and didn't give you a bum read. That was the way it was taught to me years ago in the Navy, and it's kept me from getting lit up (too much) since then working with much higher voltage circuits.
FYI from a hopeless Home Assistant Fanboy: 1) Battery operated motion detectors typically have a several minute cool-down before they will detect motion again. 2) Aquara makes a no-neutral zigbee switch! They are relatively new.
I have a few Hue motion sensors which are zigbee - just tested and once I stopped waving at it it was less than 10 seconds before it reset to "clear", after which it was able to detect motion again immediately. I believe different devices do have different capabilities and Hue seem well regarded, so worth doing some research as clearly this makes a big difference to how useful they'll be for a given use case.
Caseta makes great quality no neutral switches. But you need their hub. They will however last for years, wont void your insurance, and will be supported for years.
I've labelled all my outlets and light faceplates too. Pro Tip, just mark the backside of them using a sharpie marker with the panel switch number. Sure you have to unscrew the faceplate to see the number, but if you need to know the number you are likely going to be taking off the faceplate anyway.
13:06 The reason is that the state of the sensor is still "on", which in this case means "motion detected". Normally to change the to "off" it has to stay at least 1/2 minutes (but it depends on the sensor) without detecting motion. Having a sensor that sends Zigbee message every 5 seconds will drain it's battery faster!
I recently got into Home Assistant and watching your raw reactions using it for the first time is hilarious. It’s also probably very informative for anyone working on the HA UX as your reactions matched almost exactly with mine when I was starting. If you get a chance, can you try to figure out and explain the zigbee clustering UI? It’s a mystery to me.
When you said "I'm not going to do this" after the light switch demonstration, and then proceeded to suggest a needlessly complex solution. I loved that.
Welcome to the world of Home Assistant. Great to have your analytical mind looking at it as I'm sure you have some great feedback for the dev group. Cheers, and enjoy the Home automation!
Home assistant has literally saved the food in my fridge. It is so cold right now the fridge in my garage is not working, by putting a light in the fridge to warm it up (ironically so it will work better) and controlling that light based on time patterns I have kept my fridge at 32 and my freezer at -10. HA also reminds the family about chores via an integration with a custom discord bot, turns on my office lights after my morning alarm goes off and I have my phone off of charge for more than 60 seconds. Along with a whole slew of other useful things.
The problem with HA is that is begining of the end of this platform unfortunetelly - pletny of boomers asking for more Google, Amazon integrations and that will turn HA (already turning) into another spying no privacy platform. I strongly suggesting to find alternative because way too many westerners got "involved" and crack in HA are already visible. Sad but true.
I really don't see the point in any of these technologies. Seems more like technology for technologies sake. But then again, I'm in my 50's. But don't call me a boomer. I was born in '70, gen-x and proud of it.
So awesome to find someone taking personal data privacy seriously. IoT & home automation is great, but I don't want my home talking to ANYTHING outside my network. I don't care what country it is.
Welcome to Home Assistant! Along with my NAS, and Raspberry Pi it has been responsible for some of my Linux journey in the last few years. I was wondering when you might venture into HA. I bought your Ansible book and am using it to automate all the things! Keep up the great content!
I agree completely with you looking at the "describe what you want to do" box and going "uuurggghhhhh". In my opinion, you should type in there a phrase and it should search for that in the community blueprints section of the forum. I have NEVER managed to get that box to spit out anything useful as an automation for me. But the blueprint section on the forum usually has a couple examples lined up ready. That feature doesnt work and really drags the HA experience down, The blueprint function is MUCH better and people actually use it.
Yes, the thing i dislike about existing home automation devices is i have to use their cloud service and i can't opt out. Glad to see more devices like this come out.
Welcome to Home Assistant and goodbye to any free time you had. This was really interesting after two years with HA I didn’t realise how it must be for a newbie. I can’t wait for you to use this more as I have no doubt you will be doing great stuff with it.
lol yeah! I have had so many years of total fun mastering every kind of control system there is. no you don't want to be on line with any of this! But if you pull power from the grid you are owned. I just got a screen capture for typing this comment. know there is more then just cat6, wifi, and blue tooth at work in your PC. Hello 5G 😂 there is nothing we can do to change it.
Your videos have such a clear presentation style -- your speaking voice, the editing, the lack of distractions (intros, outros, music, sponsors, etc.) -- that make me wish you would make videos on other topics (non-tech) that I'm interested in.
You may have already figured it out, but the naming of the motion sensor was different because a "device" can have multiple "entities." A lot of little things like that or searching existing vs new integrations tripped me up as well, and I'm still finding bits that aren't very user friendly. It's super powerful, but I think your experience matches what we've all gone through when starting out. It seems like when projects end up with hardcore long time users it can be easy to overlook the onboarding experience.
A warning in reaction to the "local" part: some Tuya-compatible devices are apparently integrated using the Tuya cloud API. In that case, the "local control" is somewhat of an illusion.. I installed some Wiz Connect smart bulbs (horrible configuration experience) and TP-Link's Kasa switches (a breeze to configure). Both provide a UDP-based local protocol that has been reverse-engineered. (I do not use Home Assistant: I preferred writing my own apps, for the fun of it, and to experiment with a sorta micro-server architecture, and not because of any issue with Home Assistant. After watching your video I tried setting up a device name with a space and spent an evening fixing a handful of bugs, including HTTP character encoding misshapes. Thank you! 😂)
FWIW, the integration page for any given device on the Home Assistant website will list whether the integration requires internet access for it to work, or whether it’s local only. Since discovering that myself, I’ve been slowly replacing the IoT devices in my house with things that work locally and don’t require access to the internet. Everything is becoming more reliable as a result!
@ClintonJudy I couldnt find the information on the home assistant integrations page. Is it still there? It s hard to know which device can be conpletely setup offline...
@@JeffGeerling I think it's mostly a power-saving thing so it's not turning on the ZigBee transmitter every time that you twitch. My el-cheapo 433MHz wireless sensors do the same thing; I think with a 5 minute cool-down time. I use those, hard-wired PIRs on my Elk alarm system, a couple of Z-Wave sensors and some PIR sensors on ESP32 sensors around the house to sense motion/occupancy. That's ultimately the real power of Home Assistant, as it abstracts all the different technologies used to integrate the sensors into those abstract entities, making it effortless to work across different technologies. You don't have to pick and join a single technology/religion for the stuff in your home.
