homeassistant

I have a Shelly dimmer 2 behind one of the switches in my kitchen running Tasmota. There are two switch inputs on the Dimmer module, so I have it behind a 2 gang wall box with two physical switches. Each switch is connected to one of the switch inputs of the Shelly.

I've set the switches to be independent of each other, so I can potentially use the different switches for different triggers. Switch one is configured as a push button switch and dims my kitchen lights. Switch two does nothing. I desire to have switch2 trigger my dining room lights, so after some digging I discovered that I can use MQTT to make Home Assistant do stuff! Perfect.

But not perfect. I set up an automation to listen for this devices' MQTT topic "tele/lights_kitchen/SENSOR" and when the switch is flipped either up or down, my mosquitto broker hears that topic, and it just toggles my lights! I thought I had it all figured out. But what I didn't notice at first, is that the Shelly Dimmer pings out an MQTT status every so often, even if no switches are flipped. So my dining room lights have been going on and off all afternoon!

There is some data in the payload of the MQTT that I think should be able to fix my issue, but I'm having trouble conceptualizing how.

The payload contains a key:value pair {"Switch2":"ON"} or "OFF". So I'm hoping I can use a change in that value as a toggle. Because it's operating as a 3 way switch, I don't care if the actual value is ON or OFF, I just want to know if it's changed. Do I need some sort of helper that keeps track? This seems like something MQTT would be good at, but I can't find a good example to steal the right config from. I thought maybe I could use two triggers, one for each state, but that makes a huge complicated set of logic that needs to be added, and I really feel like there should be a more elegant way to handle this.

Any assistance?

Just looking for some advice if the idea I have in mind is even feasible.

I have 2 light switches in my kitchen, one for some pendant lights, one for some overhead cannister lights.

I hate the placement of the switches, since the pendant lights which I prefer are far away from the actual doorways into the kitchen. Meanwhile the cannister lights are on the switches near the doors.

I'm looking to do some clever "hackery" to make it so the switches by the doors control the pendant lights, if possible, but I don't want to have to rewire things in the walls/ceilings.

Is there a good solution to this? I was looking at some Shelly switches, but I'm not sure those solve for the problem I wanna solve. I'm willing to swap out switches or wire in things near the lights, but trying to keep things simple as possible.

Hi

I’ve been looking for a retro theme for my home assistant setup preferably like Windows 98 UI and I’m wondering if someone developed one or managed to find similar themes.

Dell Outlet on Ebay has the Latitude 3140 laptop, an excellent Home Assistant platform on sale for $176. A Raspberry Pi 5 or NUC with the hardware needed for these features would cost far more. The same machine is nearly 2x more on the regular Dell Outlet site.

Debian 12 supported out of box - no additional drivers needed
Fast N200 Intel processor - ~60% faster than a Raspberry Pi 5
256gb SSD
8GB ram
Advanced BIOS options
OpenVino support for Frigate
BIOS battery management.  Can limit charge to 75% for years of battery life
6 hour indicated battery life at 75% charge
Very low power usage - ~6 watts when running Home Assistant with several USB devices
Fanless and completely silent
Built like a tank

Negatives:

Built like a tank. Chunky for a small laptop
No integrated Ethernet port
Mediocre screen

I bought one of these last year when it was on sale from another vendor and have been really happy with it, especially for the cost.

I'm looking to get a cm3588 to use as a NAS and and for streaming, but I'm curious if home assistant could also be run from such a device and maybe any other usefull programs

I have three different calendars syncing using caldav, one on fastmail and two on icloud. When I open the calendar view it's often the case that one or more of these timeout (all of them are afflicted by this), so it seems that these calendars are not actually stored on the server but polled everytime I want to view them.

Are there any alternative integrations that will periodically sync the calendars and keep them on the server? Or can I self-host an app that does this and will never time out because it's on my local network?

