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Home Assistant Presence Simulation

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Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#91

Post by kkfx »

rixrax wrote: post #87
kkfx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HA is a hell of YAML and more and more things doable only from the WebUI, this means you can't nor automate nor document your setup, so you can't replicate it. It's a common issue in modern software: devs are so inhabited to use cloud stuff not knowing what's behind they are mentally unable to comprehend why doing so it's a totally absurd thing. Software MUST REPLICATE with easy, your home infra should be replicated…

Sir. You Win teh Internets today. This has been my gripe with HA for the longest time. That YAML / GUI-only / etc. approach is just atrocious. Unfortunately it works well enough, and there are little or no alternatives to it as far as I can tell. Were there a reasonable alternative, with a configuration as an actual code (YAML isn't), I would dump HA in a heartbeat. I mean I could even live without the GUI - just con…

Running it on my home-server via pip (no containers for me, thanks) I do not try the "kind-of-firmware approach, just different zfs volumes, with auto-snapshots and backups for bin (python venv), data and config. Mostly I have had issues upgrading HA but still even with my config at hand, written in org-mode and tangle-ed anyway to be less of a hell and to embed docs/references in the YAML hell, the main issue came from integrations only configurable from the WebUI. In most case it's just a matter of remove the configured part from the running config, add the integration from the WebUI, add back the config, reload etc. But it's still a PAINFUL process. Less hard than configuring via NixOS, but still hard.

Just as an example (no ads) https://kfx.fr/posts/2024-02-21-shellyfloodandha/ how is possible to demand such amount of line to get a damn flood notification on mobile?

As you rightly say HA works well enough and have less issues than OpenHAB, but as long as something less yaml-illish and webui-tied appear I'll switch instantaneously. My setup have probably far less devices than you, bus some have a gazillion of sensors (i.e. my main battery inverter a Victron MultiPlus with ECV charging station have at least 1248 lines of yaml, NOT counting the template code for many sensors usages) while it could be a simple python data structure of 1/5 of the size. My main usage is just monitoring and a bit of automation to maximize self-consumption like piloting hot water heater, running A/C etc, videosurveillance and co are managed separately.

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#92

Post by orev »

jjeaff wrote: post #64
orev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this for a long time with timer switches that could be programmed similarly, and switching to HA wasn’t some huge change, it was just nicer. I had to periodically make sure the clock was correct on them, as they would drift a few minutes, and the interface itself was via small LCD screen and buttons. HA is just a nicer experience, but I wouldn’t say it (or any home automation) is a “need”. It’s better seen as s…

I'm guessing you have to do a bit more in maintenance for your Home Assistant instance than set the clock every once and a while?

Not much more than just clicking an update button once in a while. But that’s a standard workflow most people are used to. Updating the clock on the standalone timers has to be done using a tiny LCD screen with an esoteric menu system while holding a manual/pamphlet that’s printed in less than 6pt text. It’s not something you do often enough to remember the procedure.

Of course you can make things more complicated if you want to in HA, or you can set it and mostly forget it if you just use timers.

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#93

Post by billfor »

jitl wrote: post #36

I use a normal automation to turn on the lights every day at sundown, and to turn off the lights every night at ($BEDTIME + 1hr), just as part of daily life. I don't need anything tricky to simulate that pattern when I'm traveling; I just don't disable the automation. I wonder how many people using HomeAssitant for their lights are manually turning lights on and off all the time. I would think most people would set u…

I use a rule-based automation in OpenHab (similar to HA) to randomly pick a light from a group and toggle it after a random interval, and it repeats the process every 10 minutes from 4pm to 11pm. I find this better than relying on prior history since there is no guarantee that my prior pattern of occupancy would be applicable to a vacation period. Better to just randomly cycle random lights - that will confuse them ;-)

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#94

Post by gregmac »

asveikau wrote: post #48
joshstrange wrote: post #13

Just a note to anyone interested in trying out Home Assistant: It's amazing _but_ do NOT use a raspberry pi to run it. Save yourself a ton of headaches and buy a mini pc (there was a list of used mini pcs posted here yesterday from ebay). Also I recommend using HAOS (or whatever the "we install and run the whole OS" option is called) so that you can use things like plugins without messing around with docker. I love d…

HAOS is absolutely terrible when it faces filesystem corruption. I faced this a few times when my HAOS image crashed. You can't even get it to fsck on boot when it happens. I think that's one big reason people on RPIs have issues. The FS is on an SD card, SD cards are flakey, and there's no good rescue path when the FS has issues. I guess USB power is also historically not great on RPI. I haven't played with them in…

> HAOS is absolutely terrible when it faces filesystem corruption. I faced this a few times when my HAOS image crashed. You can't even get it to fsck on boot when it happens.