Welcome to the Home Assistant world! I'm on the edge of what my 8GB Pi 4 can manage! I have 69 Zigbee devices, a dozen of ESPs on ESPHome, and some other devices (Smart TVs, UPS, etc...), totalling over 400 entities. It's an addiction, I just automated my water heater to save electricity today!
Was wondering when Home Assistant was coming to this channel! Definitely right that the automation UI needs some improvement. Until this video I hadn't realised that there's no indication if fields are required or optional (trigger id can be left blank). Still an awesome tool though. Being able to combine all of the different ecosystems is great. As is having it work without needing internet.
Glad to see you finally trying out Home Assistant! I fully expect a follow up video in a few weeks after you've succumbed to the urge to swap out another dozen light switches and install ZigBee sensors/buttons/etc everywhere 😅 I'm up to over 20 smart switches/dimmers, 4 scene switches, 4 ZigBee buttons, and a handful of other ZigBee sensors so far. My favorite automations so far have been turning off multiple lighting circuits with one switch (all off on the way out the door, etc).
Homeassistant has a dashboard where you can place buttons and widgets, also they have a mobile app. Its very good and I like that HA isnt so polished, in order to polish it up to make it more friendly to first time users you'd have to lose some of the flexibility, and that's not what the project is about
This all or nothing attitude towards user friendlines and power user features is little more than logical fallacy, you can always have both, the alternative is death by obscurity. In this case it just requires a public library of Blueprints, which looks like the direction they're already going anyway.
I liked that you went through the process for the video, rather than having everything worked out ahead of time. And your "narration" as to what you were thinking as you did the various steps can be beneficial to people watching. Thanks!
I can't wait to see the effect on Home Automation software in of itself, the influx of new users using cheap single board computer will probably lead to new development
You've just begun! Now create something for 200,000 square feet of 277 volt lighting ;) All centrally managed and scheduled for over 50 employees. I actually find it odd that this stuff is ONLY NOW getting into to hands of home DIYers. Been doing this stuff for over 20 years. It's about dang time.
Another homerun, Jeff! Love the Chapters listed too. Really helps rolling back and forth through the video. HA looks like a great program for my use; Trying to figure out how to make it run in two VMs with hot/standby setup so if the primary dies....
Look at the container install option or use esxi and HA/failover; however, the latter would leave you with a nested AND emulated setup with the core (their own home rolled kernel). This is a perfect use for the esxi arm fling but mileage may vary due to it not being a supportable product. I'm not dissing on it bc I have a mutli-ISA cluster in my home lab. I just noticed qemu underneath the other day on my soon-to-be trashed x86/64 Home Assistant. I'm probably going to get flamed but I'm giving up the home assistant due to too much time to build and maintain. Just to levelset, my smart device collection covers everything but 433mhz. I also have a very nice collection of debuggers, mcus, and sdrs with various limiting factors. Its been fun but the last update that killed both zigbee and zwave was the last nail in the hass coffin. Now I'm into custom ethernet gateways which as a person that reads assembly while on the toilet, fits me better.
@@PBRichfield I have two frames running ESX but I'm trying to NOT use that for these "home production" VMs/containers. I think I'll soon be turning them off 24/7 and only booting when needing the 64cores. I'd rather Proxmox it. I'm going to see how well HA works in my home, but from what I have seen, at least I can hack it to do just about anything. I do want ZigBee and Zwave running and stable. I have a lot of IOT objects. We'll see. I'll put out the final (working) design on r/homelab and perhaps r/homeautomation. Thanks for your input. Helps to have others who have been through the grind.
@@Doesntcompute2k my pleasure. I found out this morning while applying to be officially sanctioned/ordained as a VMware evangelist that there is a non 4 letter word for people like me. Am I terrible to even go as far as filling out the form just for the off-chance the 'prize' if I even get nominated is the Arm fling API? That's all I want. Well that and this remote and it's all I'll ever need. Oh and this chair... This apj, remote, and chair. Yep, that's all - bastardized dialog from Steve Martin in The Jerk. Fun fact: I regret not getting the e3 127/8x v3 for my 2u shorty x86/64 host instead of that 4970k... But then I wouldn't ever had to opportunity to run my azure ad connected server 2022 headless dc on water-cooled 10yo silicon! Thats where the HA is spending it's twilight years too. If you need a fully updated 700 series coordinator, let me know. I might have one for sale cheap.
@@PBRichfield I was going to put the stack of 1u Dell 1650s and Dell 1750s "into MAAS service," then I sat there and couldn't figure out WHY. DDR2. Seriously. And the power they take. :( They're going to the recycler with all of the old Cisco 10/100Mbps switches. I'm trying to get rid of all Xeon 5Ks, keeping the Xeon 2600s where the cores make sense. I have full VMWare enterprise, XCP-ng, and Proxmox. Liking Proxmox a lot. I'm pretty sure I still have a (huge Sony WXP) laptop downstairs with an Intel Quad Q9600/9650. So I get your 4970.
When I can watch a video of someone explaining something I already know and be entertained I know is a good content creator. I'm sure Jeff will find the configuration.yaml file and never use the UI again jejejeje
@@JeffGeerling indeed, not the way a non-programmer mortal like me runs it but I'm sure you'll enjoy. Looking forward for the projects you'll be able to pull off
@@JeffGeerling Not sure if you can use it for *all* the things. I think I remember some integrations having their YAML config being deprecated in favor of the UI config flow setup. (While some still only has YAML config because nobody has gotten around to them.)
There are actual human prescence detectors you can buy. Adafruit has one with steamma qt even. They recognize human prescence even if still, sleeping or whatever using radar. Thats what i would use :)
1- Your going to need to install a bridge for the phase's. 2- install a filter to block your house from outside noise. Some time's others??? are using the same device's and are in range. 3- speaking of range if your in a large property, your going to need to use extenders. your doing great. I started with x10 many years ago.
Interesting that you make this and put it out now, because I've been using home assistant on one of mi pi's for only a few days now. I've had some of the same reactions that you have had to its setup and knowing some things require certain parameters and that underscore used in the identifier name!!! You know a seasoned programmer when they automatically know that's probably a better way to go. Even on systems that allow all sorts of weird characters and spaces in filenames, I still find myself going with something that is easier to manage in scripts and programming languages.
