I was wrong about Home Assistant Automations
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- For a long time I have stored most of my Home Assistant Automations in packages instead of the default location.
The 2022.9 release of Home Assistant has convinced me I was wrong. And it is time to moved them back to the automations.yaml file.
In this video I share the recent features that make the case for this massive change in my configuration layout.
Who am I?
My Name is Jeff. I am an DIY-er and Automator of boring things. And, of course, a huge Home Assistant fan. Oh, I also live in a house that tweets.
Follow Me:
Github - github.com/the...
Twitter - / thejeffreystone / / slackerlabs
On the Web - slacker-labs.com/
Discord - / discord
And if you like this video you could always fuel my automation habit -
Grab SlackerLabs Merch: slackerlabsmer...
One Time Donation:
Paypal: www.paypal.com...
Cash App: $slackerlabs
Buy me a coffee: www.buymeacoff...
Or use my Amazon affiliate link which provides a small commission on things you buy without additional cost to you - www.amazon.com...
Video Gear:
Canon m50: amzn.to/3ftldPH
Desk Mic: amzn.to/3wkum40
Camera Mic: amzn.to/3tXk1cp
Newer 660: amzn.to/3fwwejd
Dazzne D50: amzn.to/3oGBK5y
Audio Interface: amzn.to/3u07chK
Gimbal: amzn.to/3ouKAoe
Music - Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicso...
Video Assets - LenoFx: i.refs.cc/CJXU6...
Was there anything in the recent Home Assistant releases that made you change how you built your smart home?
I’ve been following you for quite some time now and all your videos have made my smart home way better. I could use a bit of help with jarvis and macros. I’ve done everything but I’m not super familiar with macros and could use some help if at all possible. I know your busy since your move, is your discord still up?
Nice one Jeff!! strange dude you were watching at 1:32!
Thanks nice as always! You know what I really dislike in the new automations is if you select the wrong trigger you have to delete that and start over vs just clicking a dropdown and selecting the one you meant to select in the first place. Not really a big thing but I find it unsufferable! I really hope they bring that back.
Oh, yeah I think I noticed that as well. Or like in the conditions when you choose condition (and) and then realize you need condition(Or) you have to do the same.
yeah, the new automation UI is definitely NOT an improvement.
I still think that the Node Red add-on is much easier & more powerful for automations than the stuff built directly into Home Assistant. :D
When you talk about backing out of Automations to add a helper I have to ask why not have another HA web page open and just toggle between? I often find I have 3 -5 screens open so I can monitor the Overview, maybe states and/or events while editing in Node-red or the file editor. Am I doing something not allowed?
Ha, Nope it is allowed. And if it makes things more efficient its definitely allowed. There are times I do that myself. But most of the time I try to minimize bouncing between screens.
@@SlackerLabs It does help to have multiple screens, at work I had 3 so I could monitor many aspects of the programming i was involved in, only have 2 at home but find it to be a great help.
@@rickz6006 I have 4 monitors at home and regularly lose the important tabs/programs I have open. 🙃
I was panicking then thinking you were going to say the packages won’t work anymore!! I moved everything from the scripts, automations etc in to their own package file after watching your previous vids. Changed my life!!!
Same here, i'm curious how this ends up. With automations and scripts moved and packages still in place....
Yeah, we will see how this turns outs. I think there are going to be a couple of cases where it simply doesn't work. And who knows. This may all blow up in my face. I'll be sure to do an update video to talk about what did or didn't work.
@@SlackerLabs The most annoying point about using the automations.yaml and scripts.yaml is, that it messes up !includes...
@@lifth13 I've realised that using packages (and the !includes) any automations made in the GUI don't show up. They are in the automations.yaml (root - not an include as that didnt work)... but nowhere are they in the GUI. Did you experience this?
@@MattFacer No, but i have to admit i haven't engaged with the gui a whole lot so far. I've hit that "migrate" button once (to see what happens) which moved my morning_routine script from my package morning.yaml over to scripts.yaml. But it also resolved an include inside the script (which is used to assemble my morning_briefing in a seperate file - similar to what Jeff showed in his github-config) which made the whole thing pretty much unreadable. Haven't touched the gui since.
