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Home Assistant 2023.11

home-assistant.io

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Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#41

Post by robertlagrant »

pierregillesl wrote: post #19
Toutouxc wrote: post #7

Hass is the kind of software that has a lot of rough edges, but you use it anyway because there's very little direct competition. And every release feels like so much stuff has been finally polished, but then you deploy the new version and there's still a lot of stuff that feels or looks weird (the part-bad-UI-part-YAML automation). I have been using it for a couple of years now and I still haven't decided whether I…

We are making Gladys Assistant ( https://gladysassistant.com/ ), an open-source smart home software. It's less "techy" than HA (no YAML files, no CLI), and UI first. We have way less integrations for now, but are working hard on it. Don't hesitate to try it and make us some feedback.

I do feel like there's no point in making non-UI first home automation technology. It's not as though you'll be rolling it out across multiple environments.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#42

Post by solarkraft »

ChrisRR wrote: post #27
Toutouxc wrote: post #7

Hass is the kind of software that has a lot of rough edges, but you use it anyway because there's very little direct competition. And every release feels like so much stuff has been finally polished, but then you deploy the new version and there's still a lot of stuff that feels or looks weird (the part-bad-UI-part-YAML automation). I have been using it for a couple of years now and I still haven't decided whether I…

It's one of those pieces of software that was clearly designed by programmers for programmers. It's not user friendly in the slightest, there's no onboarding process, and it changes so quickly that half of the information you find is already out of date. It's very useful, but my god is it clunky (And apparently destroys SD cards by design, but even that information may be out of date) I compare it to something like R…

> It's not user friendly in the slightest, there's no onboarding process

> and it changes so quickly that half of the information you find is already out of date

Ironic: Could your impression be outdated? The last time I set it up it had a setup assistant and the core features (which are very narrowly defined) were super simple to use. Anything remotely advanced is still a bit annoying, though.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#43

Post by InsomniacL »

ChrisRR wrote: post #27
Toutouxc wrote: post #7

Hass is the kind of software that has a lot of rough edges, but you use it anyway because there's very little direct competition. And every release feels like so much stuff has been finally polished, but then you deploy the new version and there's still a lot of stuff that feels or looks weird (the part-bad-UI-part-YAML automation). I have been using it for a couple of years now and I still haven't decided whether I…

It's one of those pieces of software that was clearly designed by programmers for programmers. It's not user friendly in the slightest, there's no onboarding process, and it changes so quickly that half of the information you find is already out of date. It's very useful, but my god is it clunky (And apparently destroys SD cards by design, but even that information may be out of date) I compare it to something like R…

> It's one of those pieces of software that was clearly designed by programmers for programmers. It's not user friendly in the slightest, there's no onboarding process, and it changes so quickly that half of the information you find is already out of date. It's very useful, but my god is it clunky

I think this is an outdated view. for example:

Configuring integrations though a config file is depreciated, everything through the UI and it will convert any old yaml configurations for you.

> (And apparently destroys SD cards by design, but even that information may be out of date)

I think you're talking about hosting it on a Raspberry Pi.. It supports almost all hardware and even using the Pi you can boot from an SSD.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#44

Post by kiliancgn »

lvncelot wrote: post #2

I've tried getting into Home Assistant a few years ago, but it was right at the switch from declarative yaml files for (almost) everything to most of the stuff being set up via the UI. I would love to give Home Assistant another shot - is that still the case, or is there some way to set up the Home Assistant config via code?

I was a complete beginner and had a hard time setting it up years ago since I didn't know much about it. Here's how I did it:

https://www.amalytix.com/en/blog/home-assistant-with-conbee-...

Note: This guide is based on an older version of Home Assistant, but it might still be useful for someone just starting out to understand some general concepts.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#46

Post by contravariant »

eternityforest wrote: post #34
Toutouxc wrote: post #7

Hass is the kind of software that has a lot of rough edges, but you use it anyway because there's very little direct competition. And every release feels like so much stuff has been finally polished, but then you deploy the new version and there's still a lot of stuff that feels or looks weird (the part-bad-UI-part-YAML automation). I have been using it for a couple of years now and I still haven't decided whether I…

I'm still using my scratch built KaithemAutomation(Currently just finishing up a large cleanup of some of the almost 10yo code, new release soon) because the off the shelf stuff doesn't seem to support the Pi well on SD cards. The core workflow is all about having scenes, which have a list of cues, each of which can have IFTT-like rules attached to it, among other things, like sounds and DMX lighting values, live mix…

I quite liked node-red for automating things. Though that's mostly because programming in yaml sounded like a red flag when it comes to automation.

Making the UI is more involved but you have a lot of tools to get stuff to talk to each other.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#47

Post by mr_person »

Toutouxc wrote: post #7

Hass is the kind of software that has a lot of rough edges, but you use it anyway because there's very little direct competition. And every release feels like so much stuff has been finally polished, but then you deploy the new version and there's still a lot of stuff that feels or looks weird (the part-bad-UI-part-YAML automation). I have been using it for a couple of years now and I still haven't decided whether I…

OpenHAB?

I generally look for OH mentions when discussions like this start up and am fascinated how it never seems to be mentioned.

In my experience it has its own rough edges, but its significantly more understandable, more stable and easier to get going.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#48

Post by mavamaarten »

mongol wrote: post #20

I gave up on Home Assistant, it required too much tweaking of configs between releases. I took inspiration from https://github.com/stapelberg/regelwerk instead

Once I switched to a docker-based setup, this has been the polar opposite of my experience. It really took away the pain of a manual setup, dealing with python etc.

My update process has been the following for about a year, with zero issues:

- Create a backup - Update all HACS add-ons - Update the docker image and restart

I've never had to restore a backup. I do wait about a week before updating to see if there are some really breaking issues, but so far I've experienced none.

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#49

Post by jasonjayr »

robertlagrant wrote: post #41
pierregillesl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are making Gladys Assistant ( https://gladysassistant.com/ ), an open-source smart home software. It's less "techy" than HA (no YAML files, no CLI), and UI first. We have way less integrations for now, but are working hard on it. Don't hesitate to try it and make us some feedback.

I do feel like there's no point in making non-UI first home automation technology. It's not as though you'll be rolling it out across multiple environments.

For technologists, DIY'ers and coders, CLI first or CLI parity means you can use common dev tools to build, integrate and track changes.

UI first means you have to build an awful lot of extra cruft to emulate parts of an already solid + flexible toolchain.

EDIT: I should mention that includes text + file based config too...

Re: Home Assistant 2023.11

#50

Post by nijave »

baq wrote: post #37
Heliosmaster wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use what they recommend: I installed Home Assistant Operating System on a Raspberry PI 3. Which still means there's an OS and there's HA Core. > Home Assistant Operating System: Minimal Operating System optimized to power Home Assistant. It comes with Supervisor to manage Home Assistant Core and Add-ons. Recommended installation method. I tried on purpose to do everything as 'basic' as possible because I don't want…

no idea why it's recommended to install manually; I'd recommend docker every time. currently running on docker and upgrading was indeed just pulling new images (didn't even have to tweak the compose file, just docker compose pull). There's been a few helpful UI messages about outdated integrations in the config (e.g. workday detection moved to UI config, used to be yaml).

Iirc Home Assistant Operating System does use Docker. It's a bare bones Linux distro built with buildroot that basically just runs Docker containers
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