Thank you - was nice to see you stepping arround in HA - what I missed was the reload of AUtomations which is typically necessary after you changed or established an automation.
Reloading was only necessary when editing yaml files to define automations. When using the web UI, you only need to click on the save button for it to take effect.
Hey Jeff, I think you should keep the timeout to a minute or so but write a script that runs on your PC that detects that you are using it (e.g keystroke, mouse, media is playing) which then feeds as a motion sensor to the HA.
Nice to see that you are getting in Home Assistant… when you start, you’ll never stop and start automating everything. You’ll drive red shirt Jeff crazy with it.
Welcome to the home assistant community! I built my home assistant server in a 1U rack server with a OrangePI RK3399 and a built in UPS and 4G modem for backup.
Given that you have yml code for the blueprints, I'm curious if this can be deployed with an Ansible playbook and make automating large spaces/businesses easier to do.
Look at terraform also for your ipmi enabled boxes but i'm curious if you could jumpstart a Pi with an SSD to be used as a stand in ipmi to provision the others. Once all the clients check in, it runs a script to kick start itself into an NFS target for your vms?
I went a rather complicated way with this a few years back. Using the touch input on a teensy, some aluminium foil and a couple of resistors, I made a switch that could sense me from around 30cm away. I put one on each side of my doorway and wrote a program that looked at both sensors to determine if I was entering for leaving the room. It was messy but it did the job.
Excellent! I've seen some of my friends Home assistant add-ons for their smartphone which turn it into a control dashboard with notifications and other types of alerts. So you won't even need additional hardware to control the lights on command.
Another great video Jeff! I remember the days when we had to use "smart devices" that communicated with each other via the electrical lines in your house... late '90s being the timeline for that. So glad to be well past those days and into the this time where granular control is fainlly dooable at a very low cost.
To keep the light from turning off while the room is occupied, I would add a Zigbee toggle switch, perhaps sitting on the desk, that could be set to "on" and would override the motion sensor and wall switch. When the Home Assistant Yellow detects the override switch in the "on" condition, it would ignore the ceiling-mounted motion sensor and send an "on" command to the wall switch. When switched to the "off" position, the override switch would re-enable the motion sensor and allow the room light to be turned off after a programmed delay. The same thing could be achieved by bridging the Zigbee wall switch with a dumb toggle switch, if there is space for an additional switch in the wall box.
I am looking up all this now and noticed the HA Yellow is now close to the $1 million mark. Seems there are a LOT of fans of Home Assistant, and this is not counting the ones that use Docker, Virtual Machines or other alternative installs. These are people buying a Yellow to run it on a RPI4 basically. Since this video was made things have got a LOT easier in integrations. You can now search something like Leviton and it will bring up any integrations that Leviton can be connected to. Still a bit of a Work in Progress, but it is a lot better than when this video was released.
I ran into some issues in my house since my house wiring didn't have a neutral wire. Most smart switches require it, but I found that the smart switches from Cync (C by GE) only require a ground wire to operate. They're a little spendier than some, but they are still reasonably priced and definitely a lot cheaper than switching out all your house wiring. Just a tip for those who have a house that is a bit older and are missing a neutral wire. Your home automation dreams aren't dead!!!
I guess you already know it by now, but the Motion Sensor automation makes quite nice use of the "Mode" toggle you didnt know what its about. Basically the automation only goes by this: Trigger: Motion is detected Actions: 1. Turn on lights 2. Wait for motion detector to stop detecting motion (there is a threshold for most detectors) 3. Wait X minutes (actually thats still part of step 2) 4. Turn off lights The mode however is switched to "restart" which means that whenever the motion detector starts detecting motion again in that X minutes timeframe, the automation starts from scratch again. If it would be set to "single" like you had in your automation would not start again because its already running. Since you planned two automations, this would actually still work. I used that automation workflow like the blueprint does to daisychain multiple motion sensors together since my hallway goes around the corner and it works great! I just switched Step 2 for a wait-for template and used both motion sensors as triggers. Easy, quick and reliable
This is too funny - all this automation, new smarter hardware, and ending up with same exact problem: still have to wave hands to keep the lights on. xD
for those watching this in late 2023, I've been running a Home Assistant setup for a couple years, and its UI has gotten MUCH more user-friendly. It's quite simple to setup, change, and add devices, or automations, etc. Also limitless options when compared to "commercial" brand smart home setups.
Hey Jeff, the most important takeaway of this video of your is: you do have the same space problems as every maker I know... Usually your polished videos suggest you live in a lavish house with plenty of rooms and space to conduct all your experiments and so forth… Now the little peek behind the curtains, you provided here, leaves me grounded in the believe, that you are just one of us... (OK with good content, ideas, tight schedule etc., but still...) Thanks, Michael.
Heh, exactly. I live in a ranch with my 4 kids and wife, so basically the upstairs and most of the basement are kid-land. I have a 12' square office, and a 10x20' workshop in the basement, and I'm learning ways to cram the maximum amount of equipment possible in those spaces! Honestly the biggest limitation sometimes is the slightly-less-than-8' ceiling. Lighting and camera rigging likes high ceilings, and that I don't have at all!
Definitely-the Yellow also adds on the integrated M.2 NVMe slot, which is helpful for all the data logging, but if you go with a normal Pi, it's a good idea to also plug an SSD into the USB 3.0 port and boot from that if you can.
Would be pretty cool when the matter standard is open sourced. That way buying a home assistant solution someday soon will allow access to the wide variety of “universal compatibility” smart products without worrying about the different protocols they use.
This is one of the most realistic reviews of home assistant, but the i guss ot helps that you are a programmer and so dont tend to give up on things as easily.
I totally agree with you and that first section that tries to guess what you want to do. It has never worked for me so I just immediately go into manual mode now.
Cool presentation! Just an idea to save more energy (by reducing lights off wait period, after last motion detected): expose at a RESTful API endpoint on your desktop, a scripted utility to show user idle time (like xprintidle). then at home assistant use "rest" sensor to consume this information and add a condition for min user' idle time, before turning lights off. Or something like that...
Finally!! About time you got into HA being such a big open-source supporter. Also the trigger id is what you can use for complex automations. It's a optional field though.
