What are Reddit's favorite Home Automation Apps?
Home-Assistant.io
openHAB
Home
Nest Mobile
Google Home
HomeGenie
SmartThings
Jeedom
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Home Automation Apps:
Actually Google Cast is still the name of protocol, but instead of calling partner hardware "Google Cast devices" in marketing, they'll be called "Chromecast built-in".
Google Cast = the underlying casting Protocol
Chromecast = A Google Cast device made by Google
Chromecast built-in = Any device which supports the Google Cast protocol which isn't explicitly a Chromecast
+1 for home assistant. I think it's list of supported components and massive community support speaks for itself. I hear Hass.io makes things nice and easy if you're going to be using a pi to control everything.
I think the unobtrusiveness is not just what system you choose but what components you choose. (aka, replacing in-wall switches instead of doing all smart bulbs)
This is a device I keep plugged into a USB port in my car which automates opening and closing my garage door when I leave the house and again when I return. I'm using Home Assistant to control the garage door itself, this device is used to notify Home Assistant when I want the door opened and closed.
The STLs, source SketchUp model, Arduino sketch, and Home Assistant automations can be found in my GitHub here.
To summarize what I did:
- Installed Home Assistant and added my Wemo switch.
- Wrote a C# app, using Window's SpeechRecognitionEngine, to recognize the commands "lumos" and "nox", that I keep constantly open.
- When "lumos" or "nox" is recognized, it sends an API POST request to Home Assistant to turn on/off the bedroom lamp (or rather, the switch, of which the lamp is plugged into).
I haven't personally tried it but I've heard good things about openHAB. Taken from its own website: >a vendor and technology agnostic open source automation software for your home
I live in Quebec, Canada. Some nights are pretty cold in winter (-20 C and lower), so when cold nights are forcasted I would plug the block heater of the car to ensure a better startup when the morning comes.
To save energy, most people use a timer.
I connect the block heater to a outdoor RF power outlet switch (like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Outdoor-Wireless-Remote-Control-Outlet/dp/B005N5NK7W ) , but I am not using the remote.
I built a MQTT to RF bridge using a ESP8266 arduino to control all those cheap RF indoor and outdoor power outlets that I installed around the house from my Home-Assistant ( https://home-assistant.io/ ) dashboard.
Now, when I park the car when I come back from work, I just plug the block heater. On weekdays, at 4:30 AM, an automation kicks in and if it is colder than -12 C, the heater turns on so the oil is ready when I leave for work at 7:30!
Car always starts flawlessly, I am not wasting energy and I don't have to check the weather!
If you're willing to do some tinkering, this is a perfect way to get started Envisalink EVL-4EZR
Then once you connect this to the security system box, setup HASS and it supports Envisalink, allowing you to set up automations and read your existing security system data
Entrepreneurship. I started my own woodworking business (selling decorative mounting brackets for the Nest Thermostat) at age 30. The amount of energy required to bootstrap a small business is exhausting. Makes me miss the days when I was able to stay up all night and wake up refreshed in the morning.
Also, being a business owner is all about making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. I wish I would have started making those mistakes much earlier in life so I could have had those skilled honed by now.
For the young guys around here that are interested in being your own boss, check out the great people over at /r/entrepreneur.
One of the reasons I am a big fan of Home Assistant is because of their philosophy on automation.
https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-automation/
https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/08/16/we-have-apps-now/
> One of the most important points made is that being able to control your lights from your phone, 9 times out of 10 is harder than using a lightswitch - where Home Automation really comes into its own is when you start removing the need to use a phone or the switch - the “Automation” in Home Automation.
It has a very robust system for triggers, rules, etc. For example, it has built in components for knowing sunrise, sunset and weather conditions, which can easily be used as conditions in automation rules.
lol well I did sort of automate listening.
If I am working in my home office Home Assistant will turn my stereo on and start streaming whatever music has been newly added. Using the Logitech Media Server component to manage the music playback https://home-assistant.io/
Do what i did.
Check everyone else's github pages ( https://home-assistant.io/cookbook/ ) and copy and paste from there. Trying to figure anything out on your own is going to slowly drive you insane.
Home Assistant, automate all the things! Can't live without mine now.
It's not super-hard to get started, I found it much easier than the competing options, but there is a little learning curve.
They've components for everything from vaccums to light switches, kodi, mpd, etc. and almost any gadget you can connect to a Pi.
