Most smart devices are incredibly dumb. (moving 08)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2024
- Truly smart devices are local, private, and work without a hub or Internet.
In this video I set up Home Assistant Yellow to automate my office lights, HVAC, and security system. I also give an update on the rest of the office buildout.
Please consider donating the UOAA-you can check them out here: www.ostomy.org
Here are all the devices I used (some links are affiliate links):
- Home Assistant Yellow: www.home-assistant.io/yellow/
- Home Assistant Green: www.home-assistant.io/green/
- Raspberry Pi CM4: rpilocator.com/?cat=CM4
- Kioxia XG6 NVMe SSD: amzn.to/47et3pq
- Zooz 800 GPIO Z-wave module: amzn.to/3QIXpLx
- Leviton Zigbee light switch: amzn.to/40nLcz6
- Aqara Zigbee Motion Sensor: amzn.to/3srFtLV
- Simplisafe security system: amzn.to/3soh0Hx
- GoControl TBZ48 Thermostat: amzn.to/467WE2W
- Geerling Engineering video on AirGradient CO2/PM2.5 sensor: • An ACTUALLY smart air ...
- EP1 Human Presence Detector: shop.everythingsmart.io/en-us...
This video was not sponsored in any way-I paid for all the parts mentioned in the video.
Support me on Patreon: / geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy
Merch: redshirtjeff.com
2nd Channel: / geerlingengineering
Contents:
00:00 - First world problems
01:10 - This one's not sponsored
01:52 - Buildout progression
03:43 - Home Assistant Yellow
06:10 - Motion vs presence detection
07:07 - Assembly
10:22 - HA Install
12:06 - HA Setup
14:02 - Enrolling lights
16:04 - Motion sensor setup
19:13 - Measure once, stick twice...
21:28 - Z-wave, Security system, and NVMe move
23:24 - Back to Z-wave
24:54 - The top secret thermostat reset
26:33 - It's actually smart!
28:41 - More progress - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Home Assistant contributor dropping in to say thank you for the exposure. Home Assistant is one of the best community projects I've been a part of.
Thank you for your work!
Definitely thanks for all the hard work. I've throughly enjoyed working with it.
Yep! Love the opensourcenes. And lots of people have contributed to/made projects for it. Like Tasmota, a project started by a dutch man to remove the cloud from iot devices and lets you take full control of them! Its even based on the arduino framework and uses arduino packages and tools! Its awesome, just like esphome
@@JeffGeerling Glad to see the progress Home Assistant has made with the yellow hardware (I am comparing as an early-ish user setting it up with Raspi 3B back in 2017-2018). Since you are already using the Aqara motion sensor, I am curious if you had considered Aqara's presence sensor (FP2) and if the Everything Presence sensor might provide any advatanges over Aqara's? Great video and keep up the good work.
I had a year away from HA and came back recently. All the little changes have really added up to a better experience!
I could see it being a feasible option for the less technically inclined in the future
A suggestion for naming devices within home assistant, give them somewhat unique names. For example instead of calling them all switch and assigning to a room, giving them the room name will make it so that when you're grabbing devices for automations or groups or whatever, it's easier to distinguish. Ex: Server Light Switch, Back Room Light Switch.
When doing automations, most of the time you'll just assign rooms rather than devices/entities. But if you ever do use separate devices, you'll wish they had more context in their names!
This is trickier than it sounds too especially if you’re particular with the names. Even more so if you’re using voice automation when you start wondering if a nickname isn’t a better idea.
My bedroom has 3 lights a ceiling light, a light on a ceiling fan and a lamp. Lamp is easy but “hey siri turn on the master bedroom ceiling fan lights” at that point I’ve already hit the switch.
Thinking about it now the context for specific device is the part that annoys me the most.
@@cynic5581 My solution for this is to give them nicknames. For example, my bathroom light is a glass globe. Sorta looks like a brain. So to turn on the bathroom light I tell google "It's big brain time". For my bedroom ceiling light it's "Enable the rapture", etc.