Does anyone know if the 2024.5 Companion App update for iOS removed the ability to control entities from the widget? I've read the release notes but there's no mention of any features being removed.

I could absolutely swear that I had a working widget with most of my lights on it, a solitary button for each light, that I could single tap to toggle said light.

Then, a few months or so back, I noticed the widget didn't seem to be working. The entity icons had change to black, round shadows, and tapping them did nothing.

I deleted the widget, thinking it got corrupted somehow and have never been able to get it back exactly as described above.

Now, it seems that only thing I can do with widgets is use Actions. Some Actions have been auto-created by the Companion App for each scene on my server, and I can obviously create my own Actions, to trigger automations.

But, I don't want to have to frig around with Actions (using input_booleans and automations) to do something as simple as turning a light on or off.

Am I dreaming? Did the iOS widgets never have this ability? Or am I missing something really obvious to configure entities onto a widget?

Thanks in advance for any useful advice.

Not sure why but my mqtt broker I installed from the addons is not working. Any help here should be nice. When I look at the settings the password says "password_not_changed" wuth username "homeassistant".

I currently use Frigate as an NVR for my outside cameras. I would like something that integrates with that. I really just care that it is fully local. I don't want a chance of someone on the internet being able to access a camera in my baby's bedroom.

Just got a new water cooler and the jug sits at the bottom. I want to track how full the bottle is and I have a spare esp32.

I was thinking about using the weight of the water jug but I'm not sure yet.

There is also a low water led but it seems to be lit all the time. Possible defect? The manual says it turns on when the water is low.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/16531247

I have tried to follow several tutorial to setup using either ip or nmtui:

• https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-use-bridged-networking-with-libvirt-and-kvm
• https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/setup-network-bridge-VM

However, the bridge inherits the MAC address of host after enslaving the host hardware enp1s0.... This causes my router to give both the host and the bridge the same ip address, making the ha instance inaccessible.

The red hat tutorial clearly show that the bridge and the host have different IP, so I was wondering if I am doing something wrong.

alternatively, I can set the home assistant vm to run in NAT and port forward from host, but I have several device that communicate over different ports. So it would be annoying to forward all these ports. Not to mention, many appliances don't have documentation about the ports they use.

I can also potentially use virtualbox, but it is not well supported on silverblue, especially with secureboot enabled.

Has anybody on here had an experiment with the supermarket tags?

My understanding is that you get a bunch of the tags, somehow get a base-station/transceiver working with them, and push data as images.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's had a go. I quite fancy having some little displays around the house with useful info for the room.

I got myself an ESP32 with an integrated e-ink display. This little project shows when the next bus to the city leaves, and the current time. I get the live bus data from Skyss through the Entur integration in Home Assistant. Might have to get a few more of these to tinker with.

I have all the usual Home Assistant stuff, including a Goodnight Routine.

I also have 3 cats, one of which has only known the house with automation.

Now these cats seem to have a hierarchy, and the Top Cat sleeps in the bedroom with us. This is now the Cat that only knows automation.

So when I say "Hey Google, Goodnight" she meows, she's genuinely excited.

Now a lot of the time my Wife falls asleep on the sofa while I watch TV or game, and I have to wake her up to go to bed. It's "Goodnight" then wake up the wife.

Last night I had a brainwave. What if I can get the cat to do it? She wakes my wife up at 4am by cleaning her face already, maybe I can get her to wake her up on the sofa too.

So last night I did the usual "Hey Google, Goodnight" then started saying "Goodnight" to the cat, then softly calling my wife, "Wifey, goodnight, goodnight" until she woke up.

When she woke up the cat put her front paws on the sofa and sniffed my wife's face and meowed.

So I plan on waking the Wifey up this way in the future in the hope that the cat will cotton on, and instead of just meowing in excitement, actively participate in the going to bed process.

Thereby giving me a Biomech automation.