You could load Ubuntu on it and follow the virtual env install, or you can also just install it on Windows as it’s Python based. There will be limitations in some of the components though, as there are some that are built around Linux utilities (unless the Bash on Windows thing would let you load them and integrate?).
https://home-assistant.io/docs/installation/
There is a list of different platforms (Windows included) you can install on with directions :-)
If you want a free product have you looked into Home Assistant or OpenHab? Those seem to be the most popular options with the most community support.
It's a home automation controller, it can combine pretty much everything you can communicate with, be it WiFi, Bluetooth, RF, IR, Z-Wave, ZigBee, IFTTT. Control your home lights, climate, media, you name it. Have it all talk to each other. If you're interested, start with something like Sonoff S20 and Basic modules, control them with MQTT. See Bruh Automation guides on YouTube, he has some very good videos on there. For more advanced control, you can control Z-Wave devices with a small Z-Wave USB stick or a Z-Wave top hat. Z-Wave is more expensive, but very good. Fibaro makes quality components, but a long variety of other companies also makes many good Z-Wave components.
It's a really cool device, but I'm not sure it's worth it given how much they're possibly sending back.
I think after I move out of this apartment I'll replace my Echo with Mycroft + Home Assistant.
It wasn't easy!
So for my home automation stuff i'm using a platform called Home Assistant running on a Raspberry PI using a z-wave USB stick for most of it.
So I used IFTTT to trigger a group in that platform to turn on or off and it takes care of the rest.
In Home Assistant (AKA HASS) i'm using a feature where you can code a switch as a series of command-line commands to run the music and tv. It calls out to a command-line javascript program called castnow which lets me cast local (or youtube) media to the TV or the google home itself as audio-only.
Then from there it was just a matter of hooking the youtube video stream up to castnow to send it to the TV, and doing something similar for the music.
But for the music I wanted a bit of variation, so I bought an album that my wife likes (Andy Williams Christmas Album), ripped it to MP3s, and put them in a folder on the pi. Then I wrote a VERY shitty bash one-liner to shuffle their order and play them randomly as a playlist to the google home.
Using the linux program screen I can have the "command line switch" in HASS play the video in a screen, then kill it when I want it to switch off.
Here's the config for the andy williams switch:
shuffle_andy_williams_christmas: command_on: > screen -S christmasmusic -d -m -L bash -c "/root/.nvm/versions/node/v7.2.0/bin/node /root/castnow/index.js $(ls -d -1 /root/videos/andy_williams_christmas/** | shuf | sed 's/\s/\&/g' | tr '\n' ' ') --address 192.168.1.152 --localfile-port 5100 --quiet"
command_off: 'screen -S christmasmusic -p 0 -X stuff "sq"' command_state: 'screen -ls | grep "christmasmusic" | wc -l' value_template: '{{ value == "1" }}'
A truly smart home, fortunately that's something I'm working on.
Check out https://home-assistant.io/ if you're interested in the project. It's open source, works on TONS of devices, and fairly easy to develop for.
Get a raspberry pi 3 and check out /r/homeassistant :)
Or if you want an easier process (but not as robust) get a samsung smart things hub.
Either one you can set schedules, have presence detection, etc. Home-Assistant allows you to do some crazy things that smart things does not though. Want to turn a light red when a certain river overflows its banks? You can do that in home assistant. Want your google home to tell you that the international space station is above your house? Home assistant can do that. Want to have certain lights come on at sunset(which changes everyday, of course)? Home assistant can do that. Want to dim your lights when you start playing a video on your chromecast? You know where this is going.
Home Assistant has a great community of developers. And it is open source. Currently, it can plug into 906 different 3rd party components. It is definitely the most robust tool out there.
Thanks for helping it clarify. I guess we should have done a better job at explaining this in the podcast and blog post. Could have avoided a lot of angry posts.
I called it cloud and not bridge because I hope we can make it do other things too (see second question in FAQ)
I use Home Assistant for presence detection and then HASS can open the door for me. If you're going down the home automation route you may want to think of the bigger picture now instead of going in on a bunch of different ecosystems and hubs that don't talk.
All of my IOT devices, from the nest to the hue bulbs and such, sit on their own vlan with no routable gateway. No internet access at all.
For control, I use https://home-assistant.io/ . Self hosted on a LXC container, only accessible through the NGINX proxy . It's been simply fantastic, easy enough the wife can use it.
I'm not sure about the Zero, but home assistant is pretty popular.
I haven't followed them closely, but I knot Google Home integration is a high priority for them.
