Smart Home Hubs & Tech (Home Assistant, Homebridge etc.)

Ok so we’ve got a bunch of different Home Assistant-related topics dotted about the Community (I’ll link them below because some of them are really useful) but no actual Home Assistant topic. Given quite a few of us use it and sink so much time (and money) into it, I’m starting one here for more general discussion.

Some existing topics where Home Assistant has come up:

So to start the discussion, personally I’ve been running Home Assistant at home for a little while now. One of the things I’ve wanted to do was bring our old light switches back into use. I really like the idea of having some more quirky and interesting light switches around the house, but out the box they aren’t compatible with smart light bulbs since flipping the light switch kills the power and makes the bulb unreachable.

I bought a few Sonoff MINIR4Ms with the hope of fixing that so I can later change the switches. Here’s what they look like, nice and small to fit in the existing switch back box.

Wired them all up, hooked them up via Matter and got them to show up in Home Assistant.

So these have a mode where the flipping of the physical light switch sends a signal/can trigger an event, but does not change the state of the relay.

What this means is you can keep power to the bulb 100% of the time and have the switch trigger an automation in Home Assistent to turn on or off the light.

Unfortunately as with all things Home Assistant it wasn’t that straightforward. Out the box you can only see the relay state, not the physical switch events in Home Assistant. After some digging I managed to find a community integration that shows the light switch events in Home Assistant. This works ok but runs over the web and not locally - I now have automations to trigger the light after the switch is flipped, but they’re not instant. I find from switching the light to the action happening can be anywhere between 0.5 and 2s. I’m hopeful Sonoff will eventually expose the switch event over Matter, but for now this is ok.

Next up and now I’ve proved it works, I’ve got a few more complex lighting circuits to tackle. I’d also like to bring control over our bathroom extractor fans into Home Assistant to work in tandem with our radiator thermostat humidity sensors.

I’ve also bought a Sonoff Zigbee dongle so that I can start to retire my old Ikea hub. Getting that set up is today’s job.

Anyway, enough about me, is anyone here working on anything exciting?

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Good topic.

Sadly, I’ve no experience with Home Assistant but I do use Homebridge and Scrypted for integrating various IOT with HomeKit.

Currently running within a Proxmox container on a Minix Z100 fanless mini PC.

It works flawlessly.

Might spin up an instance later to give Home Assistant a try. It seems to be popular.

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Yup, same here.

#TeamHomebridge

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Homebridge is brilliant. The reason I use Scrypted alongside is for cameras. It’s the closest to native HomeKit Secure Video you can get. The UniFi Protect plugin is rock solid.

Homebridge does also have a plugin but I found it less stable and slower to display the feeds than Scrypted.

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So I’m running on a Pi4 at the moment, but I’m very conscious that if I keep adding devices and integrations at the rate I am, I’m going to need something more substantial. That’s a problem for later though.

Maybe give it a few days to see if there is much engagement on Home Assistant specifically. But I wonder if it might be better to have a broader smart home topic.

On Home Assistant, I’ve been considering it. At the moment I don’t really have enough smart home gadgets to warrant bothering with a centralised hub/dashboard; only really have light bulbs and plugs from a single manufacturer so am just using their app. But am looking to add some smart outdoor lighting soon which will probably be from a different manufacturer so at that point a centralised hub/dashboard may be warranted. But I’ve also been wondering if there is some other options worth considering that are simpler than home assistant. We are a mixed OS household so can’t be anything Apple-specific. Have been thinking about Echo Hub.

What’s the benefit of this over something like this Tapo S210, which seems to me a simpler option for making a dumb switch smart? Is it so that you can continue to use smart bulbs?

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I did look at home bridge but I found it too basic for me and I am a natural programmer so HA was much more capable but its fine for a simpler setup and less hassle. HA has had its moments especially since they are slaved to the monthly releases, always wait for a .1 or .2 at least as a rule.

