301–310 of 344 posts
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Sadly there's no AAA equivalent to the simple old square Tradri 0/1 on/off dimmer switches that use the cr2032 batteries. Those old switches are small enough that I could 3D print brackets to mount them in my standard wall covers. The newer AAA devices are all much bigger or try to do too many things.
The RODRET is the AAA version.
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That’s why I’m sticking to Zigbee as much as possible. The only place where there’s an internet connection is at the Home Assistant computer which has a Zigbee USB stick.
I settled on Zigbee for door, window and some motion sensors, stand-alone buttons and other devices that need to be battery powered but for everything that's built into a wall or perma-attached to an outlet (like light switches, dimmers and wall plugs) I use generic commodity hardware running open source Tasmota firmware. These devices are based on standard reference designs, made by multiple Shenzen manufacturers an…
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My friend has lost 15GB of sensor data because of corrupted MariaDB on his HA instance after an upgrade. It's definitely not a hands-off system.
If you need to store 15GB of sensor data, a MySQL derivate is not what I'd choose
I include this when considering buying something integrated. For example Philips Hue is overpriced, but their Home Assistant integration is top tier and ultra-reliable. Contrast that with myQ garage door openers (LiftMaster, Chamberlain and Craftsman) recently breaking Home Assistant support on purpose, to essentially replace it with nothing, and they're dead to me. So Xiaomi adding support, assuming it is reliable,…
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I’ve had the opposite experience. The literally home assistant branded zigbee stick refuses to work with HA („unsupported forward“) even after updates so all the zigbee stuff is in a box Have had much better luck with WiFi. Both commercial and self soldered circuits. 2.4ghz WiFi is as battle tested as it gets and between esphome and tasmota it’s pretty open and customizable. Just need to steer clear of the usual chea…
WiFi is not good for a network with lots of devices. It's star topology which limits multi-device performance. And the WiFi AP which can carry many devices is expensive. Many WiFi smart home devices only support old WiFi standard, it will pull down both performance (If there is a old standard device, the AP have to fallback to old behavior to match it. OpenWRT's setting also inform that.) and security (You can't use…
I personally see that as a feature. When I was researching what route to go (wifi/zigbee/zwave) I encountered enough horror story posts about mesh networks to know that it's not for me. Small network absolutely, especially for battery powered devices, but meshes seem to hit critical mass where it becomes unstable & then people end up doing stupid shit like having to physically uninstall wall light switches to temporarily move them closer to hub to re-pair them
Adding more 2.4ghz AP capacity is comparatively trivial. Hell even raspberry pis can act as APs.
>it will pull down both performance
Anything where I care about performance is on the 5 and 6 ghz band. 2.4ghz is too noisy in cities for general use, but is entirely adequate for IoT sending a couple bytes every now and then.
>[WPA] security
That one is indeed a problem. At some point I'll stick them on a separate AP device with a firewall between that and rest of network, but can't say its a priority
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Good advice, except that I’d try whenever possible to get AA/AAA devices rather than button cells. Not only do the button cell devices burn through batteries, causing a maintenance headache if you have a non-trivial number of devices, but the rechargeable battery ecosystem is much better developed for AA/AAA. We’re currently working on swapping out all our button cell remotes, especially. Also, the replacement proces…
A battery detection automation really helps with the maintenance (even for AA/AAA): https://community.home-assistant.io/t/low-battery-notificati...
Here’s hoping our device battery level detection is better than that of the sibling commenter.
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I think (some correct me) you can group most devices into the following categories: 1. Device requires internet for setup, and for usage 2. Device requires internet for setup, but after that don't need it anymore 3. Device can be fully setup without internet, and used without internet Personally I aim to be fully within 3 as much as I can, but some devices are really hard to find at a good price point that falls into…
I'm not buying any device that's not 3, everything else turns into a brick as soon as there's some larger change. I have some older Google Speakers, and while they seemed to be 2, after being powered off for long enough they can't be set up again, not even with internet access since their firmware was also outdated and the app isn't able to set them up again.
These days I’ve found that when in doubt get the device that is home kit approved. That usually ensures local only control. You have to fake it with home assistant, but it can be done with little fuss.
I love Home Assistant but I now have a pretty strict minimum effort rule after years of configuring integrations and building dashboards that I would forget about after 2 months: I only do automations (no dashboards at all), and try to keep them as simple as possible. Once I feel I’m reaching diminishing returns territory, I stop. Only use HA if I need to mix different vendors (e.g. turn on the hue lights if the tuya…
At the other end of the spectrum, I just managed to split up my HA automation files and mount them into a ConfigMap on my K8s cluster https://github.com/shepherdjerred/homelab/tree/main/cdk8s/co...
I love Home Assistant but I now have a pretty strict minimum effort rule after years of configuring integrations and building dashboards that I would forget about after 2 months: I only do automations (no dashboards at all), and try to keep them as simple as possible. Once I feel I’m reaching diminishing returns territory, I stop. Only use HA if I need to mix different vendors (e.g. turn on the hue lights if the tuya…
How many apps do you have installed to control everything? And how is the stuff integrating if you have equipment from different vendor that need to talk to each other, like AC units with PV inverter to start and shutdown based on electricity net production and real temperature in the rooms (using external thermometers, not the one in the AC)? And how do you consolidate and monitor power consumption in a single place…
I tried do make a dashboard some time ago but it felt rather complicated. Google Home and HomeKit integrate the best into my life and the lives of my family that there is no way HA can compete. Maybe that will change if I find myself in a house that I own… Maybe spending time to make a dashboard will have a better value prop.
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RDBMS isn't the best place to store time series data. There are better and more efficient options for that.
I'm a noob when it comes to DBs, but stumbled upon using InfluxDB with Home Assistant - would you say that's a solid choice, or are there better alternatives out there?
The difference between just storing every value ever and a time series DB is that the latter one can reduce the data frequency when it gets older.
Like if you're measuring your fridge temperature, you might store it every minute. But do you care about 1 minute accuracy when the data is two years old? Would 5 or 15 minutes be enough?
This is what time series DBs do automatically.
They're also optimised for data that's formatted as - , making inserts and queries fast for data like that.