Posters name looks Dutch. As part of a push for smart meters, most Dutch Smart Meters have a serial port on them called the "P1 port". Protocol is called DSMR. Home Assistant has support for these: https://home-assistant.io/components/sensor.dsmr/
A common Dutch meter is Landis+Gyr ZCF110CCtFs2 (some model name...), but there are a few different suppliers. Mine also has a link to it's gas cousin so I can see gas consumption. My Home Assistant heads-up looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/n8upk . These meters also track energy production, but I don't have solar panels/
You don't need anything other than your google home and your home assistant installation. If you want to use Googles native smart home capability you can use the Google Assistant component. This allows you to control anything, it will display as a light, switch, or scene in the google assistant settings.
If you want any other commands like "turn up the tv volume" you can use IFTTT with Google Assistant as trigger and a webhook to Home Assistant as action.
You can do that already actually via the Chromecast API. I'm using the Home-Assistant tts component to send audio to my Google Home whenever the front door opens or closes.
https://home-assistant.io/components/tts.google/ https://github.com/balloob/pychromecast
> mac: BT_B0:5C:E5:CE:B5:10
That's a bluetooth device. Per the Bluetooth Tracker docs: > Devices discovered are stored with ‘bt_’ as the prefix for device mac addresses in known_devices.yaml.
That's why it doesn't show up on your router. I don't use Bluetooth Tracker myself, but it seems like it's just auto-discovering a nearby phone that's discoverable.
https://home-assistant.io/components/http/
Make sure you enable x_forwarder in the http section. use_x_forwarded_for: True
In your nginx config, make sure you have proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
Yeap, it took keeping data on Ireland's children until they were 30 before most people noticed, or cared.
http://www.thejournal.ie/data-retention-pupils-data-1871456-Jan2015/
I don't understand why people don't realise that one data-grab is enough to jeopardise a person's privacy forever.
Nevermind the whingers complaining about not getting job interviews, after they've pasted their personal shite on Facebook & Twitter for the whole world's HR departments to see.
What do people think HR departments use to screen potential candidates - check their horoscopes?
One moron I know claims he doesn't care about privacy because, you've guessed it, he has "nothing to hide".
Apart from his drug dealing conviction which is still searchable, and easily falls under the 'right to be forgotten'. I got bored enough listening to him, I didn't bother telling him.
Sometimes I think they only way Irish society will cop on is if everyone's private details are uploaded to billboards.
Don't get me started on android app permissions, and off-the-shelf home automation solutions. Let people who don't care about privacy laws have those. They deserve to have their every domestic move monitored in their real names.
Give everyone else: https://home-assistant.io/
https://home-assistant.io/ will allow you to do this through your google home.
You can even trigger it using IFTTT allowing you to use one google home to talk to another, unfortunately I am not sure it allows open channel communication I think it will just say what you tell it to say.
Hass.io is NOT Hassbian and if you're seeing mention of it when you SSH in, then you haven't written the Hassbian image to the SD card. Follow the instructions here and I promise it will work: https://home-assistant.io/docs/installation/hassbian/installation/
Yes - all you have to do is go to https://www.openhab.org/download/ and follow the directions for Linux/apt. You'll need to install java (OpenHAB recommends Zulu) to install it, but there are directions for that as well.
One option is Openhab a z-wave motion detector and rules. Regardless though, from my experience, IFTTT is way too slow for something like that, like upwards of 15 minutes to fire.
This post explains the change. Short version is that IDs are slightly easier to read now, and you can now change IDs manually in the ZWave configuration to work around conflicts.
The way I do this is with Tasker and Sleep as Android. After I get my bedtime notification, when I plug my phone in after laying down to sleep, Tasker sends out a REST API event to HASS which is tied to an sleep/shutdown automation.
There are instructions for installing home assistant in a virtualenv. The point of hass.io is using images for specific boards or environments. Here is instructions on installing in a virtualenv: https://home-assistant.io/docs/installation/virtualenv/
Install Home Assistant in a VM and start down the path of home automation. Get some z-wave lights, switches, and motion sensors and start living the Star Trek life.
And since you're running a seedbox, how about Plex, PlexPy, Sonarr, Radarr (or CouchPotato), Mylar, NZB Hydra, and SABnzbd?