I don't see this as being unique to HAOS, if a filesystem is corrupted in a certain way then _no OS_ is going to be able to boot.

There are distros that are specifically optimized for the Pi (with, eg specific logging choices [1]) that try to avoid problems (with trade-offs).

I've used something before (can't remember/find it now, but maybe thought it was in Yocto?) where there were 3 partitions: one was read-write used for persisting user data, and two were for the OS/apps. One would be live and mounted as read-only, the other was for the next system update using a blue-green deploy strategy. I think it also used RAM for log and temp files.

[1] https://dietpi.com/docs/software/log_system/

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#95

Post by glitchcrab »

drdaeman wrote: post #7
starxidas wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but cats sleep around 35 hours a day.

Fortunately, presence simulation is only needed at dusk/night - when cats have their zoomies.

This would be a dead giveaway that I wasn't home; my cats tend to get the zoomies in the small hours.

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#96

Post by asveikau »

gregmac wrote: post #94
asveikau wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HAOS is absolutely terrible when it faces filesystem corruption. I faced this a few times when my HAOS image crashed. You can't even get it to fsck on boot when it happens. I think that's one big reason people on RPIs have issues. The FS is on an SD card, SD cards are flakey, and there's no good rescue path when the FS has issues. I guess USB power is also historically not great on RPI. I haven't played with them in…

> HAOS is absolutely terrible when it faces filesystem corruption. I faced this a few times when my HAOS image crashed. You can't even get it to fsck on boot when it happens. I don't see this as being unique to HAOS, if a filesystem is corrupted in a certain way then _no OS_ is going to be able to boot. There are distros that are specifically optimized for the Pi (with, eg specific logging choices [1]) that try to av…

> I don't see this as being unique to HAOS, if a filesystem is corrupted in a certain way then _no OS_ is going to be able to boot.

Theoretically true if you are very unlucky, however, that's not true at all for the vast majority of filesystem failures.

I am talking about failures where if I inspect the disk image outside the VM and fsck it, everything is fine.

Also, given that HA leans so heavily on docker, it would be a reasonable feature for it to rebuild some docker images should the disk damage them.

Traditional hard disk failures are common, but also, SD card failure is really common. If you've worked on a sufficiently popular mobile app you've probably seen tons of it. It's reasonable to plan for it at the application layer. To say nothing of at an OS layer. There's a very good reason why Unix traditionally ships with fsck tools and sometimes runs them at boot. Whoever designed HAOS not to do this made a big mistake, and I would hit this a few times a year in my old setup.

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#97

Post by shadowpho »

m463 wrote: post #46
scubbo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another "Been using RPi 4 for HAOS solidly for multiple years" anecdote chiming in here. Typically the SD cards are the unreliable bit, not the Pi itself.

You can boot and run a pi from a USB ssd, and now pi5 has easier nvme. But yeah, then you're competing with a minipc. The pi5 now has niceties like a power button and you can battery backup the clock with a wired coin cell, but then it is more time and expense to get to what minipcs had basically forever.

Yeah “easier nvme” requires buying a $40 hat and a special case with special fan because otherwise they interfere. Which is crazy considering n100 boxes already have an nvme and a fan for ~$100

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#98

Post by n8henrie »

joshstrange wrote: post #13

Just a note to anyone interested in trying out Home Assistant: It's amazing _but_ do NOT use a raspberry pi to run it. Save yourself a ton of headaches and buy a mini pc (there was a list of used mini pcs posted here yesterday from ebay). Also I recommend using HAOS (or whatever the "we install and run the whole OS" option is called) so that you can use things like plugins without messing around with docker. I love d…

I've been running hass for quite some time, for years directly in a python venv on a Pi2, then Pi3, and now happily on a Pi4 4GB for several years. Runs so well I decided not to upgrade to a 5. Use both zigbee and zwave.

Currently running in docker, which was a godsend when I migrated from Raspbian to NixOS about 18 months or so ago with no issues.

Have used an SSD wherever possible, perhaps that's why it's been so stable.

I use the GPIO, which is one reason I've stuck with the Pi!

Re: Home Assistant Presence Simulation

#100

Post by pawelduda »

joshstrange wrote: post #13

Just a note to anyone interested in trying out Home Assistant: It's amazing _but_ do NOT use a raspberry pi to run it. Save yourself a ton of headaches and buy a mini pc (there was a list of used mini pcs posted here yesterday from ebay). Also I recommend using HAOS (or whatever the "we install and run the whole OS" option is called) so that you can use things like plugins without messing around with docker. I love d…

Been running HA and a couple other services on RPi 4 with old SSD and DietPi as the OS, behind tailscale for 2 years. It needs a restart maybe once in a blue moon, and it's back online in 1 min, that's it.
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