I have got my HA coded to control the UPS (with notifications and shutdown of devices), car charging, dishwasher, washing machine, electric blankets, lights, dehumidifier, TV’s, PC (on/off), cameras (Scrypted), heating, hot water, garage door and probably a few other things like monitoring the net. I even have it pulling Heating Oil prices and monitoring tank level using a usb SDR (software defined radio). Its all interfaced into Homekit (or the bits I want) as well.

The dishwasher is linked to Agile and when you hit the button on HA it automatically sets the cheapest 2 hour period to run and queues up the job and even has a nice count down timer.

The washing machine can be set to run at X time, LG’s own app does have delay start but its very limited so HA does it far better and just sends the start job at the correct time.

All of the cost and runtime of the washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer (not smart) are tracked and once a job completes it sends a push to my and the other halfs phones with the cost for the run as well as how much it would have been on the variable tarrif by comparison.

I use a lot of Hue and a few Wiz bulbs (not great tbh) as a lot of the lights here dont have neutral in the switch as it was before that became standard but the newer kitchen that was fitted by the previous people did have a neutral which I used a Sonoff to control the side lights ring and the second switch is bypassed and triggering it on the sonoff sends the on/off to the wiz bulbs (if the motion sensors dont pick you up) and turns off the lights after X minutes. Hell at night the kitchen lights come on a little dimmer than normal to prevent them being OTT.

There is probably a lot more I have done but its been a project over a while now just adding bits in and cleaning up the interface to make it easy for the other half to work and look slick (still a big work in progress)

I have used a mix of different kit but I do like Tasmota plugs to monitor power usage and control dumb things.

Right now I am adding tracking in for the cleaning cycles for the dishwasher and washing machine, the washing machine has it shown in the LG app but the dishwasher doesnt (Bosch)

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Possibly. It depends on the type of devices. Your Pi4 will be able to handle hundreds of simple devices. Performance usually becomes a problem when you start dealing with media (cameras etc). Especially if any transcoding between video codecs needs to happen.

In my case, I have well over 100 devices (Hue, Tado, Eve, Nuki, UniFi, ThinQ etc) and my Minix Mini PC still has single figure CPU usage.

If you did fancy an upgrade, there are some reasonably priced Mini PCs out there from the likes of MinisForum or BeeLink.

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That’s not a bad shout actually. It’s likely to be where the discussion goes anyway. We can rename this one.

So both will allow you to use a smart bulb in tandem with the switch. Being able to ask Siri to set the light to 50% brightness regardless of the state of the physical switch for example is key. The only drawback of the Tapo one is the fact that you have to like the look of their switch.

I’ve been lusting over eventually buying something like this and you’d need the relay for that to work: https://www.dowsingandreynolds.com/shop/toggle-switch-black-single/

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Just make sure you have the Google Drive plugin backing up your config each night, memory cards will fail and I have also had an SSD fail on my Pi4.
Also make sure you know what will happen if it fails and have workarounds.

My HA uses MariaDB.

I have a lot of things and am looking to possibly go Proxmox on a more powerful box to do a few other bits. I wouldnt bother with the Pi5 given its cost.

If anyone has another half and wants to simply things for them try the Browser Config plugin. Her account doesnt get full HA access and it automatically gives her the proper dashboard and removes the header (I dont use it) to give a clean easy to use interface.

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This is what my default home assistant dashboard is looking like at the moment.

In terms of current automations;

  • home battery exports any left over energy at the end of the day (down to min 20%)
  • all nights turn off and roombas start if the house is empty in the day
  • hallway and garage lights come on when exterior doors are opened
  • landing lights comes on slightly if there is motion at night
  • notifications if front door or garage doors are left open
  • notifications when dishwasher, washing machine or dryer cycles end (just using smart plugs)
  • I log loads of energy related stats to a Google sheet on the 29th and 59th minutes of every hour (I’m a data hoarder)
  • the kitchen under counter lighting is on dim by default but brightens when there is motion detected

Sort of related, I have two UPS units. One for my PC and one for my router plus raspberry pi running home assistant. My home battery doesn’t offer full home backup; so these two units keep the vital stuff from dying during brief blackouts.