Erm...do we really need a spammy 3 minute video on this? It's like stupid-simple. In-fact, you can follow the official instructions here in like 30 seconds: https://home-assistant.io/docs/installation/raspberry-pi-all-in-one/#upgrading
Yes! I have something very similar setup using HTML5 push notifications - this will work on any phone or computer you may have, OS-independent. Check the Actions section here. If you want more details, I'll be glad to help.
Using Home Assistant. https://home-assistant.io/ /r/homeassistant
It basically lets all your things talk/trigger/interact with all your things. A list of those things: https://home-assistant.io/components/
As far as google chromecasts go, the default install right after setup will discover your devices (as well as a few other media player devices like Roku, etc). You can then easily send text to them which google will speak on the fly. In addition, I set up automated notifications (when people are home, not home, time of day, doors opening) which get sent to chromecast audios and the GH's for whole house announcements.
Home Assistant itself can run from simple to challenging...it depends on what you intend to do with it.
Get into some home automation - my thermostat is based on if people are on the wifi or not, it even adjusts for some of our friends who are picky about the temperature. I never touch the settings anymore. No one home? Away mode. Someone home? Home mode. Jimbo here? Reduce AC setting. George here? Set fan mode to on.
https://home-assistant.io works with most smart thermostats and easy to use. Fair warning: automation can be addictive!
It has very basic voice control using https://home-assistant.io/components/conversation/ which support "turn ... on" or lets you set custom phrases to run certain scripts.
But you can also integrate with Alexa/Google Home which have better natural language support. The built in conversation support is not very forgiving.
Nortek/Linear/GoControl HUSBZB-1. Uses a single USB port; does both zigbee and z-wave. I got mine for $35 including shipping. Works with Home Assistant.
You can change your trigger to fire on any state change - don't specify the 'to:'
Then you can use templating to check what the 'to:' actually is, and fire the respective action for each state.
https://home-assistant.io/docs/automation/templating/
https://home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/templating/
This should start you off since you asked to be pointed in the right direction rather than given the answer - but if you need more info just let me know :)
I'd suggest using the Ping device tracker and set up an automation script to trigger the smart switch off-wait-on sequence when the presence detection switches to 'Not Home' for the computer you're pinging.
All device trackers can optionally take configuration parameters that you can use to customize how often you're probing for connectivity, which can help identify a misbehaving router quickly, instead of waiting for a speedtest or other component that runs once an hour or whatever.
Try setting the delay for the nodes with the problem, like this:
zwave: customize: light.entity_2_0: delay: 5
Smartthings is a simple plug and play Hub that can get most done very easily and is a good intro to this world. That is why the Internet loves it. However it is reliant on the cloud and it is one of the main reasons this sub hates it.
If you are planning on making any lights turn on when a switch is turned on that are not on the same power circuit the cloud is a bad thing. Give this blog post a read https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-automation/ He makes alot of good points the main one being your automation should not get in the way. With that said when you first get started there will be times where it will and that's OK as long as you can recognize it.
I personally started with smartthings about 2 years ago and have been migrating to Home Assistant the last few weeks and have fallen in love with this system. Smartthings was a nice welcome kit. One thing I will say is avoid the smartthings sensors, they are zigbee and as such you may not be able to use them on your next environment. Zwave tends to be the common denominator stick to it for your own sanity. I have 4 smartthings door sensors I will most likely use for a very long time via the Home Assistant smartthings Bridge.
Insteon for reliability and latency (it is fast due to each node being a repeater for every other node), Zwave for diversity and cost. The Insteon stuff is a bit pricier due to only 1 company making it all and patenting the snot out of everything.
Home Assistant is great stuff in my opinion and really cares about openness and not tying you to a cloud service ie:
https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/04/05/your-hub-should-be-local-and-open/
I'm a bit biased as a contributor :)
I have several LED strips (both regular 3-channel and individually addressable WS2812b), a few temperature sensors, and a couple outlet relays to control lights (433MHz from RPi).
At first, like you, I developed my own small webapp to control all of these devices, but it really takes a lot of time and it was far from perfect. I would highly recommend checking out https://home-assistant.io/ . Hundreds of developers have worked on this platform and it works with any sensor / IOT device (with MQTT, you just have to set it up yourself).
My favorite part is the integration with wireless routers to determine if your phone is connected. This way it will know if you are home and you can automate all of the lights to go off when you leave, for example, or certain lights to turn on if you arrive home between certain hours.
Home Assistant had a component which will use OpenCV to read the value from a 7 segment display via webcam. Raspberry pi and a camera should do it.
