MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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I do have a handful of hue lights and a hub so it's an option, but specifically for these two lights in the hall, a hue replacement is not really feasible unless I replace the whole units. The problem I have, is that one of the lights is connected to the switch, the other, has no switched live so I can either wire into live for permanent on, or leave disconnected for permanent off (as it has been for 2+ years).
My thinking is I can put something like a Shelly 1 Mini in the problem light, and use it to turn the light on/off over wifi. But then I need a way to control the Shelly unit. Obviously I could set up something in HA and use my phone, but it would be nice to have it controlled from a physical switch for ease.
So that leads me to, 2x Shelly 1 mini, one in each light in the hall. Then some kind of a switch on the wall to replace the current switch entirely, when you press this new switch, it sends a command to HA which then triggers both Shelly's to turn on.
Previous house had an old galaxy tab on the wall for all things Smart Control, but in this case I would really just like some kind of semi traditional switch.
yeah, you can do that. Fairly bodgy obviously!! I've actually similar in my bedroom where there are two separate light fittings on either side, but connected to the same circuit & controlled by a single switch. I've used a Shelly i4 (which provides 4 distinct inputs, I'm only using 2 though obviously), replacing the single switch on the wall with their Wall Switch 2 which is wired into the i4.
You could of course use a standard 2-gang switch, but momentary switches such as the Shelly one work so much better with smart lighting! The only drawback with the Shelly Wall Switch is it's slightly too small for UK switch boxes. It's not a massive issue although I plan to design & 3d print something that does fit properly at some point!
Obviously with this solution the switch is detached from the light, and relies on your WiFi network being up for it to work! (which works fine for me although overall I'd say Zigbee is a slightly better/more reliable solution). You can however script the switch Shelly to fire off an HTTP request directly to the Shellys controlling the lights which at least takes HA out of the equation!
I just got some wifi wall switches that work a treat
The problem I have, is that one of the lights is connected to the switch, the other, has no switched live so I can either wire into live for permanent on, or leave disconnected for permanent off (as it has been for 2+ years).
How did it end up like that? Did someone really add a light fitting for a light that couldn't be turned on and off?
You could wire up the first shelly to the normal switch, and then use HA to control the second shelly when the state of the first one changes.
@pdw your guess is as good as mine..! Both hall lights are new(ish) so were fitted when the previous owners renovated. I'm not sure what they were thinking...
Two shellys with some automation to make them sync (could I again skip HA and make shelly 1 run a script when it gets power to trigger shelly 2?) sounds like a good first step to get past the boss, though I do like the idea of the i4 and wall switch!
could I again skip HA and make shelly 1 run a script when it gets power to trigger shelly 2?
not when it gets powered - it would need to remain powered permanently - but when it receives a switch input (or the relay is triggered), yes
Ah, I've just looked at the manual for the mini and I misunderstood how it works. So I feed it permanent live, output to the light, and for light 1, I connect the switched live to the switch port of the shelly, then I can make shelly 1 turn on shelly 2 when shelly 1 switched live goes on ?
ok, home assistant gurus, I need help,
My first attempt at setting up an alert just isn't working. I am trying to set up an alert to my phone, to notify me when the co2 level is rising so I can open a window for 5 mins.
The trigger is working, the notification is sent but it doesn't contain the message i have setup. It looks to me like it should work, I can't see anything I have done wrong according to the documentation. Doesn't matter so much just now, but if I set up some more alerts then knowing which one I am receiving would be kind of nice. It also doesn't show anything in notifications in home assist.
alias: Notification co2 above 1000
description: ""
triggers:
- trigger: numeric_state
entity_id:
- sensor.dyson_big_quiet_carbon_dioxide
above: 1000
conditions:
- condition: time
after: "07:00:00"
before: "21:00:00"
actions:
- action: notify.mobile_app_MonkeySpacePilots_iphone
data:
message: "Living room co2 above 1000 open window"
data:
push:
sound:
name: default
critical: 1
volume: 1
did you create this via the GUI or YAML? If YAML, indentation could be wrong (impossible to tell from that cut n paste as it's lost it all!)
everything below "push:" doesn't look right though. To do a critical alert on iOS I think it's just this (where the ">>" are indents)
data:
>>push:
>>>>interruption-level: critical
I have it working now, after re-installing the app on my phone. That's a few hours wasted thinking it was something I had done.
You can use backticks to paste code, I think it preserves spacing.
Testing:
data:
push:
interruption-level: critical
... yes it does, but in dark mode it pastes in light grey on a light grey background. You need to highlight the text to read it (or switch to light mode I guess).
I've been running on HA Green for about 2 years and am thinking of moving to some higher spec hardware. I'm not really hammering the Green that much but things like predbat can take a while to run, and I'm aware that the storage has a finite lifetime so want to jump before I start seeing issues. Any suggestions of a suitable alternative to run HA on?
I can't answer your question but this
I'm aware that the storage has a finite lifetime
is ancient "established wisdom" and almost certainly wildly overstated on modern hardware.
Is there any particular advantage in using the HAG over say a Pi?
HAG uses eMMC which I'm led to believe is slower and less reliable than stuff like an SSD. HAG scores as an out of the box platform for HA so there's no faff to get up and running as a newbie, but now I'm more comfortable with the whole environment I'd be happy to do some of the config work. I'm hacking python these days too so a platform that can support a separate dev instance might be useful.
I’ve just moved my HA from the iSG display max to one of these - https://amzn.eu/d/deDfTP6 -
probably overkill but it should use less power over its life than a 2nd hand office mini pc for similar money.
