4 ms·

I just bought my first house, so I am hoping to sink my teeth into some home improvement tasks (drilling, basic plumbing, changing light fixtures etc) - definit

by domh 4y ago

I just bought my first house, so I am hoping to sink my teeth into some home improvement tasks (drilling, basic plumbing, changing light fixtures etc) - definitely a challenge for someone who's only lived in rentals before. Also interested in making the home as energy efficient as possible (LED bulbs, better insulation, smart thermostatic valves on the radiators etc). If anyone has any resources to read on this please share! For anything "smart" I'm looking for local-first systems without cloud dependencies.

denvrede 4y ago
Make sure to give Home Assistant a try. It's local first (option to add a "Cloud" connection). It has, by far, the biggest community around home automation. It's easy to extend yourself. It just ticks all the boxes. I've never heard someone talking bad about it. https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ Tip: don't bother running it as a container or "standalone", just use their HAOS distribution.
- domh 4y ago
  Thanks! Been eyeing up Home Assistant a lot over the last few days. Also tempted to attach a touchscreen to my raspberry pi, put it in a nice case and use that as a UI for it, though adding a web browser to the installation rules out using HAOS directly I guess? What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system?
  - denvrede 4y ago
    > Also tempted to attach a touchscreen to my raspberry pi, put it in a nice case and use that as a UI for it, though adding a web browser to the installation rules out using HAOS directly I guess? I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation. > What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system? For me it's that you can manage "addons" directly via Home Assistant e.g. if you need a MQTT broker on your system (I do because I use zigbee2mqtt for integration of my Zigbee devices) you can just go to the addon store, click install and it also automatically integrates with Home Assistant. Same for zigbee2mqtt. If you want to do that with a container version of HA you need to start up a MQTT / zigbee2mqtt broker manually (as another container) and then connect it to HA. It's not the end of the world, but why make it harder as it could be. You can also upgrade HA via the UI and don't have to stop the container, chose another image, restart the container. Backup & restore is also breeze.
    - domh 4y ago
      > I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation. I would like to have a Raspberry Pi running HA, whilst also having a web browser running on the pi with a small touch screen, showing the HA dashboard on display somewhere in the house. This is in no way a deal breaker though, I could just as easily access it through my phone or another device. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that HAOS is just the daemon, and doesnt have a UI that would show on an external display? I hope that makes sense.
      - denvrede 4y ago
        Ahh got it. No, HAOS features a full HA installation including the UI which is then of course also accessible via the Raspberry Pi and an attached display :)
jventura 4y ago
Just a suggestion for you, based on my own home improvements: break bigger things in smaller tasks and try to finish them in the same day or the day after. Sometimes life gets in the way, or you lose steam, and an incomplete repair or unfinished task starts to become a psychological drag or even make a section of your house unusable. Another one: buy the basic tools (screwdrivers, hammer, pliers, saw, sets of screws and nails) whenever possible and have them always available, but buy other tools as you go along, because only then you'll know what you are going to need. And yet another one: don't be afraid to do (most) things. If you do a bad job or break something you can learn something from that and re-try. If not, you can always (or mostly) hire someone to fix your errors. I'm not a native EN speaker and slept poorly last night, so I hope you can understand my suggestions!
- domh 4y ago
  Thank you! I will absolutely bear that in mind, and I'm definitely conscious of taking on too much with work and family commitments. Your English is perfect!

by domh 4y ago

denvrede 4y ago

Make sure to give Home Assistant a try. It's local first (option to add a "Cloud" connection). It has, by far, the biggest community around home automation. It's easy to extend yourself. It just ticks all the boxes. I've never heard someone talking bad about it. https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ Tip: don't bother running it as a container or "standalone", just use their HAOS distribution.

domh 4y ago
Thanks! Been eyeing up Home Assistant a lot over the last few days. Also tempted to attach a touchscreen to my raspberry pi, put it in a nice case and use that as a UI for it, though adding a web browser to the installation rules out using HAOS directly I guess? What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system?
- denvrede 4y ago
  > Also tempted to attach a touchscreen to my raspberry pi, put it in a nice case and use that as a UI for it, though adding a web browser to the installation rules out using HAOS directly I guess? I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation. > What are the reasons to prefer HAOS over installing via docker on a host system? For me it's that you can manage "addons" directly via Home Assistant e.g. if you need a MQTT broker on your system (I do because I use zigbee2mqtt for integration of my Zigbee devices) you can just go to the addon store, click install and it also automatically integrates with Home Assistant. Same for zigbee2mqtt. If you want to do that with a container version of HA you need to start up a MQTT / zigbee2mqtt broker manually (as another container) and then connect it to HA. It's not the end of the world, but why make it harder as it could be. You can also upgrade HA via the UI and don't have to stop the container, chose another image, restart the container. Backup & restore is also breeze.
  - domh 4y ago
    > I don't get that part? HAOS is a Linux distribution with a pre-configured / installed version of Home Assistant. It behaves (almost - see below) like a "normal" Home Assistant installation. I would like to have a Raspberry Pi running HA, whilst also having a web browser running on the pi with a small touch screen, showing the HA dashboard on display somewhere in the house. This is in no way a deal breaker though, I could just as easily access it through my phone or another device. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that HAOS is just the daemon, and doesnt have a UI that would show on an external display? I hope that makes sense.
    - denvrede 4y ago
      Ahh got it. No, HAOS features a full HA installation including the UI which is then of course also accessible via the Raspberry Pi and an attached display :)

jventura 4y ago

Just a suggestion for you, based on my own home improvements: break bigger things in smaller tasks and try to finish them in the same day or the day after. Sometimes life gets in the way, or you lose steam, and an incomplete repair or unfinished task starts to become a psychological drag or even make a section of your house unusable. Another one: buy the basic tools (screwdrivers, hammer, pliers, saw, sets of screws and nails) whenever possible and have them always available, but buy other tools as you go along, because only then you'll know what you are going to need. And yet another one: don't be afraid to do (most) things. If you do a bad job or break something you can learn something from that and re-try. If not, you can always (or mostly) hire someone to fix your errors. I'm not a native EN speaker and slept poorly last night, so I hope you can understand my suggestions!

domh 4y ago
Thank you! I will absolutely bear that in mind, and I'm definitely conscious of taking on too much with work and family commitments. Your English is perfect!