In terms of devices/integrations in home assistant;

  • hue and Wiz for lighting
  • various hue buttons, dials and switches
  • hue indoor motion sensors for motion and temperature
  • myenergi for car charger, solar and home battery
  • kasa mini smart plugs
  • octopus API for energy usage and rates (plus octopus mini)
  • roomba for robot vacuum
  • nest for thermostat
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Any reason behind using the Hue bridge? And not say a Zigbee stick with Zigbee2MQTT?

Could you still use the Hue app, if you did that?

I’ve reached the limits of my Hue hub, it’s now crawling along and I sometimes have to press a switch twice for it to do anything. I think I’m at 52 devices at present (Hue bulbs and dimmers).

Hue keep promising a firmware/app update to allow true multi-hub support (without having to switch accounts) but it has yet to materialise.

If there is another solution, I’d be interested.

Is the notification triggered by simply looking for when power consumption through the plug drops to zero? Or is there more to it than that?

If you use the Zigbee2MQTT it gets rid of the Hue hub all together. You pair the items to the Zigbee Stick (https://www.amazon.co.uk/SONOFF-Universal-Gateway-Antenna-Assistant/dp/B09KXTCMSC) and then simply use MQTT on home assistant.

All the stuff I do tends to use MQTT (EMQX) as its just rapid!

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Yep. After a bit of trial and error, I found that ‘when power drops below 10 watts for 1 minute’ seems to work well, like this:

Mostly just legacy of having slowly grown my smart home devices gradually over time. Plus it lets my partner continue to use the hue app if necessary.

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This is how I’ve done it, with a simple helper and automation

alias: "Set Washing Machine Status To Running"
description: ""
mode: single
triggers:
  - entity_id: sensor.washing_machine_current_consumption
    above: "1"
    for: "00:01:00"
    trigger: numeric_state
conditions:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_select.washing_machine_current_status
    state: "Off"
actions:
  - data:
      message: 🟢 Washing Machine Cycle Has Started
    action: notify.all_devices
  - data:
      option: Running
    target:
      entity_id: input_select.washing_machine_current_status
    action: input_select.select_option

then when its done

alias: 'Set Washing Machine Status To Done'
description: ''
trigger:
  - platform: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.washing_machine_current_consumption
    for: '00:01:00'
    below: '0.1'
condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: input_select.washing_machine_current_status
    state: Running
action:
  - service: notify.all_devices
    data:
      message: 🏁 Washing Machine Cycle Is Done
  - service: input_select.select_option
    data:
      option: Finished
    target:
      entity_id: input_select.washing_machine_current_status
  - service: light.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: light.kitchen_border_light_strip
    data:
      color_name: green
      transition: 5
mode: single
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Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while is put a small indicator light on the interior side of some of my doors and windows to indicate current armed/disarmed state of my alarm system. Idea being to make it less likely for anyone to inadvertently open the door/window first thing in the morning before disarming the system.

I’m assuming I could get home assistant to read the state of my Ring alarm system, but I’m not sure what I could use for small, cheap battery powered indicator lights. Obviously don’t need full led strips as I would only really need a single led on each door/window. Anyone have any suggestions?

Yeah use Ring2MQTT

This is what a contact sensor reports back

Then this is the alarm control

This is the addon

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Thanks, I assumed it would be possible to get HA to read the state of the alarm. But what I’m not sure about is what I could use as a small indicator to stick on doors/windows to indicate state of the alarm. I’m hoping to be able to find a small battery powered single-led device with all electronics housed in a small case no bigger than a small matchbox. But I can’t find anything like this. I can only find smart led strips with relatively bulky controllers.

I guess I could go for a full DIY job with small ESP32 microcontrollers connected to an LED and battery but would like to avoid if possible.