@@cynic5581
in voice assistants:
- if you assign your voice assistants to areas you can say "turn on the lights" and it'll know what
- i would rather say "turn on small lamp" than "turn on living room small lamp" or "turn on lights 3"
in home assistant:
the entity naming is "[device name] [identifier]", like "bedroom motion light level". you need to choose your device name so the entity name makes sense.
This is something most users will need to work out over time. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to change in HA.
@@KTibow What I would absolutely love to see, but don't expect to see anytime soon, is for the voice assistant to be smart enough to know that it heard me from a station in the bedroom, and it then looks for devices in that room before it starts trying to match other devices.
That breaks down when you're using your phone in the bedroom, at least without a lot more work, but it would definitely bring us a lot closer to being able to walk into a dark room and say 'Computer, lights!', and have it do the right thing.
(Yes, star trek gave us all high expectations in regards to voice assistance for smart devices. And darn it, we should be able to get there!)
Jeff is so much further ahead in his studio project. Staring at an empty space today with this on and it feels like so much work just to get something usable.
It's quite a bit of work, for sure! I think I started down this path in April this year, got the lease in May, and simultaneously worked with an architect then. Work started in June... and here we are today-it _looks_ like I might get inspection next week. We'll see!
Yes it is, I'm working on making my office better, since September
Nice video! Local is definitely the way to go if possible. I have a couple of cloud integrations that I inherited from the previous homeowner, and they occasionally give me cloud troubles. When I feel like paying for replacements they will definitely be local.
The "failsafe" local physical control is also key. There is a Mitch Hedberg quote that goes around home automation circles: "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs." Designing your "smart"-ness around that principle is the way to go.
My dad once told me, “You know you’ve done a good job as a parent when your children grow up and still want to spend time with you.” I think this is a good saying, and it's cool the relationship you have with your dad.
One of my favorite automations is when I arm the security system, HA turns off the lights. Very useful when you're leaving and you don't have to run around the house turning everything off first.
I absolutely loved this slow, breakdown showing around the automation. Normally I see home automation and the cameras everywhere - "Oh I just hooked it up, easy"
But you really broke it down and while it is really easy, it was nice to see in almost real time! :D
For that z-wave thermostat, you needed to go in home assistant and start the exclusion process before triggering it on the thermostat. It would have most likely cleaned itself up like that. You can exclude items that were on previous networks like that, or factory resetting them like you did.
Oh cool! Didn't even know that was a thing...
@@JeffGeerling It's probably in the friendly manual :)
TBH, Z-Wave is annoying for stuff like that. I understand some of the motivations, but in the end, it's just annoying. Zigbee, for all it's faults, is alot simpler to get a device connected, IF you can get the device connected (which isn't so certain with Zigbee)
I'm pretty sure that only works on the ZWave controller it was originally paired too. I suspect the factory reset here was the only solution.
@@chuyskywlk It will work this way too. I've had to use the method before myself in both Homeseer and Home Assistant
My experience with Aqara devices is that most of them come with a second adhesive pad in the box. I think they figured out that enough people make the same installation mistake that it's less expensive to just include another pad instead of having to deal with complaints about them not being available.
I really hate battery powered light switches and being told not to use the normal light switches because they "break".
I fully agree with you that smart devices should be "dumb" devices with smarts built in and not tacked on as an afterthought.
Quite. I think most of us start our journey with smart bulbs. Those always "break" because someone turns off the switch, and even worse cheap ones that forget their settings when they don't have power. Smart switches are the way to go for home automation -- or smart relays behind dumb switches.
For desks in the studio, maybe a long built-in workbench with storage underneath for bits and bobs, and then husky/similar workbenches on wheels for the rest of the space, so you can have mobility.
You can use a tablet wall mounted or a raspberry pi with a touchscreen to make a dashboard to control everything instead of using your mobile device every time you want to run something using home assistant. Create that separate dashboard which should not have security system entities in it. Just the work can also use that to run automations you want to “one click record start”, one click camera feeds, the possibilities are endless with HAOS! This this is amazing. 🤩
This is definitely the plan!