I think the developers of Home Assistant should take this video to heart, as it perfectly demonstrates how new users interact with it, it is so not intuitive. I tried it several times, it just feels clumsy and instead I did everything in node-red where stuff is predictable, everything that you can control in HA is also possible in node-red.
Many people (Me included) use home assistant as the hub that brings together lots of different components, then use NodeRed as an automation engine.
I think Home Assistant is an example of developers building something they want and not really listening to end users. I think it's great but I'm a developer and I often just write yaml files to do what I want. Not a very friendly solution to anyone that doesn't know the system. Now my SO just puts in feature requests 😂
Been using home assistant for years. It has come a LONG LONG way since the early years. More and more stuff is being brought into the GUI. I personally love the YAML style configuration but hey, I am a developer. It is really nice to be able to click through the GUI and only get into the YAML stuff when its required for advanced cases.
Same boat here.. Node-Red and mqtt are so flexible and easy to configure. I have bunch of wifi plugs and few 6 port extensions all configured just the way I want..
I'm using HA for quite a while now - and still frequently get stung by things like "what's that on/off value called again", or having to resort to templates to implement a missing brightness attribute of a lamp while the lamp is off. The YAML is nice and powerful - but the documentation makes learning it not easy. And somehow some actions got a lot of love - like the very magical service action, while others like setting lights directly are really cumbersome.
An _occupancy sensor_ might be more useful here than just a simple motion sensor. Motion sensors rely on (relatively) large motion, like walking, whereas an occupancy sensor also uses heat and sound so that if you're in the room and not moving much (like when you're at a computer), it'll still keep the lights on.
omg, this seems more like what Jeff started talking about at the beginning of the video, and why I decided to watch it, so it was a bit batey :P Could you give any examples/links on it? And @Jeff Geerling it would be amazing if you could get more into it please!
A mechanical switch under his seat or floor mat if he is not moving much might be better but I understand his pain at work on pc you don't move much all lights go out..
some sort of pressure sensor on his chair, although it would be funny if he got off the chair and the light went out.
Did not knew that was a thing so thanks.
@@affieuk lol that would be fun :P but for real, there otta be a better/simpler way to do this. Incl. the same IR sensor but just measuring the amount of IR and sound in the room maybe.
"So it's working. That's a good thing! Why it's working, I'm not 100% sure yet." --- This is so relatable🤣
The more layers of abstraction, the less likely you'll be able to deduce why something happens!
@@JeffGeerling like Ansible ;-)
My exact reaction when I set up pi vpn and it just worked.
Pretty fun (and also a little nerve wracking and frustrating), to see you run through everything for the first time as a novice. I found myself saying "no, no, no, YES!" a lot. I honestly think a video like this is super important because once you get familiar with HA it's hard to remember what it was like to be a novice. Cheers and good luck on your HA journey.
I often try (but don't always succeed) to document the first time using anything - that's basically how I ended up writing Ansible for DevOps, it started as a series of my own notes to help myself... then I polished them a bit and a book popped out after a while!
😆 I was doing the same Rob! Great to see you get on board Jeff, I feel you can add SO much value once you get your head around it. Thanks for your work!
I hope that the HA devs look at this video with the same eyes. It used to be a lot simpler for new people and I know it’s possible, I just think the devs have gotten too deep to remember what it’s like when you don’t already know how things work.
Oh YES ! this is a super useful video for the Home Assistant Usability team (assuming there is one). The video showed several occasions where a small change in the UI would provide great benefit for a (new) HA user.
Excited to see Jeff, the RPI and YAML master, doing HA videos.... All the ingredients are here for super content in the future. Mark my words.
@Paul Hibbert: take a look at this video. You will enjoy it as much as I do enjoy yours.... The HA, the HA, the HA... Oooh the HA
I admire Jeff with all his knowledge, but I too was like... no!!!!
I'm more of an MQTT guy, now I see why more people don't use it. zigbee seems pretty easy to set up.
This is exactly what I have been waiting for after all home automation went cloud based and completely killed my desire to install these into my home. Have zero interest in granting massive companies unfettered access to my personal space. Looking forward to learning from your upcoming projects!
Normal switches aren't dumb, they're doing their job 99% right after installation. You know what's dumb? Needing internet connection to turn on your light. Smh
Me too I'm so hyped about this, I LOVE new tech and automation, but I will never willingly install listening devices and wireless cameras in my home lol anything that has an always on speaker MUST be local, or it's not an option. Ill finally be able to move beyond basic smart home crap
@@stellviahohenheim You know being wifi enabled doesn't somehow disable the physical switches right? Lol it ADDS functionality, it doesn't take any away. Idk exactly what you were talking about tho cuz OP edited the comment lol
@@stellviahohenheim private and local is offline it runs off the servers you have in your house you can connect to internet but you can do what I do and have it only connected between my own servers so I have full surveillance of my 20 acres in my hands only and i can connect everything and make it all automated like some tony stark shit and it would be all offline all in my hands with a solar system array all off grid data transfer through all my servers photos videos movies anything you can think of in a digital format will go on a server.
The thing that took me forever to figure out with Home Assistant is there's a big difference between "devices" and "entities". Devices contain entities, ideally one for each "thing" that it does or provides. So your motion sensor is a device, which contains entities for detecting motion, looks like it also does temperature, and probably an on/off status and battery level.
Totally obvious. It's not like people use the term device completely different 😅
Yeah I have had HA installed for a year now, and everytime I go into it I just give up after staring at it.. lol I just dont get it
Jeff got the hang of things Way too easily for my liking, took me far longer than I'd care to mention.
The penny only dropped regarding Devices & Entities, when I built my automatic gate opener. That thing has more entities than a 747 cockpit after I was done with it (Slight exaggeration there..... Obviously). But the "Device" at the gate, now has an entity for sensing if the gate is open or closed, the entity for a trigger to open or close the gate, a link to the doorbell in the kitchen (which was an awesome addition... Loudest doorbell in the southern hemisphere I think), an entity for the beams when there is a vehicle obstructing the gate and a few other nicknacks like the gate lights etc.
My current project is the solar array I have for the battery bank I use to keep myself and the rest of the family connected to the internet, local network and wifi.