Home Assistant's z-wave integration is finally quite good. You will need a z-wave dongle (z-stick for instance). I'm actually moving from my Vera back to Home Assistant for z-wave.
As for other protocols, not sure what you are after.
>Which systems do you use in your home with HomeAssistant?
Door/window sensors
Energy monitors
Switches
Lights
Garage door
Amp
Leak sensors
HVAC
Most of that is z-wave, other than the garage door and amp.
I also have integrations with my wifi (disable the kids SSID), weather station, cameras, etc.
>What are there any good examples of systems I can copy?
See here: https://home-assistant.io/cookbook/
Gotcha. That really depends on how in depth you want to go and what you want to automate. Home Assistant is compatible with <em>a lot</em> of things. I've probably spent over $500 on Hue lights, WeMo smart plugs, TP-link smart plugs, and Harmony Hub. Most of that was the Hue lights. HA also integrates with Octoprint, Plex, and Google Calendar. I'm currently working on getting it to work with my Xbox One.
I'd say it was worth it just to autodim my lights when Plex started playing a movie and bring them back up when I paused or stopped.
> https://home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker/
I wrote it to run standalone. I'm just starting with Home-Assistant and didn't realize it had something similar already. Thanks for the info. I'll check it out and see how my implementation differs.
https://home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker/
This is what you're looking for. Don't need to sign up for a third party service. This checks to see if a Mac address is appearing as connected to your router.
I suggest you to avoid wifi devices if possible and use the Z-Wave or Zigbee standards. You can use openhab with home assistant to script your devices.
You need a Z-wave usb key plugged into your server to control your devices.
"tell me about my day" in the morning is pretty nice. weather, travel time to work, calendar for the day, and then some news. All of that is customizable if you don't want it all. I also find it handy for asking questions about movies/tv shows/actors while watching tv.
I do have Home Assistant running along with emulated hue on a Rpi3. This lets me expose my firetv stick to the google home. So I can just say "hey google, turn on firetv". This will turn the firetv on, and through hdmi-cec, my tv as well. Pretty nifty since it takes a bit for the tv to boot up and soundbar to turn on and be ready to watch. I can also expose scripts to the GH to launch a particular app by voice and play/pause etc. i haven't set those up yet though.
I don't know why this wouldn't be doable. One thing to note though is HASS doesn't have any type of group/security structure. So anyone with access to the webui would have full access to anything.
The compatible thermostats can be found here: https://home-assistant.io/components/#climate
As you pointed out those like Next and Honeywell both connect back to their respective companies and you point HASS to them.
There are some I believe that can be tied into the wifi and controlled directly with HASS but I don't have any direct experience with these.
I'm using a z-wave one for home, but that wouldn't be idea in your case as everything would be too far apart to all talk back to a single point.
This can be easily done with Home Assistant. Just need the media player component and then write some time triggered automations for 2am to set the volume. I give you some pointers if you're interested. You'll need a computer that is always on or better yet, a Raspberry Pi.
Ein cooles Projekt für genau solche Sachen ist Home Assistant, was du dir ganz ohne Alexa oder sowas auf nem Raspberry Pi einrichten kannst und dann sehr fein anhand von vielen Umweltzuständen (z.B. der GPS-Position deines Handys, des aktuellen Wetters, Sonnenauf- und -untergangszeiten) programmieren, aber welche Hersteller unterstützt werden ist wie gesagt ziemlich willkürlich. Immerhin haben die ne Liste, was für Produkte unterstützt werden, aber musst halt das Glück haben, dass dein Produkt dabei ist.
You don't need to use mqtt. You can read the sensor state directly: https://home-assistant.io/components/sensor.dht/
Depending how you've installed HA you might need to add the homeassistant user to the gpio group to allow it to read the pins >sudo adduser homeassistant gpio
You'll actually connect your switch to the smartthings hub using their app.
Since (once properly configured) hass will communicate with the ST hub over MQTT and the ST hub will communicate with the switch, you won't actually have a zwave entry in your config at all.
Here's a fully walkthrough: https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/02/09/Smarter-Smart-Things-with-MQTT-and-Home-Assistant/
Nice! Not 5 minutes ago I was trying to cast things through HA. I failed to cast anything from Netflix but I did manage to do pictures! Under "Developer Tools" in the main HA screen click the "Services" icon (the first one).