I have a couple Pi-based flush mount touchscreens I could get installed.
for the "recording mode" switch, I would add also some kind of "ON AIR" signs outside the studio room, that would light when recording mode is on. It looks professional, and maybe keep other people outside :-)
Yes! I actually thought about this last week. Wish I would've had the electrician run power to the space next to the door, but for now I could probably hack something together with an LED and ESPHome...
@@JeffGeerling WLED and Home Assistant integrate extremely well...just saying ;)
Glad to see some home assistant video. Quick note: You can add home kit integration and integrate it with your phone so you could do some extras trough shortcuts
For my bedroom i automated my alarm with it so now I can’t just snooze it
What i love about this video is that you actually show when things go slightly askew and then fix them. Great job !
The Streamdeck home assistant integration works really good for studio lights etc. If you use a multi-action you can have 1 button do things with HA and pc/mac software like OBS.
Ah true! I never think of integrating Home Assistant and my Stream Deck... I have one at my desk at home and will be setting one up for the main desk location. Could just add one at the recording area along with a long USB cable back to my main computer too. We'll see.
If you don’t want to run an usb cable you could also use an rpi (probably rpi zero w) to relay the signals, but I don’t know how reliable this solution. Hardwiring is definitely the safer bet.
@@JeffGeerling you can run long USB runs over CAT 5e / 6 with Monoprice Monoprice USB Extender over Cat5e or Cat6 Connection, up to 150ft for USD $12
Bitfocus’ “Companion” is also an open source project that can be run on a server (or RPi) and can use satellite Stream Decks for automation, primarily AVL production equipment, but also has modules for consumer equipment and Home Assistant. Might be a good bridge between your HA yellow and any production equipment in your studio that doesn’t have home automation integrations. 🤷🏻♂️
Great work and illustrating common use cases. Definitely want a community driven project over subscription based. Excellent!
I strongly agree with your 3 premises. Also use Home Automation and have set my devices similarly.
It's a bit of an additional learning curve, but ESPHome or Tasmota offers additional flexibility for devices beyond simple built in functionality. For example, I used ESPHome to write some basic scripts to turn a simple switch into a time-run switch. I can trigger different delay time for single-press, double-press, etc. Still additive, per your guidelines.
I have two principles when it comes to home automation, which I think align with yours: it should follow the *principle of least surprise* and it should *fail dumb* wherever possible.
For the first, I want switches to work as expected, and automations not to do stuff that seems odd to a guest. For the second, I want critical services like lights to have as few points of failure as possible.
For example I use ZigBee dimmer modules for my room lights, with their switch inputs wired to retractive switches in the place where light switches would normally be. Then a failure of Home Assistant or even of the ZigBee mesh won't stop me getting light.
For the desks I would suggest height-adjustable ones like IKEA sells. So with the press of a button it travels to a preset height and you can either sit or stand behind it.
Thank you for sharing your progress on your moving and setup @JeffGeerling
I really like seeing the different devices you choose and how you set them up for your specific jobs/tasks.
Thank you!
@JeffGeerling
If you were going to use a regular Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB to do the same thing, what ZigBee module would you use on the Raspberry Pi if you were going to do it?
@@David_LaddSkyConnect, hands down. It's developed by Home Assistant, supports Zigbee 3.0 and promises to support Thread at the same time in a future firmware update.
I seriously love your videos. They are so streamlined and informative I just wanna try everything you’re doing myself. I guess one of the reasons why I fully upgraded my home net and bought servers + switches was thanks to you 😂
Always nice to see more people setup home assistant! It's such an awesome system even with it's flaws.
I know it was not the point of the video but this this is the best Home Assistant Tutorial ive seen. Everyone else have a weird use case were this one is very "generic" or has wide applications. It made it seem simple vs other that make it seem so complicated.
Yeah, I think focusing on solving a couple little lower-effort uses is the best way to get started. Automating a light, integrating a few sensors... start somewhere easy.