I think that I would use node-red if it weren’t as heavy of a addon- my RPI already doesn’t like having a bunch of addons, I’ll just use the built in automation editor, it works great and is pretty powerful. (Best UI editor out there that isn’t node red)
Jeff Such Good videos! Seriously!!! so helpful on the real nitty gritty stuff
Feature I would like to see next is that it lets you edit the other automations/script files, rather than being limited to the one file. Doesnt help with the packages, but it would allow for better categorisation of the automations/scripts (eg. all my living room automations are in a file names livingroom.yaml)
This would be the perfect solution. But I believe the issue is since the package can contain automations, scripts, and everything else they would have a hard time (maybe impossible) at keeping the formatting of the file and getting the automations actual under the automation: heading and not creating multiple. I have noticed when moving my automations from the packages, the editor actually butchers the formatting of templates making it impossible to read in the YAML which is not ideal for someone like me that is use to both ways. .
@@SlackerLabs honestly I see this as kind of a cop out. If they can get it to read the automations, scripts, switches, etc. from these files, they could get it to save them into it.
Unfortunately HA also butchers the formatting of everything it saves as YAML. I get that there's probably limited development will to implement a linter into the codebase, but at the very least it could not strip out comments.
I'd love to see them add the ability to edit automations stored in packages in the UI, to be honest.
Oh Man, this would be the best. But I vaguely remember their being a technical reason for excluding them. Think it was something about file layout not being consistent.
I like the new, streamlined, automations UI.
I really liked the addition of trigger IDs and the choose action. It feels much simpler when you want to turn something on based on one trigger, and off based on a different trigger, and the like. The previous automations UI was too cluttered in the face of non-trivial automations; it was too hard to see what was going on, or to make changes.
I've been a programmer for decades, but I find YAML really difficult to read or write, so I appreciate the UI improvements that reduce the need to deal with YAML directly.
I'd like to see helpers (variables) local to an automation. Maybe a section for helpers, like you have for triggers, conditions, and actions. Having a global list is probably simpler for newcomers, and is fine when you don't have too many of them; but as your configuration gets more complex, keeping the related pieces together reduces cognitive load. (This seems to be the point of packages. It would be sweet if they could come up with a reasonable UI for dealing with packages.)
Another place where the automations UI could be improved is in providing simpler UI for some forms of the call service action. For example, turn a light/switch on/off, or open/close a cover.
Thinking maybe I would try one more item of interest. What is the best and most retired budget-minded motion sensor that works out of the box with Home Assistant in your opinion? Based on your selection will order and test. If the motion sensor has temperature reporting that would be the icing on the cake. Thank you.
How hve you mke the stats overview on the beginning of the video?
@Daniel Schmidt There are two parts. The sensors and the lovelace card. I created a gist to make it easy to find. gist.github.com/thejeffreystone/4f89611b1ff5b4598a6c7009bffb7cc2
Not sure how your setup is laid out, so you may have to adjust the sensors. But all of that should go under sensor: or dropped as is in the sensor.yaml file. And the lovelace part is just an entities card.
Hmmm.. I don't know if I have the guts to do this. I have such a deep understanding of how my set up works that I'm afraid if I surrender it to the UI, I'll loose some of that understanding. Sure, I may not need such a deep understanding anymore if Home Assistant is fixing everything for me but I still think some problems need really creative solutions that are best tackled in YAML and loosing that institutional knowledge on the set up might make me regret the move.. and I can't even IMAGINE how or if the move BACK out of thee UI would be. Good Luck with the move and I'll be watching nervously from the sideline!
-Carlo
Oh, I am a master of making impulsive decisions that crash and burn especially regarding my smart home. haha. So this may work or it may not.
Will these changes show up on your github site so it can be viewed
Yes. Things are a mess right now as I work on getting things added back in. But I was just thinking after this that I need to update that repo.
What i am missing in the automation UI is some form of organization features for my 200+ automations like folders, groups or tags.
Yea. I’ve considered using areas for this since you can put automations in areas. But a lot of mine aren’t really area specific.
One of the things that I can't seem to get working in the Scripts and/or Automations is using an include. !include template/speech/something.yaml doesn't work and it complains about it. I also don't see how you can add attributes to the script other than editing it in yaml. It would be nice, if scripts that had variables which needed to be set would then "present" those variables in the automation for you to select or set. For example, your jarvis stuff which uses different variables to enable the speech from the template in the script.
Yeah, the UI editors dont like the !include keyword. Interestingly enough, if you add it into the scripts.yaml manually file and reload the scripts from the YAML panel, you wil be able to edit your script in the script UI but it will have imported all the contents from the file you included.
And yeah, I'm hopefully that we could get some manually defined attributes that would show up in the UI editors for things like those scripts.
