4 ms·

I've got a lot of hope for Home Assistant here. Its just a little bit too involved for a typical end user at the moment but I really don't think its very far fr

I've got a lot of hope for Home Assistant here. Its just a little bit too involved for a typical end user at the moment but I really don't think its very far from being something that can be sold as an appliance to people who don't know what MQTT is.

Sander_Marechal 5y ago
I love Home Assistant, but it's definitely hobbyist software, not end-user software.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  So you hire someone to put it in for you. A car analogy is not far behind 9)
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Considering how unique each how is in details that matter to this type of thing I think smart houses will need to evolve to hiring someone to set it up. Sure your device can connect automatically - that is easy - then you need to tell it what room it is in, and what events to respond to. Only some of that can be automated.
    - gerdesj 5y ago
      If you hold your nose, you get OK Google and co to act as your intermediary. Home Assistant has one paid for option: "Nabu casa" which includes an intermediated link to Google/Amazon etc. https://www.nabucasa.com/ https://www.nabucasa.com/ I have run up several HAs and it keeps on getting better. Yes, each deployment is different but HA delivers because if you use "supervisored" or the hass.io distro you get all the addons out of the box and that includes Node Red with a shed load of batteries included. Adding more is simply a config entry. I have one customer who needs a way to fire up and shutdown their office PCs when they work from home. These are Catia workstations with some serious grunt that a home machine generally lacks. I deployed HA and LAPS (MS way to deploy local admins on a Windows box.) HA is a VM so it is "free" apart from my time. I recently added an AD account unlock facility involving quite a lot of LDAP triggered by a button press, not to mention a few ACL changes on the AdminSDHolder container. My home HA controls underfloor heating, makes my doorbell speak to us. It turns a water feature off and on depending on sunup and sundown and a few other things. I've recently added a power meter monitor. My office one watches windows, doors and lights amongst other things. That was an easy win. When you lock up at the end of the day you check out the panel and it tells you which windows are still open etc and you sort that out. It will also send MQTT messages and SMS my phone if any smoke or water sensors go off on one. We have 40 windows and a quite a few doors in my office. Most doors are defined as fire doors (UK) so they must be shut. We have a NUC style PC with two LG commercial panels attached and a camera for constant video conferencing with a colleague in another country. A NodeRed routine wakes the lot up in the morning and shuts it down at night. I've barely scratched the surface of what HA and co can do. The real point is that all this stuff is free or nearly free and is documented and there are forums for support. In HA (finally) Zwave, Zigbee and all the rest are finally all useful and very well supported. You still need to take some care but there are very few sharp edges left. Nowadays all I see is a relentless progress, functionality just keeps on appearing. It's quite something to watch.
- rhinoceraptor 5y ago
  It has come a really long way, to be fair. My configuration.yaml no longer has any integration configs, it wasn't that long ago that a ton of basic integrations required YAML, and the restart cycle that entails. Right now the only thing of note in mine is a template cover, I have a relay controlling my garage door opener and a tilt sensor checking the door, so I need to tie those together into a cover entity via a template.
cptskippy 5y ago
I do a fresh install of HA every so often to see where it's at. It has a steep learning curve and it's a mostly unpleasant experience to setup. Webthings (formerly Mozilla) is a much more consumer friendly interface and a breeze to setup by comparison, it's a shame it's languishing with little interest in the project.
- gerdesj 5y ago
  HA has improved quite a lot over the last say 18 months. Please consider giving it another go. Make sure you are using either hass.io or supervised. The dockerised approaches are far superior to say the venv jobbie. I'm a dyed in the wool old school sysadmin and it took a while for me to get it. Get the nginx proxy addon with Lets Encrypt working and you are all good for kick off. As always, ensure stuff you don't trust is on its own network/VLAN or use host based firewalls to take up the slack. HA will use HIBP to check your passwords in your addons which was controversial but I think rather good. HA is in the hands of people who seem quite driven, which is nice.

Sander_Marechal 5y ago

I love Home Assistant, but it's definitely hobbyist software, not end-user software.

gerdesj 5y ago
So you hire someone to put it in for you. A car analogy is not far behind 9)
- bluGill 5y ago
  Considering how unique each how is in details that matter to this type of thing I think smart houses will need to evolve to hiring someone to set it up. Sure your device can connect automatically - that is easy - then you need to tell it what room it is in, and what events to respond to. Only some of that can be automated.
  - gerdesj 5y ago
    If you hold your nose, you get OK Google and co to act as your intermediary. Home Assistant has one paid for option: "Nabu casa" which includes an intermediated link to Google/Amazon etc. https://www.nabucasa.com/ https://www.nabucasa.com/ I have run up several HAs and it keeps on getting better. Yes, each deployment is different but HA delivers because if you use "supervisored" or the hass.io distro you get all the addons out of the box and that includes Node Red with a shed load of batteries included. Adding more is simply a config entry. I have one customer who needs a way to fire up and shutdown their office PCs when they work from home. These are Catia workstations with some serious grunt that a home machine generally lacks. I deployed HA and LAPS (MS way to deploy local admins on a Windows box.) HA is a VM so it is "free" apart from my time. I recently added an AD account unlock facility involving quite a lot of LDAP triggered by a button press, not to mention a few ACL changes on the AdminSDHolder container. My home HA controls underfloor heating, makes my doorbell speak to us. It turns a water feature off and on depending on sunup and sundown and a few other things. I've recently added a power meter monitor. My office one watches windows, doors and lights amongst other things. That was an easy win. When you lock up at the end of the day you check out the panel and it tells you which windows are still open etc and you sort that out. It will also send MQTT messages and SMS my phone if any smoke or water sensors go off on one. We have 40 windows and a quite a few doors in my office. Most doors are defined as fire doors (UK) so they must be shut. We have a NUC style PC with two LG commercial panels attached and a camera for constant video conferencing with a colleague in another country. A NodeRed routine wakes the lot up in the morning and shuts it down at night. I've barely scratched the surface of what HA and co can do. The real point is that all this stuff is free or nearly free and is documented and there are forums for support. In HA (finally) Zwave, Zigbee and all the rest are finally all useful and very well supported. You still need to take some care but there are very few sharp edges left. Nowadays all I see is a relentless progress, functionality just keeps on appearing. It's quite something to watch.
rhinoceraptor 5y ago
It has come a really long way, to be fair. My configuration.yaml no longer has any integration configs, it wasn't that long ago that a ton of basic integrations required YAML, and the restart cycle that entails. Right now the only thing of note in mine is a template cover, I have a relay controlling my garage door opener and a tilt sensor checking the door, so I need to tie those together into a cover entity via a template.

cptskippy 5y ago

I do a fresh install of HA every so often to see where it's at. It has a steep learning curve and it's a mostly unpleasant experience to setup. Webthings (formerly Mozilla) is a much more consumer friendly interface and a breeze to setup by comparison, it's a shame it's languishing with little interest in the project.

gerdesj 5y ago
HA has improved quite a lot over the last say 18 months. Please consider giving it another go. Make sure you are using either hass.io or supervised. The dockerised approaches are far superior to say the venv jobbie. I'm a dyed in the wool old school sysadmin and it took a while for me to get it. Get the nginx proxy addon with Lets Encrypt working and you are all good for kick off. As always, ensure stuff you don't trust is on its own network/VLAN or use host based firewalls to take up the slack. HA will use HIBP to check your passwords in your addons which was controversial but I think rather good. HA is in the hands of people who seem quite driven, which is nice.