Let's just say it's been more of a headache after it was set up than what it was doing the actual installation, as now you have graphs and stats that give you endless sleepless nights, worrying if you have enough battery storage, and wondering if there are enough hours in the day to get solar batteries charged before sundown :/
@@-Gadget- Used to work with a guy who hankered after a '30s motorbike where you took the cap off to see how much gas you had and if your knees burnt the back wheel was about to stop, no HA for him😅, cheers.
one gotta wonder why they don't just called it "activators" or something
Missing step - with a power tester, always check something that's live first! Otherwise your tester might be off/flat/broken and you wouldn't know.
As an electrician's apprentice who has been (literally) shocked when the journeyman didn't check, your comment needs WAY more likes!
@@LabGecko
Live-dead-live testing is a *very* good idea.
Check the tester on a known-live source - nearby extension cord, outlet, whatever.
Check the circuit or device to be worked on is dead.
Check the tester again on known-live source to ensure that the tester is still functioning correctly and didn't give you a bum read.
That was the way it was taught to me years ago in the Navy, and it's kept me from getting lit up (too much) since then working with much higher voltage circuits.
FYI from a hopeless Home Assistant Fanboy:
1) Battery operated motion detectors typically have a several minute cool-down before they will detect motion again.
2) Aquara makes a no-neutral zigbee switch! They are relatively new.
Ooh nice! That's news to me.
@@JeffGeerling Probably Aqara. They make zigbee stuff. I never heard Aquara.
I have battery operated motion sensors, 6 of them, none of mine operate like that, and they are zigbee technically.
I have a few Hue motion sensors which are zigbee - just tested and once I stopped waving at it it was less than 10 seconds before it reset to "clear", after which it was able to detect motion again immediately. I believe different devices do have different capabilities and Hue seem well regarded, so worth doing some research as clearly this makes a big difference to how useful they'll be for a given use case.
Caseta makes great quality no neutral switches. But you need their hub. They will however last for years, wont void your insurance, and will be supported for years.
I've labelled all my outlets and light faceplates too. Pro Tip, just mark the backside of them using a sharpie marker with the panel switch number. Sure you have to unscrew the faceplate to see the number, but if you need to know the number you are likely going to be taking off the faceplate anyway.
I've done exactly that and kept a spreadsheet ... my house only has a single switch and 1 or 2 power points per room :)
This is a good idea
13:06 The reason is that the state of the sensor is still "on", which in this case means "motion detected". Normally to change the to "off" it has to stay at least 1/2 minutes (but it depends on the sensor) without detecting motion.
Having a sensor that sends Zigbee message every 5 seconds will drain it's battery faster!
I recently got into Home Assistant and watching your raw reactions using it for the first time is hilarious. It’s also probably very informative for anyone working on the HA UX as your reactions matched almost exactly with mine when I was starting.
If you get a chance, can you try to figure out and explain the zigbee clustering UI? It’s a mystery to me.
When you said "I'm not going to do this" after the light switch demonstration, and then proceeded to suggest a needlessly complex solution. I loved that.
Welcome to the world of Home Assistant. Great to have your analytical mind looking at it as I'm sure you have some great feedback for the dev group. Cheers, and enjoy the Home automation!
Glad it's not just me. ;)
Home assistant has literally saved the food in my fridge. It is so cold right now the fridge in my garage is not working, by putting a light in the fridge to warm it up (ironically so it will work better) and controlling that light based on time patterns I have kept my fridge at 32 and my freezer at -10.
HA also reminds the family about chores via an integration with a custom discord bot, turns on my office lights after my morning alarm goes off and I have my phone off of charge for more than 60 seconds. Along with a whole slew of other useful things.
The problem with HA is that is begining of the end of this platform unfortunetelly - pletny of boomers asking for more Google, Amazon integrations and that will turn HA (already turning) into another spying no privacy platform. I strongly suggesting to find alternative because way too many westerners got "involved" and crack in HA are already visible. Sad but true.
I really don't see the point in any of these technologies. Seems more like technology for technologies sake.
But then again, I'm in my 50's. But don't call me a boomer. I was born in '70, gen-x and proud of it.
@@peterbelanger4094 I'm in my 50's and I don't have enough of this stuff
So awesome to find someone taking personal data privacy seriously. IoT & home automation is great, but I don't want my home talking to ANYTHING outside my network. I don't care what country it is.
Welcome to Home Assistant! Along with my NAS, and Raspberry Pi it has been responsible for some of my Linux journey in the last few years. I was wondering when you might venture into HA. I bought your Ansible book and am using it to automate all the things! Keep up the great content!
I agree completely with you looking at the "describe what you want to do" box and going "uuurggghhhhh". In my opinion, you should type in there a phrase and it should search for that in the community blueprints section of the forum.
I have NEVER managed to get that box to spit out anything useful as an automation for me. But the blueprint section on the forum usually has a couple examples lined up ready.
That feature doesnt work and really drags the HA experience down, The blueprint function is MUCH better and people actually use it.
Yes, the thing i dislike about existing home automation devices is i have to use their cloud service and i can't opt out. Glad to see more devices like this come out.
I don't think I have ever seen a better thumbnail.
Welcome to Home Assistant and goodbye to any free time you had. This was really interesting after two years with HA I didn’t realise how it must be for a newbie. I can’t wait for you to use this more as I have no doubt you will be doing great stuff with it.
lol yeah! I have had so many years of total fun mastering every kind of control system there is. no you don't want to be on line with any of this! But if you pull power from the grid you are owned. I just got a screen capture for typing this comment. know there is more then just cat6, wifi, and blue tooth at work in your PC. Hello 5G 😂 there is nothing we can do to change it.
Your videos have such a clear presentation style -- your speaking voice, the editing, the lack of distractions (intros, outros, music, sponsors, etc.) -- that make me wish you would make videos on other topics (non-tech) that I'm interested in.
You may have already figured it out, but the naming of the motion sensor was different because a "device" can have multiple "entities." A lot of little things like that or searching existing vs new integrations tripped me up as well, and I'm still finding bits that aren't very user friendly. It's super powerful, but I think your experience matches what we've all gone through when starting out. It seems like when projects end up with hardcore long time users it can be easy to overlook the onboarding experience.