On the topic of motion lights, there are sensors that uses 24GHz radar to detect if someone exist in there instead of just moving. So the lights wont turn off if you are just sitting on your desk. I used LD2410B and LD2410C with esphome to pipe the data to home assistant.
Check out 06:30 ;) EP1 is on the way! (And I also have a few models coming from AliExpress).
Also this solution cost only 5 USD.
LD2410C cost 18.8CNY
ESP32-C3 from luatos cost 9.9CNY
which is a bit under 4USD under current rates. Shipping excluded tho.
@@JeffGeerling whoops, I commented before watching 6:30
anyway, there are also LD2450 that can output directions and speed. Maybe preemptive triggering for seamless lights would be possible
These kinds of videos must be a fascinating learning experience for the product development teams that build these devices. Watching a user build your product without outside assistance, using only your documentation, is a great way to learn what's clear and what's confusing or poorly designed.
For my old office, where I had a long run of desk/test bench, I built desk supports that looked like a capital T but with the downward piece of to be only 6" from the wall. The top of the leg was secured solidly into the wall and the bottom had an adjustable screwed foot on it. This meant that the load on the worktop was carried down to the floor but there weren't any legs at the front to obstruct me from just wheeling myself to a different work area. I fitted kitchen worktops to the legs and set the a few inches off the wall to allow me to pass power leads down to the wall mounted sockets (UK spec plugs need a bit of space to pass through).
This is very timely, I've been building my own HA setup, and light switches are on my current list of compare devices before buying.
get some ws2812b and esp32 too! the software is called wled, you can install it in half a minute. its awesome
This is by far the best tutorial I’ve seen for this so far. It’s not that bad, but so many people make it look complicated ❤
I've never used them personally, but lots of people swear by french cleats. They may make more sense for woodworking shops where you have all the tools needed to make more of them (table saw mainly), but something to consider. You could always put a peg board on the french cleats 😆.
I would have added a smart button to the entrance room instead of a motion detector. Especially, if you ever want to add alternative lighting arrangements in the future like lamps, LEDs or even just want to be in the dark for whatever reason. You could get around this by setting the smart switch to disable and enable the motion sensor. That way you can just always leave the motion sensor enabled unless you don't want the lights to be on when your in the room.
EDIT: Of course you can always temporarily disable the motion detector or smart switch in the home assistant dashboard but this would be kind of inconvenient.
I would make a wrap-around setup the way the one guy from Hardware Unboxed did when he converted his garage into his new studio. That way you have a wrap-around desktop where you sit in the center with th cameras, lights, mics(if you aren't doing overhead) on the desktop in front of you, and a desktop behind you for a background, and computers and accessories on the side desktop. Plus you can have shelving and drawers underneath, and plenty of room for cabling that will be all hidden under the desktop. You chair would be in the center and depending on how big you make it, everything is just a short slide of the chair away from you. You could leave one side open, or partially open depending on size, to get in and out, or you could have a flip-up section of the desktop that you lift to get in and out, and it folds or locks when its up - kinds like how you see some bar top in bars.. this way you don't lose any surface area when you bring it back down.
You can have multiple camera angles on the desktop, plus an overhead camera(s) looking down on the desktop area(s) depending on what you want to do.
- - And judging by the size of the studio area you have, there is PLENTY of space to even make a second area for maybe a second show, like a new series where people come in and you interviews them or what have you, and make it a cozy little area with a couch or two chairs... anything you want.... You don't have to use the whole studio area for one big room as you recording area.... Personally I WOULD make this wrap-around desk and have that in the center of one half of the room (one side up against the wall and the two sides just a bit over two arm-widths.. from one finger tip to the other, on the inside for me to move my chair around and the width of the desktop about 1 meter wide. This way there is still room on each side of the desk and the wall) and the other half of the room would be two areas, one for that secondary recording area for the future, but still putting a couch or some comfy chairs to take a break in... (NOT just an office environment.. you HAVE TO MAKE IT COZY SOMEWHERE lol) with the other quarter of the studio for storage and recording stuff, computer stuff.. things you'll want easy access to....
