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Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

home-assistant.io

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Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#161

Is anyone else here completely confused at how much hype there is around automated light management systems? I don’t get it. Is it really that hard to turn on and off lights manually that people really need all this stuff? What am I not getting?

This might sound crazy but my remote dimming hue lightbulb is probably my favorite purchase all year - more than my 55" 4k tv and new gaming computer.

Light dimming alone is a huge improvement but the ability to start a movie or go to sleep without needing to get up to turn off the light is really great. Believe me I was just as skeptical as many people here.

All the other options I tried before the (admittedly more expensive) hue bulb were either clunky/big or unreliable.

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#162
post #12

Founder of Home Assistant here. If anyone has any questions, let me know! Besides being able to install it as a Python package on Python 3, you can also install it using our Hass.io OS. Based on ResinOS and powered by Docker, it offers over the air updates and management of your device via the user interface: https://home-assistant.io/hassio/

Did you guys consider distributing reference 3D printing designs to accommodate the Raspberry Pi at home. For example replacing a wall light switch? The wall niche for the Pi+ switch is a perfect place because it supplies electricity and is already reserved for a human interface.

I've developed a open hardware 3d printable LCD touchscreen which uses WiFi+MQTT to interact with Home Assistant which fits into a standard wall panel which you can find here: https://github.com/aderusha/HASwitchPlate

This still requires Home Assistant to be running somewhere else on the network and uses an ESP8266 instead of a Pi for several reasons, but it might help you out on your use case.

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#163
post #89
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

asyncio is amazing. It has been way faster and more predictable. Home Assistant has a lot of small tasks running all the time with the occasional task taking a long time (ie. trying to reach a device which has been turned off). The number of tasks running simultaneously used to be limited by the size of the thread worker pool, which is no longer the case. A request taking a long time is now just a coroutine pending r…

Dude. A blog post on writing application on top of asyncio which may interchangeably use threads or async/await, and incrementally making the switch to asyncio would be awesome. I work with a large-fintech platform which is partially powered by Python. Our old server was based around threads, queues, and socket multiplexing but we are gradually starting new applications in asyncio. I recently completed a project in a…

I have not used tornado but I love aiohttp. it's super fast (part in cython) and does HTTP + websocket client and server. Their team is are part of the asyncio contributors, they know their stuff.

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#164
I love Home Assistant, by far my favorite automation platform. I couldn't recommend it more. At home we use it to automatically dim the lights based on the luminance outside, send us messages when laundry is done, activate and deactivate our alarm system based on who is home, turn the radio on in the morning when we enter the living room, turn off all lights in the house when we go to bed, etc. etc. !

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#165

Is anyone else here completely confused at how much hype there is around automated light management systems? I don’t get it. Is it really that hard to turn on and off lights manually that people really need all this stuff? What am I not getting?

I think light switches are an absolutely fantastic UI. You can look at them to determine state, you an interact with them without unlocking a device and when they're placed well you can just "wave your hand" and lights come on.

However, when the light switches aren't well placed it is nice to add a layer of software abstraction between the switch and the light to be able to rearrange existing switches in your home without having to pull new wiring. So you can essentially just keep what you are already doing but make the existing, mature UI even more suited to your needs even if you're skeptical of all of the rest of it.

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#166
post #123
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind mentioning a link to the PRs you're referring to?

Sure. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/9272 Closed with prejudice as a “hack.” I actually spent some time to make this feature request implementation consistent with other code as another contributor mentioned. https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/9270 The second one was based on an observed defect in the UI. The defect is still there but apparently this is flippantly a “feature”…

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. As an open source project we get bombarded with pull requests where people have spent time and research to create something without reaching out to us in advance. This means that sometimes the way you are architecting your new feature doesn't fit with the current design or our vision. It means that we will sometimes say the feature needs changing.

We are all volunteers and the last thing we want is to start argueing with every person on the internet. The maintainers would burn out pretty quickly. And that means that if we are looking at 20 PRs a night, we will make mistakes and judge too quickly. Can we look at less PRs and spent more time on each PR? Sure, then people get pissed that it takes too long to get feedback on their PRs. There is no winning for us here and so each maintainer will have to find their balance.

For 9272, Pascal has offered the correct solution: a service switch. Every platform could be sharing code with other platforms given enough configuration parameters. We have made the decision that that is not in our best interest as it means that growing one platform now has to be made compatible with all the other configuration options and it becomes a mess. So create a new platform if your change is changing the core of a platform (like removing the template from a template switch). Your comments after the PR got closed got probably missed.

For 9270, you rebased after the discussion took place and I don't remember if the code was different before. The current change looks fine for me. You've removed your clone so I can't re-open the PR for you, but feel free to open a new PR with those changes and tag me in the PR message.

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your first reaction to anything you don't understand to question its existence? Maybe try to find the value others see first, then you will be better prepared to weigh that value against your own values.

> Maybe try to find the value others see first That is exactly what he's doing.

No, the questions in the original comment were posed in a clearly dismissive way, in a way trying to get others to join in the dismissal ("Does anybody else..." isn't an honest question, it's a call to action).

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get an astronomical light switch that replaces the manual light switch that can do that and more based around actual sunrise/sunset time for $30 - it’s a little pricey but they just work.

All of my Zigbee stuff 'just works' as well and is under $30/bulb for basic lights.

Yes but I have 4 bulbs outdoors controlled by my $27 switch. Bulbs will fail over time, especially when exposed to the elements and seasonal temperature swings. I can set my lights to turn on off at a fixed time relative to sunset/rise or randomize it +- 30 mins. All with a switch that I bought at a big box store 10 years ago.

Re: Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3

#169
post #125
post #12

Founder of Home Assistant here. If anyone has any questions, let me know! Besides being able to install it as a Python package on Python 3, you can also install it using our Hass.io OS. Based on ResinOS and powered by Docker, it offers over the air updates and management of your device via the user interface: https://home-assistant.io/hassio/

I don't have a external screen and http://hassio.local:8123/ says 'Server not found', because my network is a bit special. Therefor I connected via serial to the rp and now it asks me for a username and password which I can't find. Would you care sharing this?

I'm not a Hass user, but recommend you try user pi with password raspberry. (That's an RPi standard of sorts.)
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