Show HN: Makejinja: Automatically generate complex Home Assistant configurations • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Makejinja: Automatically generate complex Home Assistant configurations

#11

Post by wkat4242 » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 12:19 AM UTC

MattDemers wrote: post #3

Happy to see this, mostly because HomeAssistant stuff is nowhere near consumer-ready. I barely have the Docker knowledge to get it working in the first place on my NAS, and even just doing basic automations assumes you know much more coding/process stuff than the typical normie.

I don't think it has to be anyway. When it becomes too consumer-focused, the value-add for us techies is lost. Because mainstreaming invariably comes with reduced power user features. Home Assistant is also heading in this direction with deprecating valuable stuff like raspberry pi gpio support.

I don't use Apple stuff anymore either because it's too restrictive for my usecases. I use FreeBSD and ungoogled Android now.

I don't want HA to go the same way. Of course what they do is up to them but I don't think everything should necessarily be for everyone. If FreeBSD (or Linux)+KDE was for everyone for example, it would no longer be for me.

Re: Show HN: Makejinja: Automatically generate complex Home Assistant configurations

#12

Post by shmoogy » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

chomp wrote: post #7

MattDemers wrote: post #3

Happy to see this, mostly because HomeAssistant stuff is nowhere near consumer-ready. I barely have the Docker knowledge to get it working in the first place on my NAS, and even just doing basic automations assumes you know much more coding/process stuff than the typical normie.

> mostly because HomeAssistant stuff is nowhere near consumer-ready I don't think that's quite accurate, normal people probably won't be able to set up complex automations, but having used Control4 and HomeAssistant's configuration tools, both are somewhat equivalent in difficulty, with C4 having a slight edge because there's a lot of hardware vendors who deeply integrate with it. A lot of the families I've done home…

It's not quite there yet, but with all in one devices they are creating - they're trying to make it a little easier. It's significantly better than when I first tried it like 6 years ago, and got a SmartThings hub because I needed something more stable for wife approval.

I've run into, twice in the past year, some kind of update or config change (that says valid) that made the UI inaccessible and had to quickly spin up a new VM and restore my backup.

E: many people will be better served by Alexa/Google/Apple hubs with matter integration that support everything with a polished Ui. Those with super techy inclinations - or propensities towards tinkering will want something like HA

Re: Show HN: Makejinja: Automatically generate complex Home Assistant configurations

#13

Post by kkfx » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 8:36 PM UTC

japanuspus wrote: post #5

kkfx wrote: post #2

I always ask myself anytime I have to deal with my HA or k8s stuff why the hell people want to shot themselves in the genitals with YAML crap instead of using a damn programming language for a damn personal config.

My impression is that most people doing heavy automatisation in Home Assistant are using Node Red or AppDaemon [1] almost exclusively. [0]: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-community-add-on-node-red/55023 [1]: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-community-add-on-appdaemon-4/163259

Thanks for citing AppDaemon, I'll try it.

I know Node Red but I consider all visual tools as a nice way to complicate things not to simplify so I never used it. Actually my HA is in an org-mode file tangled in the right place, but just the recent template syntax change was a painful waste of time to update especially since after some update my Victron/MQTT integration have change sensors names for unknown reasons ad I have to craft a monster just have proper p.v. production logs in the energy dashboard... Oh, sure I can even ignore HA but that's is, a giant crapload of YAML...

Re: Show HN: Makejinja: Automatically generate complex Home Assistant configurations

#14

Post by kkfx » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 8:38 PM UTC

mlenz wrote: post #4

kkfx wrote: post #2

I always ask myself anytime I have to deal with my HA or k8s stuff why the hell people want to shot themselves in the genitals with YAML crap instead of using a damn programming language for a damn personal config.

I totally agree, yaml is just messy when used for anything near complex. This is also why most automations in my home assistant setup are written in Python using AppDaemon. But I did not find anything good for dashboards, so I tried to reduce duplicate code as much as possible using makejinja.

Personally I use org-mode with noweb, it simplify A LITTLE BIT, but not much more than a little and the push toward "integration" vs "in config" setup in HA, plus various syntax changes (last heavy the template syntax) is a nightmare to keep up...