- Oh and when I said that you need to have a cozy area, I didn't mean the very front room... that's not supposed to be super comfy.. that's reception LOL ... I meant a comfy area in the studio... but in the front room you make it semi-comfy... you don't want the Fed-Ex guy falling asleep in your reception area while you sign for a package do you? LOL .. And by comfy I'm also talking about lighting, a TV, some game systems hooked up... to make it feel like a home away from home... not just a nerd cave.. that's what the wrap around desk is for... OH YEA, you NEED to have a half decent Fridge microwave and toaster oven... you CANNOT overlook the importance of being able to make your own food while in the studio, you can't spend all your money on takeout and delivery LOL
Videos like this get stuff supported in Home Assistant. I LOVE Home Assistant
Your "additive" requirement for home automation devices is absolutely essential; everything _must_ fall back to operating like normal household devices, and any automation must live on top of that for convenience reasons.
I mostly use Tasmota devices instead of Zigbee and those have one additional trick, which is that you can group the devices together in such a way that you can get things like multi-way switching for simple automation via configuring rules directly on the devices. They communicate peer-to-peer to accomplish this, which means these rules still work even if your Home Assistant instance is down or inaccessible for whatever reason (requiring only wifi to be operational). Of course, the devices themselves still work as perfectly normal switches/dimmers if absolutely everything is down.
This is a big problem for me with my TP-Link and Amazon smart plugs. If the internet goes out, I have to crawl under things to hit the tiny switch on the side of the plug. At least the TP-Link smart bulbs will turn on to their last setting if you turn the power off and back on quickly.
I am always able to watch your videos, no matter how I feel
You always cheer me up
Keep up your work jeff!
Philips Hue should be Zigbee as well and you should be able to factory reset them and remove them from your hub and then connect them directly to HA. I have 3 LED strips from the Gen 1 hub era that I was able to reset and add directly into HA and never looked back.
Hi Jeff, I really enjoyed this one. As far as your workspace, I recommend separate work areas. I did this when I set up my home lab. A table for soldering iron, oscilloscope and other electronic test equipment and tools. A workstation for programming/editing & SBC work. And a third for 3D printing and project assembly. I also got a 6’ shelf unit and a pile of 9 x 12 stackable parts boxes. Makes it simple to keep things organized.
I'm leaning this way, mostly so I can keep my stuff organized a little. Soldering/electronics bench, PC/server bench, and probably photography/video bench...
Honestly, the best thing I done with Home Assistant was to move away from Raspberry Pi and switch to an X86 USFF secondhand PC. HA became so much more responsive compared to RPi, I just need to switch the HDD to SSD now.
The video is well done but what you said about those with ostomys was the important part. Nobody gets that surgery unless it's life saving. Sometimes it's temporary, as in my father's case, sometimes not. He didn't hide it. he showed what it was and explained it and why he needed it. Even at the age I was then, it amazed me that it was even an option.
Maybe consider french cleats instead of pegboards. At least for tools. It is way more efficient to build custom mounts for specific tools.
Agreed! I commented the same advice before I read the comments, whoops.😆
I like how far this channel has come. Good work, keep the good content coming.
I appreciate your video. Good practical demonstration for getting device automation set up. On your construction, you might consider using french cleats on your walls (run the cleats as "stripes" around the wall parameter). You can modularize what goes on the walls and is fluid when you want to rearrange, or as needs change.
Great video, Jeff. I've already got Home Assistant and totally agree re the benefit of fully local automation - I really need to try and do more with it though, love what you've set up so far.
For my home, I set the alarm to arm automatically when I leave, because I was always forgetting. Home assistant tracking location on my phone and automation etc.
I run Home Assistant on an rp4 to control my smart bulbs. I don't care for RGB, but setting color temperature to match the time of day is actually a big quality of life improvement.
The more Smart Home and Smart Office videos I see, the more convinced I am that a Dumb Home is right for me.