She's an intelligent kitty so I have confidence it'll work. Today she (indoor cat) managed to get out while I gave a delivery guy directions and she sat outside in the garden meowing to be let back in, and another of my cats was inside the door meowing too.

Based on https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/releases/tag/1.39.1

For the record, this seemingly broke my presence sensors somewhat.

This might be tangential to HomeAssistant but Im currently thinking about a household renovation and one thing I am considering is wiring.

I have some POE devices along with many other that run with a 12v DC supply.

I'm lookin at putting in a relatively straightforward 12v battery UPS with a small solar panel to charge. I probably only have space for 1500W of panels so putting in a whole grid tied solution is overkill. Primarily this is to provide backup as we sometimes lose power.

Networking wise I think I will put RJ45 into each room as we are concrete reinforced construction and so signal quality is an issue.

My query was how feasible it is to run both standard PEO devices and 12v devices (1-2w) all over POE.

I thought the alternative would be to run separate 12v cables with USB connectors at the end into each room as well as Rj45

Is anyone else doing this in their home?

I'm finding it really difficult to tell whether a particular air conditioner is supported by Home Assistant, since all the ones I've seen in stores don't seem compatible. I mean, I'm probably wrong in that, I'm sure that with enough work anything will work, but I didn't see any integrations with Midea air conditioners, for example.

All my windows in my house slide sideways, so most of the in-wall air-conditioners won't work, and I rent the place, so I can't make large alterations. This pretty much limits me to portable ACs, which don't tend to have much smart home functionality.

Any help would be appreciated, as I'm pretty new to using Home Assistant in general, and I'm still trying to figure out how things work. I only bought my Home Assistant Yellow last year, and I don't yet have any smart appliances to connect it to.

UPDATE: well, I've belatedly realised I've left out a key piece of information. I need to buy a pair of locks - one for a regular wooden entrance door, and one for a security screen door in front of it.

Turns out hardly anyone (reputable) makes a decent smart lock for screen doors, except the Yale Unity range, but those aren't Z-Wave compatible.

Guess we're sticking with keys for a while longer...

Hey folks - the time's come for me to consider diving into smart locks.

I've been running HA for many years now, and have resisted the urge so far, but a few recent incidents have me thinking smart locks are the next upgrade I need to think of.

My requirements, equal in priority, are:

• Must be usable via HA (automating my locks is the primary reason I'm considering this move)
• Key lock backup (I'm petrified of flat batteries stopping me from entering)
• Ability for HA to report on battery level (see above)
• Local network only (prefer IP, but will consider Z-Wave - anything that calls home in the cloud is a hard no)
• Code and/or fingerprint entry (unique code per person, at least 6 codes)

I say "consider Z-Wave" as I don't currently utilise any Z-Wave devices. The main reason for this is that I run HA (Home Assistant) on a (heh!) HA (high availability) Proxmox setup, and I hadn't sat down to think through how that would work with a Z-Wave USB hub across two nodes.

But, after some cursory research, it seems there's enough options out there that will let me control Z-Wave remotely via MQTT, so I can use one of my RasPis to host a Z-Wave hub just fine.

There's been plenty of positive comments on other posts regarding Schlage's locks, so I'll probably start my research there. But I'm very keen to hear of anyone's experiences with any smart lock brands - good or bad - to help guide my research.

While I'm at it, I'm open to recommendations on a Z-Wave hub. I have zero Z-Wave experience, but I gather it's reasonably straightforward to use. Simple enough requirements:

• Usable on a RasPi running Rasbian
• Decent enough range - has to reach the smart locks through a couple of internal walls, from the garage to the front door (about 6m/20ft)

Cheers in advance for any advice offered!

Windows and macOS have similar clients (Hass.Agent for Windows and Home Assistant for macOS).

I've found these kinds of clients useful because I can remotely wake-up or sleep computers, track how long they are turned on for, and automatically pause my lights and music when my webcam turns on.

I still get updates for things I have installed, but I haven't seen any new integrations or themes added in some time.