You can also disable single actions instead of removing them :)
I'm just trying to find something that allows me to say "Alexa goodnight" or "hey Google goodnight" and it will control my Alexa, smartThings, and Google routines all through one command.
For example turn my phone screen brightness all the way down (smarthings/Bixby), turn on white noise on my Google speaker, turn off the Alexa show screen.
I'm not sure about controlling your brightness on the phone. But the other stuff is possible. My good night routine is mostly for my kid. But if we tell either the google in his room or the echo good night the same thing happens. Home Assistant turns off audible notifications which lowers the volume on all the echos and google homes in the house, his awake status gets turned off, the lights in his room change (some change color, some turn off), "Jarvis" tells him if he has school the next day or if its vacation how many days left until school again and then tells him good night. And if the command if done via the echo his bedtime playlist on Apple Music starts playing on the echo in his room. And if it was done via google his bedtime playlist starts playing via Spotify on his google home. And if I still had smart things up and running and linked to home assistant I would be able to control any of those devices and services too,.
You could totally turn of google displays, and execute any amazon routine you want to from the same commands as well from either of the speakers as long as you were sing home assistant to be the middle man.
All these breaking updates really annoy me, to the point I'm about ready to stop updating Home Assistant all together! The most recent ones being there was an update not long ago that broke all my notify automations, then there was just an update recently that says I have to change all my MQTT actions as that will be breaking soon in a coming update.
Their write up of breaking changes is always really good though, and breaking changes only happen on the major releases each month.
I allow my container to auto update minor revisions and then send me a notification to manually review the breaking changes when a new major revision becomes available.
My argument against visual programming. Visual programing makes the simple stuff simple. It makes the hard stuff harder. Very much what you said...
Home Assistant automations are just way too clunky for me. I use them for a couple really simple things, but the bulk of my automations live in Node Red.
I hear good things about node red. I've been coding for too long to get comfortable building automations with the drag and drop interface.
I ditto the nodered comment, I did yaml automations for a long while until I needed further complexity for some of my automations. The drag and drop was definitely something to get used to (still am!), But ultimately the move was the way to go for me
@@SlackerLabs I think you get more power with a simpler interface and the debug capability is way, way higher. And when I need to do something really complex, I can write JavaScript functions which I've been using for over a decade. It just didn't make sense to learn Home Assistant's YAML when I had that option.
I use both NR and yaml. If your yaml skills are good, it's better than NR. If they are not good, NR is a good choice.
@Renegade I'm just trying to find something that allows me to say "Alexa goodnight" or "hey Google goodnight" and it will control my Alexa, smartThings, and Google routines all through one command.
For example turn my phone screen brightness all the way down (smarthings/Bixby), turn on white noise on my Google speaker, turn off the Alexa show screen.
Can node red do that?
Moving all automations to one file is a bold move. I prefer packages for many if the same reasons you have mentioned, and I'm not ready to give them up for a UI improvement. Still, I watch your progress with interest. Godspeed!
I'm doing this for science!
I am done with HA every time you ask a question concerning "how to do something" they get on their high horse and tell you "they did it" or "reference some page on their website" which does nothing to explain how to do what you have asked to do, with no help beyond that. Bunch of high horse rats. Good day sir. (This comment does not reflect your channel just venting for the last time against HA)
Yea. I get that. It’s why I avoid the HA forums. Haha. Well if you decide to stick around you can always ask me. I’m sometimes slow to respond. But I always try to.
@@SlackerLabs to say I was surprised at your congenial response would be an understatement. You have a follower for life and gonna scroll up and see if you have a "buy me a cup of joe" button. Thank you for your kindness. It will be the one with no name or comment LOL forgot to enter those entry boxed.
"I was wrong about XXX ... this changes EVERYTHING!" - what about the crazy thumbnail with wide eyes and your hand over your mouth - if you do cliche, at least do it properly? Anyway - nice video!
lol. I was testing something with this one. It got people to click on it more than any other video I have made to date, but watch time still not too good. Maybe I should embrace that over the top youtuber. Or start streaming myself playing Fortnite. haha.
@@SlackerLabs Maybe it’s like investing in stocks. You have good content, so it’s a waiting game which will eventually pay off over time.
Yea. Really as long as I’m having fun I’ll keep doing it. Oh. And my next thumbnail will be Casey Neistat and the title what famous TH-camrs got wrong about home assistant.
@@SlackerLabs I must admit that’s pretty good!
I loved the thumbnail and the content! Got me interested in it from the start!