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Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

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Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#31

Post by jakupovic »

alangibson wrote: post #23
jakupovic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another vote for home assistant, also from another thread further down use a dockerized version, no issues. I have all kinds of things connected, lights, switches, shellys, custom sensors/collectors and it all works flawlessly. Just amazed how good HA performs after using various other things over the years. You're also not tied to HA, but can develop using anything then once it all works put the result on HA.

I love HA for it's stability. However, I've written several HA integrations and I've got to say that their component API is insane. Inheritance based, vaguely documented, shifting terminology, etc. I'm working on my own use-case based API just to rationalize it a bit.

In order to get some sensors working I used Arduino examples from the web, understood the example and how it interfaces with my platform. Once it all worked I was able to transfer everything to HA, successfully. Going with "I'll just use HA from beginning", got me stuck thoroughly.

I feel like one of the people waving at the cloud saying: "Use Home Assistant", same as back in the days of use linux for all your troubles.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#32

Post by jspash »

mwlp wrote: post #6

Nice! I also control my lights using Elixir and a Hue bridge (through Home Assistant). https://github.com/Manwholikespie/mojodojo

Interesting that you also used Elixir. It's also quite interesting contrasting your approach to OP's. Was there a specific reason that you chose Elixir?

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#33

Post by vetinari »

boringuser2 wrote: post #26
dementik wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all my issues with Python versions went away when starting to use HA in docker container. Everything is very smooth. One way is also to use HAOS but it is kinda limited. Current stack for me is HA+traefik+Z2M+Frigate+Mosquitto. All running in containers, on top of Debian. Works perfectly.

How is it limited? I have been thinking of migrating my setup from a docks container to HAOS on metal. I have like 1 dozen Intel j5105 boxes, might as well use them.

Limited; as in you might have to find a way to configure some things in a different way than you are used to.

HAOS in a principle is a lightweight immutable distro for running containers; the HA itself is the same container that you would be running if you went the Docker path.

In my case, I have my IoT toys in a separate VLAN; HAOS needed to have access to both, main LAN (for the frontend) and IoT LAN (to talk to the devices). Configuring that meant installing container with SSH, making sure I can connect to the host via that (the featured "Terminal & SSH" addon won't allow that, you need the other, "Advanced SSH & Web Terminal"), and then using nmcli to configure the network.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#34

Post by eichin »

pmontra wrote: post #7
smt88 wrote: post #4

> * Rationally, I might have been better off going with Home Assistant, which has ready-made integrations with Shelly, Zigbee dimmers, and probably thousands of other device types, but I wanted complete control and hackability, and I preferred to spend time building my own system rather than learning and customizing Home Assistant and maybe never getting it to work like I want it to.* This thought was correct. Home A…

I've got some Shelly Plugs. I decided to operate them with a self made web app running on my home server. That app makes HTTP calls to the API of the plug. It's very simple, just a curl from bash would work. One call to turn on the plug, one to turn it off and one to read the power meter. I put buttons on the web page and it does what I need. There are no dependecies from other services and especially no dependency f…

Yeah, one of these days I expect to set up homeassistant, and even recommend it to others, but I'm happy driving my shelly plugs with bash+curl from a streamdeckui entry for now :-)

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#35

Post by aidenn0 »

I looked into some basic automation for Christmas lights this year; some thoughts:

1. Zigbee devices are crazy inexpensive. I can get two zigbee power switches for less than half the cost of a single USB controlled one.

2. Zigbee2Mqtt is really nice; setting it and mosquitto up was easy, and I can control everything over mqtt now.

3. The creator of HA really doesn't want me using his software, so I'm not.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#36

Post by kriiuuu »

aidenn0 wrote: post #35

I looked into some basic automation for Christmas lights this year; some thoughts: 1. Zigbee devices are crazy inexpensive. I can get two zigbee power switches for less than half the cost of a single USB controlled one. 2. Zigbee2Mqtt is really nice; setting it and mosquitto up was easy, and I can control everything over mqtt now. 3. The creator of HA really doesn't want me using his software, so I'm not.

What is your reasoning behind nr.3? I don’t disagree as they seem hostile towards the nix HA project. At least that is what I gathered when I set up my zigbee devices on a NixOS server.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#37

Post by aidenn0 »

kriiuuu wrote: post #36
aidenn0 wrote: post #35

I looked into some basic automation for Christmas lights this year; some thoughts: 1. Zigbee devices are crazy inexpensive. I can get two zigbee power switches for less than half the cost of a single USB controlled one. 2. Zigbee2Mqtt is really nice; setting it and mosquitto up was easy, and I can control everything over mqtt now. 3. The creator of HA really doesn't want me using his software, so I'm not.

What is your reasoning behind nr.3? I don’t disagree as they seem hostile towards the nix HA project. At least that is what I gathered when I set up my zigbee devices on a NixOS server.

I also use NixOS. They requested HA be not included in nixpkgs.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#38

Post by darkwater »

Toutouxc wrote: post #14
gempir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want yaml based configs and running on a non HomeAssistant provided OS you are already making it hard for yourself. This is not the most popular route and therefore also less supported my advice: - use a raspberry-pi with Home Assistant OS or buy one of their self made raspberry-pi alternatives Home Assistant Yellow etc. You can run docker but it's still not straightforward because then you need to passthrough…

> Everything can be done with the GUI, I haven't touched my yaml files in years. Command line sensors, REST sensors, some types of virtual sensors, groups (I think), there's a lot of stuff you still can't do in the GUI, and even if you don't mind writing their stupid YAML-based config, the documentation isn't very friendly and in places outdated and contradicting itself.

IME documentation is pretty up to date and correct. Care to share some concrete example?

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#39

Post by birdman3131 »

The big thing I really like about the shelly devices is that you can flash tasmota onto them. I don't have the need or desire to do so but it means I can't find myself with a dead home automation setup because some company went belly up as has happened several times before.

Re: Turtles, a Shelly/Zigbee home automation tool in Elixir

#40

Post by wredue »

aidenn0 wrote: post #37
kriiuuu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your reasoning behind nr.3? I don’t disagree as they seem hostile towards the nix HA project. At least that is what I gathered when I set up my zigbee devices on a NixOS server.

I also use NixOS. They requested HA be not included in nixpkgs.

There are parts of NixOS that require specific support or you apps simply don’t work, and I can see why a developer would not want NixOS issues causing tickets for them.
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