Domain:
media_player
Service:
play_media
Service Data:
{"entity_id":"media_player.NAME_OF_YOUR_CHROMECAST", "media_content_type":"MUSIC", "media_content_id":"http://www.mememaker.net/static/images/memes/4384239.jpg"}
I realize it says type "MUSIC" but that parameter doesn't matter and is required. The only thing you need to change from the example is the entity_id. Click CALL SERVICE and voila.
As for the map image, I also happened to find this today which shows you how to get the URL of the image of the map of your location: https://home-assistant.io/cookbook/google_maps_card/
Let me know how it goes!!!
Or you can use the built-in !secret directive.
For example in configuration.yaml:
## Zones ###
zone:
- name: Home
latitude: !secret latitude_loc_home
longitude: !secret longitude_loc_home
radius: 100
icon: mdi:castle
- name: Jess School
latitude: !secret latitude_loc_ub
longitude: !secret longitude_loc_ub
radius: 100
icon: mdi:school
Then in Secrets.yaml:
latitude_loc_home: 0.0001 longitude_loc_home: 0.00001
latitude_loc_ub: 0.001 longitude_loc_ub: 0.001
The Pi is the server hosting Home Assistant, gathering temperature readings (via Zwave, GPIO, etc.), presenting the UI, and choosing when to switch the switches. I'm sure you're right that a light-weight web-server could be built right onto the ESP8266 but in my case this is just one component in a full home automation solution based on the Pi.
There's a time automation platform that you can use.
https://home-assistant.io/getting-started/automation-trigger/
Look at the Time Trigger section's code for automation 3.
I would do this:
- Organize the lights' states into 2 scenes
- Create a script that activates the first scene, waits 5 minutes, then activates the second scene
- Create an automation that activates the script every 10 minutes.
This will have the effect of toggling the scenes every 5 minutes.
Do you already have a Z-Wave controller? If so, which one?
Home Assistant supports both Z-Wave AND RESTful API.
It sounds like you may be interested in something that can handle integrating more devices and more complex automations. I suggest you look at home assistant
This would likely solve your problem, but is a DIY solution and doesn’t work with home kit (unless you use something like Home Assistant)
Home Assistant can run on anything really. Preferably in a linux environment or in docker. Most people pop it onto a Rpi since it's cheap and consumes very little power running 24/7.
hue: allow_hue_groups: false
I'm guessing you have hue setup via the discovery component, just add the above code to your configuration.yaml and it will no longer add rooms that have been setup with Hue, only the lights.
It's a piece of software you can install on the Pi that makes it into a home automation hub. It's far more powerful and flexible than most home automation hubs, though it's more complicated to set up and is more targeted towards makers and developers (though they are working to make it more friendly).
Best place to begin is probably this video and the getting started guide.
emulated_hue is practically broke at this point cause it no longer connects locally without an old version of google assistant and people have been having a lot of problems connecting with it. The good news is, is that Home-Assistant now supports Google Assistant directly with the Google Assistant component. It works better than emulated Hue and can differentiate between lights, switches and scenes etc.
Try setting up the Google Assistant component:
You should try /r/homeassistant, lots of things going on. Also, to your question, if you know basic programming, that's enough to get started. For example, it auto detects your hue lights, you need to copy and paste some existing automation recipes from https://home-assistant.io/cookbook/ and you are ready to go. Lastly, they now have an integrated install, https://home-assistant.io/hassio/, that basically allows you to do lots of things via a friendly GUI.
In case you really get into it, I suggest you do some research on z wave and then you will open your home to another level of automation.
Good luck!
Yes. https://home-assistant.io/ is the software at the core of the hub and they have a ton of plugins to control your home, the hass.io way of setting it up is a whole operating system image for the PI that uses docker containers to make installing an managing it much easier https://home-assistant.io/hassio/installation/
There's a heap of youtube videos out there that talk about setup and more advanced stuff.
Here's how I did something similar using Home Assistant: https://home-assistant.io/
Tell Google Home to play the desired playlist. (I use a shortcut for this, to "OK Google, it's sexytime")
Home Assistant detects the first song in the playlist playing on the Google Home, and then activates the scene based on that.
Does your laptop support docker? If so then there is docker images for home-assistant and OpenHAB
Instead of installing Rasbian and then installing Home Assistant, just install Hassbian: https://home-assistant.io/docs/installation/hassbian/installation/
Hassbian is just Rasbian with Home Assistant but someone has already done the work for you.