Thanks for the video.
Enjoyed that video, very informative!
As for desks, could I suggest one that is height adjustable? If you’re moving around say from a studio to the office, you might find it easier and quicker to stand at a desk rather than bending over if you need to check something.
It may also be worth getting a desk/trolley/cabinet with some decent ‘trolley wheels’ attached so you can move it around if you need a temporary working surface.
I've heard this from a few people now. I think I'll try to go that route, could be nice to be able to clean better too!
You can also buy height adapters you can put on top of a stationary desk to make it adjustable. I only know about it because my work offered that to us as employees as an alternative to an actual adjustable desk (which is extremely heavy).
I just set up Home Assistant a month or so ago and I love it. FOSS just like I always wanted for my smart lights. Only problem is the learning curve is steep if you're just a layperson like me. I wanted my bedroom light to turn on at a specified time for waking up, and setting up that automation was quite a process. But once I got it working it's been fantastic. The final issue haven't figured out yet is that I can't hold down the buttons on my dimmer remote for dim/brighten. I have to press the buttons repeatedly and I can't do it too fast because the extra presses do nothing. I think the remote is polled every second or something. Not a big deal. But I am grateful to the FOSS community that it exists.
Great to see the new studio progressing!
Good to see what appear to be good all-around options to cover the gamut of smart home stuff!
I recently bought my first home and am wanting to get into automation with Home Assistant. I would love to see more videos about it. I know it’s not exactly your main focus, but I like the way you talk about it.
I’m thinking about preordering the Home Assistant Green since it seems so simple to get going.
I have tons of ideas to make fun automations, like speakers throughout the house that will follow you and keep the music playing just where you are. That seems neat.
Also thermostats, and simplisafe integration is awesome.
Good video and good luck with the rest of the office build.
I'm a fan of the Lutron Caseta switches when you would like to make an existing switch into a 3-way switch. Replace the existing switch with the Lutron Caseta switch or dimmer. Then install the remote on the wall where you want it. It will look just like a permanent switch as it is so thin you can mount a normal switch face plate over it.
you could set up a LED sign (i.e. BetaBrite) to display the time and any other notifications like the ON AIR automation, server status updates or any EAS activations in your area!
I'm renovating a house right now and honestly painting is a pain and only thing I found helps is to make a game out of it; challenge yourself to go faster, visualise a progress bar, picture what you're going to do after it's painted or anything else your mind can come up with!
Oh man this is great timing, I'm so getting on the Home Assistant train in my new house 😎
Thanks for the Ostomy advocacy!
Really appreciated this video. I have the same issue with Home Assistant that you described - where to start making dashboards. I need to find the time to sit down and really figure it out because it's not terribly intuitive for someone just getting started with HA.
I hope you'll make a separate video on setting up a physical network in the studio. Thanks for the great video!
Jeff, I fully agree with your opinion that smart automation should be 'additive' as you said, i.e. it should be on top of the basic, non-smart functionality of a product. Thanks for the quite detailed deployment video!
I've seen some talk about the Home Assistant getting voice support. It would be really cool if you could show some voice integration since that's primarily why I still use Alexa (asking the weather, the time, setting alarms or timers, etc.)
Definitely considering that. Might set up some mics in the studio space at least... we'll see.
@@JeffGeerling Voice suport has two facets - controlling the home and gettign general info. HA now supports the first. However, to your point about smart home being additive, simply moving control from a button press to a voice command isn't smart (to me). A smart home should react to what is happening. (or course there are exceptions)
Love home assistant! Agree with your point at the end about Hue. I actually got rid of their hub and just paired them with my HA zigbee network directly since they are just zigbee lights at their core. They beefed up my zigbee network too since they act as repeaters.
HA has made a huge difference in how I plan every new home project. As long as I take the WAF into account I can usually make my smart home a happy home.
I love Home Assistant + zigbee. I also use Node Red. I don't do a ton of actual automations aside from linking whatever buttons I want to whatever lamps. But one thing I really like is that I have an "away" light program that triggers automatically when no one is home so if we go on vacation or something, all of my lights indicate someone is home without any thought. It's got random variation and reacts to the sunset time as well.