Love that you filmed the process of automating even though you haven't previously learned it. 👍
A warning in reaction to the "local" part: some Tuya-compatible devices are apparently integrated using the Tuya cloud API. In that case, the "local control" is somewhat of an illusion.. I installed some Wiz Connect smart bulbs (horrible configuration experience) and TP-Link's Kasa switches (a breeze to configure). Both provide a UDP-based local protocol that has been reverse-engineered.
(I do not use Home Assistant: I preferred writing my own apps, for the fun of it, and to experiment with a sorta micro-server architecture, and not because of any issue with Home Assistant. After watching your video I tried setting up a device name with a space and spent an evening fixing a handful of bugs, including HTTP character encoding misshapes. Thank you! 😂)
FWIW, the integration page for any given device on the Home Assistant website will list whether the integration requires internet access for it to work, or whether it’s local only. Since discovering that myself, I’ve been slowly replacing the IoT devices in my house with things that work locally and don’t require access to the internet. Everything is becoming more reliable as a result!
Now you just need to check if your devices support names with left-to-right Arabic script. 😁
@ClintonJudy I couldnt find the information on the home assistant integrations page. Is it still there? It s hard to know which device can be conpletely setup offline...
Oh Jeff, your way of troubleshooting is the same as me! I don't feel alone in my thoughts. Thank you
You'll need more than a scarf in -17. Canadians: "-17, that's nothing!"
As a Australian. What's that's. Here it's boiling hot to just cold. Unless you're in the Australian Alps.
Thanks Jeff for this video. Yesterday I never heard of Home Assistant and now I'm addicted!
Different smart motion sensors have different interal cooldown for them. some have minutes while other seconds.
This is good to know! Didn't even know that was a thing, but now I do.
@@JeffGeerling I think it's mostly a power-saving thing so it's not turning on the ZigBee transmitter every time that you twitch. My el-cheapo 433MHz wireless sensors do the same thing; I think with a 5 minute cool-down time. I use those, hard-wired PIRs on my Elk alarm system, a couple of Z-Wave sensors and some PIR sensors on ESP32 sensors around the house to sense motion/occupancy.
That's ultimately the real power of Home Assistant, as it abstracts all the different technologies used to integrate the sensors into those abstract entities, making it effortless to work across different technologies. You don't have to pick and join a single technology/religion for the stuff in your home.
Welcome to the Home Assistant world! I'm on the edge of what my 8GB Pi 4 can manage! I have 69 Zigbee devices, a dozen of ESPs on ESPHome, and some other devices (Smart TVs, UPS, etc...), totalling over 400 entities. It's an addiction, I just automated my water heater to save electricity today!
Awesome project. Could you share some guidelines or any link to do that? Im
first time user and immediately spotted the biggest problem with HA: kinda user friendly. But very friendly to the programmers ;-)
Perfect timing! I was just getting an Home Assistant obsession in the past few weeks!
You gotta love the time in seconds 😂 That's a complete programmer move
nah, it should be in milliseconds. let me decide if I want to wait 60000ms or 1!
Going through the process is more interesting then teaching it. Thanks.
Was wondering when Home Assistant was coming to this channel!
Definitely right that the automation UI needs some improvement. Until this video I hadn't realised that there's no indication if fields are required or optional (trigger id can be left blank).
Still an awesome tool though. Being able to combine all of the different ecosystems is great. As is having it work without needing internet.
As a programmer, I loved this video. Working to upgrade my old SmartThings setup
Glad to see you finally trying out Home Assistant! I fully expect a follow up video in a few weeks after you've succumbed to the urge to swap out another dozen light switches and install ZigBee sensors/buttons/etc everywhere 😅
I'm up to over 20 smart switches/dimmers, 4 scene switches, 4 ZigBee buttons, and a handful of other ZigBee sensors so far. My favorite automations so far have been turning off multiple lighting circuits with one switch (all off on the way out the door, etc).
Welcome to Home Assistant, Jeff. Keep it local; no lag and better security.
Homeassistant has a dashboard where you can place buttons and widgets, also they have a mobile app. Its very good and I like that HA isnt so polished, in order to polish it up to make it more friendly to first time users you'd have to lose some of the flexibility, and that's not what the project is about
This all or nothing attitude towards user friendlines and power user features is little more than logical fallacy, you can always have both, the alternative is death by obscurity. In this case it just requires a public library of Blueprints, which looks like the direction they're already going anyway.
I liked that you went through the process for the video, rather than having everything worked out ahead of time. And your "narration" as to what you were thinking as you did the various steps can be beneficial to people watching. Thanks!
I can't wait to see the effect on Home Automation software in of itself, the influx of new users using cheap single board computer will probably lead to new development
So interesting watching people figure out HA after being deep in the rabbit whole for a while.
It's a great platform and a great community! Enjoy!
You've just begun! Now create something for 200,000 square feet of 277 volt lighting ;) All centrally managed and scheduled for over 50 employees. I actually find it odd that this stuff is ONLY NOW getting into to hands of home DIYers. Been doing this stuff for over 20 years. It's about dang time.
"It's working, that's a good thing"
"Why it works, I'm not 100% sure"
Just amazing quote
Another homerun, Jeff! Love the Chapters listed too. Really helps rolling back and forth through the video. HA looks like a great program for my use; Trying to figure out how to make it run in two VMs with hot/standby setup so if the primary dies....
Look at the container install option or use esxi and HA/failover; however, the latter would leave you with a nested AND emulated setup with the core (their own home rolled kernel). This is a perfect use for the esxi arm fling but mileage may vary due to it not being a supportable product. I'm not dissing on it bc I have a mutli-ISA cluster in my home lab. I just noticed qemu underneath the other day on my soon-to-be trashed x86/64 Home Assistant. I'm probably going to get flamed but I'm giving up the home assistant due to too much time to build and maintain. Just to levelset, my smart device collection covers everything but 433mhz. I also have a very nice collection of debuggers, mcus, and sdrs with various limiting factors. Its been fun but the last update that killed both zigbee and zwave was the last nail in the hass coffin. Now I'm into custom ethernet gateways which as a person that reads assembly while on the toilet, fits me better.
@@PBRichfield I have two frames running ESX but I'm trying to NOT use that for these "home production" VMs/containers. I think I'll soon be turning them off 24/7 and only booting when needing the 64cores. I'd rather Proxmox it. I'm going to see how well HA works in my home, but from what I have seen, at least I can hack it to do just about anything. I do want ZigBee and Zwave running and stable. I have a lot of IOT objects. We'll see. I'll put out the final (working) design on r/homelab and perhaps r/homeautomation. Thanks for your input. Helps to have others who have been through the grind.