Once Hassbian is installed, there are some helper scripts installed: https://github.com/home-assistant/hassbian-scripts
For example, to install Samba and create a share for your Home Assistant configuration directory, you can run:
sudo hassbian-config install samb
If you're buying a home and looking to get set up with automation, I would suggest you look into a home automation hub. I like HomeAssistant, which is roll your own and can live on a Raspberry Pi, but SmartThings is good as well.
It's worth thinking about the thing holistically. For example, you can get smart plugs for lamps for about $25 each, or you can get wireless bulbs for your lamps that will cost you about $15 each and can dim or can be linked together to dim or light up a whole room simultaneously; spend another $20 or so and you get full RGB.
I'll skip my whole spiel because the homeassistant website sells it better, but here's what got me into using a hub.
For a lightbulb, the easiest control mechanism is almost always going to be a physical switch. Yes, you can't do it from bed, but it's a lot quicker than voice control. However, if your lightbulbs can automatically come on when it starts to get dark, or dim when you start casting something, that's when things start to get easier. If you can tell your GH 'I'm going to work' and have it turn off the lights/TV, enable away mode on your thermostat, turn on your robot vacuum, and send you a notification if five minutes later if you didn't lock your front door, that makes things start to be a lot easier.
So a few things.
- go checkout r/homeautomation/ and /r/homeassistant/
- home assistant is great / flexable and will run on a Pi 3
- for cheap modules you may want to look at Sonoff modules as they can be wired inline and be hacked with various ESP8266 firmware to do what you want.
You maybe able to accomplish all this with Homeassistant. Using automations you can start things at certain times, or when light levels or low, etc.
The whole system will run on a pi and you could use the pi light component to drive pwm drivers for the lights. https://home-assistant.io/components/light.rpi_gpio_pwm/
Also look into into using transitions to ramp up and down the light levels. I use transitions as a wake up light over a period of 10 minutes. https://home-assistant.io/components/light/
The setup process is straightforward and the TP Link switches work great.
Fresh out of the box the TP Link plug broadcasts a wifi network that you connect to and use the app to configure it to be on your home wifi. The configuration protocol has been reverse engineered and re-implemented here so you're not dependent on the app still existing.
Once it's on your wifi, the configuration for Home Assistant is really simple. You just tell it the IP of the plug and it does the rest. Home Assistant polls the plug for its status every few seconds, there are no cloud services involved. I have over-engineered the situation and have the plugs on a special IoT only wifi SSID which has no access to the internet, so it couldn't even talk to the cloud even if it wanted to.
They're not just useful for switching things on and off. Our tumble dryer is in the garage and we keep forgetting to empty it, so I put a TP-Link HS110 plug on it, which is the model with current sensing. I use that to detect when the dryer has finished running and Home Assistant sends me a push notification to take the clothes out. That was my first ever Home Assistant automation, and the learning curve was a bit steep while setting it up, but it works perfectly now that it's done.
I intend to put another HS110 on the washing machine and do the same thing - possibly even joining the two automations together so if the washer goes on but the dryer isn't used later on the same day then it sends a more nagging alert. Or if the weather forecast is sunny it could suggest that I put it on the clothes line instead of the dryer - one "advantage" of having the current sensing plug on the dryer is that I can tell exactly how much it costs to use!
Nice guide. I think there are some problems with this method though:
- The way this works is either to have a Windows PC running full time or to have a Windows VM on a server which is relatively "heavy" for a job like this. I assume that not many people would run a setup like this.
- If I understand the AddtoPad application correctly it will scrape the History of Alexa and execute commands based on that. Alexa will always tell you that she doesn't know what your command is about. I would think that this could run into problems because Alexa tries to learn to understand you better and if it runs into a failed request like this it might try to correct what it heard next time.
An alternative that I am using is Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi. They just released a Wake on Lan component. You can emulate this as a Phillips Hue device which lets Alexa trigger this with a "Turn On PC" command and give you an "OK" response.
If you have Windows running anyways this could be a good way to do this but if you start from scratch I think Home Assistant would be a better setup.
Yes. I just so happen to have written a guide just for that.
I use EventGhost to launch SteamVR at my PC.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/6d2g58/getting_eventghost_to_talk_to_home_assistant/
- EDIT *
You can also use the webserver in EventGhost with HASS - use HASS Shell commands to hit the URLs https://home-assistant.io/components/shell_command/
+1,000,000 here. Ben is the reason I got into Homeassistant, and has taught me TONS about it. A lot of people share their configs on Homeassistant too, which help with things like this here, under "Example Configuration.yaml": https://home-assistant.io/cookbook/
okok, thank you. I was confused and thought that Home Assistant was Google Assistant. I just realized that Home Assistant is something separate:
I use home assistant to do this: https://home-assistant.io
It's a pretty great home automation suite. Using a combination of the command line switch component and the emulated hue component, you can do pretty much anything.