Nice. Love your content Jeff!
It has always bugged me that my Ecobee smart thermostat can't use Internet-provided temperature or an external thermometer to understand the outside temperature and allow for automatic switching between heat and cool. We're currently in that time of year where it might be warm enough to need a little cooling during the day, but it drops down low enough to need a little bit of heat at night. This means that I have to manually switch it every night if I want to maintain that set temperature. (I usually just never turn it off cooling right now.) In my mind, I can see a function with the Ecobee where it sees that it is -15F from the set temperature outside and inside is currently -2F, and given the deltas, heating is likely necessary. You could also do the exact same with cooling... with positive deltas of course.
Well done, Jeff! This is the sort of thing I've been looking for.
Great topic presented really well - home automation here we come😊
I don't have experience for studio usage, but I would definately recommend high adjustable desks. For a normal workstation it's good to have a sit and stand position, and for a workbench it's also pretty nice to have anything inbetween. For example when I build a computer and have to do cable management, it's veeeery confortable to have the desk at around 90cm and have the case at eye level while sitting before it. I always had my back hurt when leaning over the table too much.
Awesome Home Assistance Jeff!
The one good thing online home assistant things do is they integrate nicely with voice controls.
There's something nice about being able to walk in and just tell Google turn on the PS5 and living room light off, then have it turn on the TV, switch the source to the PS5, and turn the light off without me needing to do a bunch of fiddling or pressing buttons on control panels.
I've not found a local solution that can do that, they either need to tie into cloud solutions(losing the local advantage) or just aren't as good(which I fully understand, there's less computing/development behind it).
Nabu Casa's been working on voice controls this year. I intend to test that out and see how they're getting along next year.
Great video Jeff. I really like the saying of "additive" I agree with you 1000% that companies should have their standard manual way of manipulating things in case if the internet/network goes down!
For the lab area I like the long wall mounted power strips, can never get enough plugs.
As a homa assistant curious, Im glad to see such content. I would love so see more.
Jeff, excellent video on HA Yellow. I’ve seen other mentions of HA, like Nide Red, etc. & has no idea of the diff with Yellow, Red, etc. Your video is intriguing as I use SmartThings now and would like to tinker with something like HA to get my feet wet in a different automation environment. Have never really done any programming so I’ve always stayed away from HA.
Thanks for the video. I want to set up automation I'm my home outside the ADT system that came with my house. Now I know where to go.
if you put heavy duty hinges mounted to the studs and hang chains (or a non-stretch rope like amsteel) off off the studs at a higher point you can make workbenches that can be lowered or raised out of the way as needed. Furthermore if you attach a winch higher up off the wall you can have the home-assistant automatically deploy or stow the desks as needed
Jeff keep on rolling! I also have a Ostomy because of IBD. Also in Data and Computer Science
using RPI and Arduino. You are very informative about data engineering and the various device's associated with Arduino, and The Raspberry PI in it's different forms.
Great video, I hope you make another showing your one button setup with all your cameras since the setup process would probably be more difficult and It would be good to see how someone troubleshoots with custom solutions.
""it uses RADAR to detect humans" - that's the most honest, yet funny, explanation of the human presence detector LOL
Best way to un-stick the Aqara motion sensors is with a wide flat knife. PS: it leaves a mess... I lately put them up with the transparent 2 sided gorilla tape. That one is easy to take off and clean up.
those command strips work great too!
As someone that works with propietary building automation systems for lights and HVAC it is amazing to see how far an open source and community project like Home Assistant has gotten. Preventing vendor lockout and loss of local functionality when the system fails should be a priority when building or setting up a system like this. Something like being able to turn on and off the lights locally, using a local timer or the thermostat is often overlooked and ignored.
I initially started out with Samsung SmartThings hub for Z-Wave. About six months later they got out of that business. No future. That is why it is bad to rely on any one vendor AND the "cloud."
