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Home Assistant is by far one of the most impressive open source non-business applications out there. Have my setup running for over 5 years. Not without its pr

Home Assistant is by far one of the most impressive open source non-business applications out there. Have my setup running for over 5 years. Not without its problems and I have done a few painful rebuilds in that time but I love the fact I can glue together technologies that do not natively talk to each other through node red automations. Think Ring doorbell, sending a notification toast to my LG TV and turning on my Phillips Hue lights.

memoriasit 4y ago
How do you send toast messages to the tv? :P
- monkeydust 4y ago
  https://webostv.developer.lge.com/design/webos-tv-system-ui/notifications/ https://webostv.developer.lge.com/design/webos-tv-system-ui/...
  - sofixa 4y ago
    I really thought you get notifications on your TV when your toast is done toasting.
    - monkeydust 4y ago
      Haha. Now you got me thinking.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      That’s actually not hard. Connect the toaster to a smart plug with monitoring, make an automation to send a notification when the power draw drops after X seconds of power draw. It’s essentially the same way people make their washing machines smart.
    - ajolly 4y ago
      I get notifications on my TV once my kettle is done heating.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
izacus 4y ago
One thing that bothers me with Home Assistant and could never find a way to fix it: Is there a way to disable it from automatically spying on every single logged in mobile phone? E.g. if I install HASS app on an Android phone and login, it'll automatically start tracking everything from location, connected wifi, charging timing, all of it. And I need to go and disable this manually from every entity separately... and it randomly reenables itself if the device reauthenticates. Since I don't want to track every single step my family makes, did anyone find a configuration option on the server to turn this off for all clients?
- segfault11 4y ago
  You can deny most permissions when setting up the HA mobile app. This way, it won’t have much to report
- mackey 4y ago
  It should show your phone in the "Integration" list and then you can just disable it. I agree that it shouldn't be like this just by installing the app.
- tomatocracy 4y ago
  If you're using the "official" companion app on Android, you can go to the Hamburger menu/Settings/Companion App/Manage Sensors and enable/disable them there.
spacemanmatt 4y ago
> Have my setup running for over 5 years. Wow. Mine invariably cratered after 3-5 months. Had to start over from scratch every time.
- tass 4y ago
  What do you mean by cratered? Biggest issue I had was using a raspberry Pi and having the sd card fail. There’s addons for regular backups to cloud storage, and also alternatives to using an sd card - I now use an odroid
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Same, SD card failure was the only failure I ever had. Nowadays, I just run an SSD instead.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      I just grabbed a cheap Lenovo Thinkcenter Mini and don't bother with raspberries at all :)
  - spacemanmatt 4y ago
    > cratered Quit working. One or more critical modules would fail beyond my ability/interest to repair in a foreign container-manager based application. Or the thing would quit booting. I guess I could try different SD cards but the ones I had were serving fine with raspbian before. The first time it failed, I tried to join the community but found it exceptionally hostile before I even had a chance to seek regular support.
    - tass 4y ago
      I have had the following variety of problems: * very occasional post upgrade problem which was fixed by the next upgrade or just a restore * zigbee radio occasional issue which turned out to be a bug with the dongle firmware. Upgrading the firmware sorted me out. (Basically, I sometimes needed to power cycle before the zigbee network was functional) * SD card corruption. This was the biggest pain, and required building the system from scratch once (since the backups were on the same card - oops!) and from backup one other time. I never once had an issue after moving away from using sd cards that needed more than a restart - and this was maybe once in the last 6 months. I suspect the upgrade problems I previously had were also corruption related. If you were willing to try again, I highly recommend the odroid with eMMC - it’s also more powerful (though pricier) than a raspberry Pi 4 along with being generally neater since all the plugs attach on one side and it doesn’t need an external usb for its disk.

memoriasit 4y ago

How do you send toast messages to the tv? :P

monkeydust 4y ago
https://webostv.developer.lge.com/design/webos-tv-system-ui/notifications/ https://webostv.developer.lge.com/design/webos-tv-system-ui/...
- sofixa 4y ago
  I really thought you get notifications on your TV when your toast is done toasting.
  - monkeydust 4y ago
    Haha. Now you got me thinking.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    That’s actually not hard. Connect the toaster to a smart plug with monitoring, make an automation to send a notification when the power draw drops after X seconds of power draw. It’s essentially the same way people make their washing machines smart.
  - ajolly 4y ago
    I get notifications on my TV once my kettle is done heating.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

izacus 4y ago

One thing that bothers me with Home Assistant and could never find a way to fix it: Is there a way to disable it from automatically spying on every single logged in mobile phone? E.g. if I install HASS app on an Android phone and login, it'll automatically start tracking everything from location, connected wifi, charging timing, all of it. And I need to go and disable this manually from every entity separately... and it randomly reenables itself if the device reauthenticates. Since I don't want to track every single step my family makes, did anyone find a configuration option on the server to turn this off for all clients?

segfault11 4y ago
You can deny most permissions when setting up the HA mobile app. This way, it won’t have much to report
mackey 4y ago
It should show your phone in the "Integration" list and then you can just disable it. I agree that it shouldn't be like this just by installing the app.
tomatocracy 4y ago
If you're using the "official" companion app on Android, you can go to the Hamburger menu/Settings/Companion App/Manage Sensors and enable/disable them there.

spacemanmatt 4y ago

> Have my setup running for over 5 years. Wow. Mine invariably cratered after 3-5 months. Had to start over from scratch every time.

tass 4y ago
What do you mean by cratered? Biggest issue I had was using a raspberry Pi and having the sd card fail. There’s addons for regular backups to cloud storage, and also alternatives to using an sd card - I now use an odroid
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Same, SD card failure was the only failure I ever had. Nowadays, I just run an SSD instead.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    I just grabbed a cheap Lenovo Thinkcenter Mini and don't bother with raspberries at all :)
- spacemanmatt 4y ago
  > cratered Quit working. One or more critical modules would fail beyond my ability/interest to repair in a foreign container-manager based application. Or the thing would quit booting. I guess I could try different SD cards but the ones I had were serving fine with raspbian before. The first time it failed, I tried to join the community but found it exceptionally hostile before I even had a chance to seek regular support.
  - tass 4y ago
    I have had the following variety of problems: * very occasional post upgrade problem which was fixed by the next upgrade or just a restore * zigbee radio occasional issue which turned out to be a bug with the dongle firmware. Upgrading the firmware sorted me out. (Basically, I sometimes needed to power cycle before the zigbee network was functional) * SD card corruption. This was the biggest pain, and required building the system from scratch once (since the backups were on the same card - oops!) and from backup one other time. I never once had an issue after moving away from using sd cards that needed more than a restart - and this was maybe once in the last 6 months. I suspect the upgrade problems I previously had were also corruption related. If you were willing to try again, I highly recommend the odroid with eMMC - it’s also more powerful (though pricier) than a raspberry Pi 4 along with being generally neater since all the plugs attach on one side and it doesn’t need an external usb for its disk.