The emulated hue component exposes your devices as Philips hue devices which Alexa integrates with very well.
If you tell me more about exactly what you want to achieve, I'd be happy to help writing a hass config file.
Home Assistant will do this automatically using the flux component
https://home-assistant.io/components/switch.flux/
You can set the temperature parameters. It makes the color transition seamless on the Hue bulbs. It will only update the lights that are on, so it's not dependent on a specific scene or routine or anything.
I don't think there is anything to figure out. It's just letting you know that it's taking over 10 seconds to setup, (an eternity for a computer), not necessarily that it has errors to fix.
I think there is the ability to exclude: but not sure what this would be. Warnings?
Your mac should not have dashes in it, it should be either colon separated or not separated at all, like the examples.
> mac: 'B4:43:0D:CC:0F:58'
You can wire a MPU-6050 and measure the vibration.
inspiration from here https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/08/03/laundry-automation-update/
my version that uses IFTTT https://gist.github.com/yene/168ca7984fef4638ae6655ef88058a02
>Like the hue bulbs that can dim when you turn on plex and shit
You're thinking of HomeAssistant. I use it and it is frankly, amazing. https://home-assistant.io/ or /r/homeassistant
The amount of stuff it works with and the things it can do are unparalleled IMO.
Sort of off topic here, but if you're storing time-series data like power usage, etc, you may want to look into a database more geared towards that. I've used InfluxDB in my day job, and it was super easy to tie into Grafana to get some pretty dashboards. It also should be less resource-intensive than MySQL.
Conditions are where you want to look.
Your automation should trigger when the device is home:
trigger: platform: state entity_id: device_tracker.your_phone state: 'home'
And there should be a condition to make sure it's dark out:
condition: condition: sun after: sunset
And then your action which will run when the device state is triggered and the condition is met:
action: service: switch.turn_on entity_id: - switch.light1 - switch.light2
I didn't test this, but you get the idea.
How about Home Automation written in Python?
It's a fantastic use for a Pi if you've already Kodi etc. sorted out.
Add a SenseHat to it and now you can have enviromental sensors in the mix, plus Bluetooth / Wifi presense detection is built-in.
All in a fairly easy set-up with loads of custom options, plus off-the-shelf component support.
It's the Internet of Things done right, with privacy for a change (adding Pi-Hole is a good idea with this).
Please read this for the official view of Hubs and open source from Home Assistant's development team:
https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/04/05/your-hub-should-be-local-and-open/
You can make Home Assistant into a hub via hardware addons, or use Home Assistant to control commands to and from your existing hubs. Getting a zwave USB stick allows HA to be a "hub" for zwave devices for instance. The key is that they want to prevent lockin
Have you looked at the customize or organisation sections on the website? https://home-assistant.io/components/group/
What you will want to do is put the devices in a group. You can mix and match as many different device types in a group as you would like, and name the group what you want as well, e.g. "living room", instead of "switches" or "lights".
I may be wrong, but the automation will trigger when the state changes to 'unknown'. In your case, it is initialized as 'unknown' and hence it is not triggering the automation. You may want to try the 'HOMEASSISTANT_START` event trigger to run the automation when HA restarts.
Hue doesn't work without its hub. Zwave and echo aren't hubs. I presume the wink hub is to speak to wink devices. Home assistant is the glue that connects them all. It's fantastic. Also check out /r/homeassistant if you're interested.
Holy shit! I love it! I will totally set this up. I don't know node but would it be too difficult to add an existing HTTP POST on every unlock call it makes to another API? I'd like to fire an event to my home automation server.
I am a big fan of using MQTT for communicating data from and to my esp8266s. It is a protocol that has been developed with low-cpu/memory in mind. It is also the protocol that offerings like Amazon IoT use as backend.
Once the data has been moved from your devices to MQTT, you can connect a wide range of other apps to it to respond to, analyze or consume the data. I use home-assistant.io (which I developed myself) to integrate the data my esp8266s gather into my home automation via MQTT (like this).
Sadly not woth an Alexa skill, you need to go through something loke Home Assistant. It isn’t for the faint of heart, and involves other hardware and some beginner to mid level coding. I have it working like that.