Best thing about Home Assistant (for me) so far has been that I can pair my Philips hue bulbs directly with the Zigbee radio. Bye bye Hue app/account, hello local, private control over a device in my own house.
Amen Brother on the non-cloud/account requirements. I'm using a Home assistant as well.
Loving to see you going into HA...
Nice video! I got into home assistant a while ago to control plugs in my house! Installed it as a vm on my existing unraid server and haven't looked back! I use zigbee and tasmota WiFi devices and it's fab! I rent so can't change light switches and stuff but many 4 way sockets in my house are smart now, with temperature sensors fitted to each sonoff basic. Who knows where it could end. The precense sensor looks good, I want to turn a night light on for my kids when they get out of bed and know the pir ones aren't what I want. Something to look into!
I am so happy to see just how successful you have become on this platform, I can't think of anyone who deserves it as much as you, you're a genuinely amazing person. Thank you for bringing attention to the fact that you can live a normal and successful life with an ostomy, I had an aunt who had to have one, unfortunately she was always so self conscious about that fact, she passed before she could really come to terms with that fact. I truly appreciate you sharing your story in your videos and I hope that it helps others in a similar situation realize that it's not the end of the world and people aren't thinking about it as much as they think. I commend your strength through everything and the positivity that you continue to bring to the world, I'm not sure I could do the same in your position.
I have a friend who has like 200 Home Assistant devices. It took me two years to get my first Home assistant device but now I'm going to buy a few of those Leviton Switches. I have the same issue with Home automation. If my Wife has to call me to help her turn on the lights when the internet is down that's a failure.
Haha so true. One of the things I tried out last year would be buggy sometimes, and did not pass the wife test-if she can't get it to work without asking me for help, it's a dumb device. So only truly smart devices get a pass at my house :D
It's funny, this is why I installed Insteon instead. No networking required, no app or controller, you just link devices to each other with buttons directly. It lets you create program groups without any external programming or hubs because they talk to each other over the power lines as well as wirelessly.
WAKE UP BABE, JEFF JUST POSTED!
I've been using HA for 3 years, just migrated to Home Assistant Green. Big improvement over my old RPi 3. My Hue lights are paired direct to a Zigbee stick, I've never touched a Hue hub in my life. 👍
I had very a very similar experience not being able to exclude my Trane thermostats from my old Z-Wave setup to get it going with HA. I also ended up factory resetting it.
Great video Jeff! Like to see more of the HomeAssistant intergrations
Very cool demo.
Agree on the smart devices. Learned a lot in the video. thanks.
I have been asking for this. And Jeff has delivered a feast :D Would be nice to see how the AirGradient kit you mentioned in another video could be used in the office. Could it control the HVAC in any way when CO2 is high? How to ace indoor CO2/Humidity and Temperature during winter?
These are things I plan on testing out in the future, stay tuned!
One thing an old boss of mine always did in his offices which he did before any home automations stuff was run all the lights back to a single switch so in the way out you can just click the switch and all the lights would turn off. Now with home assistant this would be easy but I would still use a switch as this is what people are expecting. Also you could save the state of all your switches before you turn them off and then in the morning you press the button and you can set all your light back to how they were the night before.
Nice to see the new space getting cool tech. If you are going for 3 work stations how about looking at sit to stand desks. Gives you the best of both worlds.
Great cause, didn't have to think about it twice. Preach it brother!
Thank you!
Now that you already have Home Assistant set up, you could give Frigate a try for video surveillance. Generally speaking it has pretty tight integration with HA but im not sure how it'll perform on the Yellow. Would be pretty interesting to see as I only run it on my "big" server and it uses almost no recourses.
I have several Aqara motion detectors too but thinking of switching to a ceiling mounted motion detectors like Sonoff SNZB-03. I am less than thrilled about Aqara mounting. Especially when it comes time to change the battery. You can stick a SNZB-03 to the ceiling near each door with blue tack and create a motion group for the area. Just need to be sure it detects when you walk into the room and not just near the door.