Thanks @petrieboy - was the move just a case of restoring a backup once you had HA set up on the new machine?
HAG uses eMMC which I'm led to believe is slower and less reliable than stuff like an SSD. HAG scores as an out of the box platform for HA so there's no faff to get up and running as a newbie, but now I'm more comfortable with the whole environment I'd be happy to do some of the config work. I'm hacking python these days too so a platform that can support a separate dev instance might be useful.
Useful, ta. About what I thought, but I wondered if there was something 'special' about it.
I tried setting up HA on an old laptop. tbh i then went and purchased home assistant green. its been faultless so far.
i then went and purchased home assistant green
Why? What was the issue with the laptop?
The reason I'm asking is that for some time now I've been resisting the urge to somewhat inevitably go down the HA path. It's going on a Pi of some description, probably a 3 series, unless there's any compelling reason not to.
I should probably start my own thread about this TBH.
I have a version on a Pi5 with SSD using the online video tutorial. It's quite sparkly but we ran into a networking problem which means it has been ignored for a couple of months. The amount of data and tweaking is well into "thief of time" territory. I added it into the Cloudfare Tunnel domain and can access all the data anywhere (unless Cloudfare are having a 'technical moment').
I have a version on a Pi5 with SSD using the online video tutorial.
With the disclaimer that my net experience to date with Home Assistant is Paul Hibbert videos, I would have assumed that the only difference between "configuring an application on an official HA box" and "configuring an application on a Raspberry Pi" would be "initially installing the application." Is that an optimistic assumption?
Only difference is moving the start-up to the SSD and using the HA version of the OS on Pi Imager. There was a bit of GUI based set-up followed by an SSH session then using the phone/computer app to add in all the necessary appliances and data logging. Best part of a day while herself was out of the house, there's host of by the hand tutorials for adding in things requiring HACS (which was fun).
i then went and purchased home assistant green
Why? What was the issue with the laptop?
The reason I'm asking is that for some time now I've been resisting the urge to somewhat inevitably go down the HA path. It's going on a Pi of some description, probably a 3 series, unless there's any compelling reason not to.
I should probably start my own thread about this TBH.
Because i was messing around with lunix distros and all sorts of rubbish when i just wanted to setup and get going. IMO as someone who moved from google home and wrote all the automatons in yamil i didnt find HA as easy as i thought. the shear vastness of it (ive got about 100 things in my house and 20+ automatons) im still playing about with it all months down the line. The HA green was easy and thats what i needed at the time.
My HA instance is about five years old. First three it ran on a PI (3 I think). The SD card failed (apparently not that rare due to the amount of R/W compared to say being used in an action cam). I took the opportunity to move it to my Syntology NAS which is the 920 so a decent spec. I did need to upgrade the memory tho once I'd fired up a couple of VMs (one for HA, one for PI-Hole). It works really well, the distro is freely available and just loads up with no extra config. Mgt on the NAS is pretty good as well. Restored off my backup (not backed up onto the PI obviously!) with a few little issues, but took about half a day from fresh install to fully working
I've just (well a year ago but life got in the way) set up a brand new instance I'm going to build from scratch. There is so much old config/dead devices/odd bits of YAML I wrote that now I've no idea what it does etc, it's going to be easier to start fresh. But wow it's so much more featured than when I built the first install. Agree it's hard to know where to start.
I have around 12 smart plugs, 10 lights, including some with Shelly controls, a bunch of IOT stuff and some legacy BT stuff that I might not move across. Plus all the electricity mgt stuff for Octopus and the EV charger. I also have around 40 automations and loads of scripts. Saturday was a fun day going through each one in a snog/marry/avoid kind of way.
TDLR- did look at the HAG when my SD card died, but decided I had a stonking great NAS not doing much so used that instead.
Thanks @petrieboy - was the move just a case of restoring a backup once you had HA set up on the new machine?
It would have been, but as my HA instance was a bit of a mess as I’d learnt things over the time I had the iSG, I took the opportunity to start fresh.
The reason I'm asking is that for some time now I've been resisting the urge to somewhat inevitably go down the HA path. It's going on a Pi of some description, probably a 3 series, unless there's any compelling reason not to.
I wouldn't unless it's because you have a Pi 3 kicking about doing nowt, in which case you can try it out for no cost. It'll be slow to boot, and you might have to reboot HA quite often when setting it up so this could be frustrating!
IMO no Pi is the right tool for this job, as by the time you've added SSD storage you've probably spent the same as some kind of cheap mini-PC. Most of the hardware failures are down to SD cards with the constant writing I think. I bought a 2nd-hand Lenovo Thinkcentre (their equivalent of a NUC) off eBay. Lots of people go for those cheap Beelink mini-PCs.
Do you want/need something powerful? Maybe. Depends how deep down the rabbit hole you go 😂. I actually use mine as a server - HA add-ons are just Docker containers (although you can't manage them directly) and pretty much everything I'd want to run is available as an add-on: Plex server, software NVR (Frigate, which needs reasonable CPU if you have multiple cameras, as it also provides real-time object classification so can turn even the cheapest camera into an "AI" camera with object/facial recognition etc), handles all Torrent/Usenet downloading using Radarr/Sonarr etc, I've been toying around with Immich (self hosted photo storage) and Paperless-NGX (document storage) too.
There's a lot of AI/ML stuff you can play around with, even your own locally hosted voice assistant à la Alexa which obviously needs a bit of compute power. Although you could run all this stuff on a traditional server, I tried that for a bit and found I had no interest in being a Sys Admin and it's way simpler to just let HA handle keeping everything up-to-date, secure etc!