@@Doesntcompute2k my pleasure. I found out this morning while applying to be officially sanctioned/ordained as a VMware evangelist that there is a non 4 letter word for people like me. Am I terrible to even go as far as filling out the form just for the off-chance the 'prize' if I even get nominated is the Arm fling API? That's all I want. Well that and this remote and it's all I'll ever need. Oh and this chair... This apj, remote, and chair. Yep, that's all - bastardized dialog from Steve Martin in The Jerk.
Fun fact: I regret not getting the e3 127/8x v3 for my 2u shorty x86/64 host instead of that 4970k... But then I wouldn't ever had to opportunity to run my azure ad connected server 2022 headless dc on water-cooled 10yo silicon! Thats where the HA is spending it's twilight years too. If you need a fully updated 700 series coordinator, let me know. I might have one for sale cheap.
@@PBRichfield I was going to put the stack of 1u Dell 1650s and Dell 1750s "into MAAS service," then I sat there and couldn't figure out WHY. DDR2. Seriously. And the power they take. :( They're going to the recycler with all of the old Cisco 10/100Mbps switches. I'm trying to get rid of all Xeon 5Ks, keeping the Xeon 2600s where the cores make sense. I have full VMWare enterprise, XCP-ng, and Proxmox. Liking Proxmox a lot. I'm pretty sure I still have a (huge Sony WXP) laptop downstairs with an Intel Quad Q9600/9650. So I get your 4970.
Literally clicked due to the hilarious thumbnail.
When I can watch a video of someone explaining something I already know and be entertained I know is a good content creator.
I'm sure Jeff will find the configuration.yaml file and never use the UI again jejejeje
Wait I can use YAML for all the things???
@@JeffGeerling For everything
@@JeffGeerling indeed, not the way a non-programmer mortal like me runs it but I'm sure you'll enjoy.
Looking forward for the projects you'll be able to pull off
@@JeffGeerling Not sure if you can use it for *all* the things. I think I remember some integrations having their YAML config being deprecated in favor of the UI config flow setup. (While some still only has YAML config because nobody has gotten around to them.)
Jeff also has a 3d printer so I expect a custom wall panel (cm-based, of course) before Christmas!
LMAO the thumbnail 🤣🤣🤣
OMG the idea of putting numbers on my outlets and switches is amazing and I don't know why I never thought of doing that
"The office" moment when you start waving your arms haha
It was getting so annoying. In the 5 days since setting up Home Assistant, I haven't had to wave my arms once. Win!
Couldn't be less honesty in marketing than calling any of these things smart devices.
There are actual human prescence detectors you can buy. Adafruit has one with steamma qt even. They recognize human prescence even if still, sleeping or whatever using radar. Thats what i would use :)
not sure I like being irradiated 24/7, but I guess a wifi camera would hit you with similar exposure.
Best. Thumbnail. Ever.
1- Your going to need to install a bridge for the phase's. 2- install a filter to block your house from outside noise. Some time's others??? are using the same device's and are in range. 3- speaking of range if your in a large property, your going to need to use extenders. your doing great. I started with x10 many years ago.
Interesting that you make this and put it out now, because I've been using home assistant on one of mi pi's for only a few days now. I've had some of the same reactions that you have had to its setup and knowing some things require certain parameters and that underscore used in the identifier name!!! You know a seasoned programmer when they automatically know that's probably a better way to go. Even on systems that allow all sorts of weird characters and spaces in filenames, I still find myself going with something that is easier to manage in scripts and programming languages.
Thank you - was nice to see you stepping arround in HA - what I missed was the reload of AUtomations which is typically necessary after you changed or established an automation.
Reloading was only necessary when editing yaml files to define automations. When using the web UI, you only need to click on the save button for it to take effect.
Hey Jeff, I think you should keep the timeout to a minute or so but write a script that runs on your PC that detects that you are using it (e.g keystroke, mouse, media is playing) which then feeds as a motion sensor to the HA.
Nice to see that you are getting in Home Assistant… when you start, you’ll never stop and start automating everything. You’ll drive red shirt Jeff crazy with it.
Welcome to the home assistant community!
I built my home assistant server in a 1U rack server with a OrangePI RK3399 and a built in UPS and 4G modem for backup.
I been looking for this for so long, It's a good Thursday.
Really excited to see you getting into Home Assistant!
Given that you have yml code for the blueprints, I'm curious if this can be deployed with an Ansible playbook and make automating large spaces/businesses easier to do.
I believe some people have already been doing it. And I should probably follow suit (see github.com/mpataki/ansible-homeassistant for example!).
Yes and probably a great idea after you get your version control and CI/CD pipeline setup.
Look at terraform also for your ipmi enabled boxes but i'm curious if you could jumpstart a Pi with an SSD to be used as a stand in ipmi to provision the others. Once all the clients check in, it runs a script to kick start itself into an NFS target for your vms?
Along with it's cert from the domain CA
I'm so glad I'm not the only one that struggles to find things in the homeassistant ui's dance of configurations and addons. :)
Yeah! Ansible!
wait....that's not what the title says.... It's not ansible?
It's still YAML!
Man, I haven't even had a chance to sit down and watch the video yet, but the thumbnail had me cracking up so much!! LOLOLOL
Home assistant has come a long way
Welcome to the wonderfull rabbit hole that is home assistant. Been using it for 3 years and love it 👍
Oh my! I sat today to do a quick research on home automation solutions and here you are! Just in time mate! Thanks a lot for that
You missed a perfect opportunity for "Home Automation Hello World"! :P
Another fantastic vid, thanks Jeff!
Thank you for sharing your knowledge Jeff, love how calm you present your knowledge. God bless you and your family.
I went a rather complicated way with this a few years back. Using the touch input on a teensy, some aluminium foil and a couple of resistors, I made a switch that could sense me from around 30cm away. I put one on each side of my doorway and wrote a program that looked at both sensors to determine if I was entering for leaving the room. It was messy but it did the job.
Excellent!
I've seen some of my friends Home assistant add-ons for their smartphone which turn it into a control dashboard with notifications and other types of alerts. So you won't even need additional hardware to control the lights on command.
I love this faux clickbait thumbnail! Cool to see your process with home assistant.
Nice thumbnail Jeff - good memeage. Can’t wait
to watch this video, sat waiting in the dentist thinking about robots as you do
Would not like robots working on my teeth, though!
@@JeffGeerling I can imagine a robot hygienist, not sure if I’d trust a) the robot and b) the person who wrote the software
Another great video Jeff! I remember the days when we had to use "smart devices" that communicated with each other via the electrical lines in your house... late '90s being the timeline for that. So glad to be well past those days and into the this time where granular control is fainlly dooable at a very low cost.
The channel The Hook Up has some awesome Home Assistant tutorials.
To keep the light from turning off while the room is occupied, I would add a Zigbee toggle switch, perhaps sitting on the desk, that could be set to "on" and would override the motion sensor and wall switch. When the Home Assistant Yellow detects the override switch in the "on" condition, it would ignore the ceiling-mounted motion sensor and send an "on" command to the wall switch. When switched to the "off" position, the override switch would re-enable the motion sensor and allow the room light to be turned off after a programmed delay. The same thing could be achieved by bridging the Zigbee wall switch with a dumb toggle switch, if there is space for an additional switch in the wall box.
I love opening things and the silkscreen is designed expecting someone to open the case
Looks like a great system in the minds of the designers! Not running out and buying one of these!
I am looking up all this now and noticed the HA Yellow is now close to the $1 million mark. Seems there are a LOT of fans of Home Assistant, and this is not counting the ones that use Docker, Virtual Machines or other alternative installs. These are people buying a Yellow to run it on a RPI4 basically.
Since this video was made things have got a LOT easier in integrations. You can now search something like Leviton and it will bring up any integrations that Leviton can be connected to. Still a bit of a Work in Progress, but it is a lot better than when this video was released.
I ran into some issues in my house since my house wiring didn't have a neutral wire.
Most smart switches require it, but I found that the smart switches from Cync (C by GE) only require a ground wire to operate. They're a little spendier than some, but they are still reasonably priced and definitely a lot cheaper than switching out all your house wiring.
Just a tip for those who have a house that is a bit older and are missing a neutral wire. Your home automation dreams aren't dead!!!
I guess you already know it by now, but the Motion Sensor automation makes quite nice use of the "Mode" toggle you didnt know what its about. Basically the automation only goes by this:
Trigger: Motion is detected
Actions:
1. Turn on lights
2. Wait for motion detector to stop detecting motion (there is a threshold for most detectors)
3. Wait X minutes (actually thats still part of step 2)
4. Turn off lights
The mode however is switched to "restart" which means that whenever the motion detector starts detecting motion again in that X minutes timeframe, the automation starts from scratch again. If it would be set to "single" like you had in your automation would not start again because its already running. Since you planned two automations, this would actually still work.
I used that automation workflow like the blueprint does to daisychain multiple motion sensors together since my hallway goes around the corner and it works great! I just switched Step 2 for a wait-for template and used both motion sensors as triggers. Easy, quick and reliable
This is too funny - all this automation, new smarter hardware, and ending up with same exact problem: still have to wave hands to keep the lights on. xD
I love the lag timing, a same person would get one of these, you switch it on lag.
For actual presence detect, use additional motion sensor outside room and use that to toggle switch off. So you can sequence check entry and exit
“It works.. but I don’t know why” .. classic 😂
When you removed that heatsink to reveal the CM4...*Ecstasy* LOL Great video fellow Jeff!
for those watching this in late 2023, I've been running a Home Assistant setup for a couple years, and its UI has gotten MUCH more user-friendly. It's quite simple to setup, change, and add devices, or automations, etc. Also limitless options when compared to "commercial" brand smart home setups.
Hey Jeff, the most important takeaway of this video of your is: you do have the same space problems as every maker I know... Usually your polished videos suggest you live in a lavish house with plenty of rooms and space to conduct all your experiments and so forth… Now the little peek behind the curtains, you provided here, leaves me grounded in the believe, that you are just one of us... (OK with good content, ideas, tight schedule etc., but still...) Thanks, Michael.
Heh, exactly. I live in a ranch with my 4 kids and wife, so basically the upstairs and most of the basement are kid-land. I have a 12' square office, and a 10x20' workshop in the basement, and I'm learning ways to cram the maximum amount of equipment possible in those spaces!
Honestly the biggest limitation sometimes is the slightly-less-than-8' ceiling. Lighting and camera rigging likes high ceilings, and that I don't have at all!
This thumbnail is gold.
I came here to like your video just for the thumbnail.
I'm still using finger technology to turn my lights on and off at home, I'd have to say it's pretty reliable.
for anyone wanting to save money, there are usb zigbee gateways that can be plugged into a normal raspberry pi and work with home assistant
Definitely-the Yellow also adds on the integrated M.2 NVMe slot, which is helpful for all the data logging, but if you go with a normal Pi, it's a good idea to also plug an SSD into the USB 3.0 port and boot from that if you can.
@@JeffGeerling you can also even use a cheap thin client off ebay btw
that's how I run my home assistant server haha
Would be pretty cool when the matter standard is open sourced. That way buying a home assistant solution someday soon will allow access to the wide variety of “universal compatibility” smart products without worrying about the different protocols they use.
That HomeAssistant casing is so cool!
This is one of the most realistic reviews of home assistant, but the i guss ot helps that you are a programmer and so dont tend to give up on things as easily.
I totally agree with you and that first section that tries to guess what you want to do. It has never worked for me so I just immediately go into manual mode now.
Nice exploring of the grammar here - this is where I want an old fashion manual!
Cool presentation! Just an idea to save more energy (by reducing lights off wait period, after last motion detected): expose at a RESTful API endpoint on your desktop, a scripted utility to show user idle time (like xprintidle). then at home assistant use "rest" sensor to consume this information and add a condition for min user' idle time, before turning lights off. Or something like that...
Finally!! About time you got into HA being such a big open-source supporter.
Also the trigger id is what you can use for complex automations.
It's a optional field though.
This is a great video! I’m glad I found your channel. Thanks for sharing such great content!
Having the old light setup.
Give you a break from monitor and can help you in your posture. It's also a good stretch