Home Automation
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The Apple Home app is terrible,and just seems to get worse and worse. What other options are out there?
All of my devices are homekit compatible, but I do not want to use the Apple Home app because it's pretty much broken IMHO. I was suggested these alternatives. Did anyone have experience with these, or other recommendations? I have Hue and Aidot lights and sync boxes. A Homepod mini, an M2 Mac Mini, 2 iPads, an iPhone 13, and smart plugs, and a camera.
“Eve for HomeKit,” “iHaus Smart Home,” “Devices – Control for HomeKit,” or “Home+ 5.”
>EDIT: I also tell Siri to perform tasks, mainly turning the fan on and off, but she frequently gets it wrong. She also can't seem to figure out how to play requested music through the AppleTV, and always wants to play it through the Homepod Mini. The
AppleTV constantly tells me I've reached my device playback limit when I'm only playing back on maybe one other device, and even that isn't intentional; I only ever want to play on one device at a time. As for the Home app, it often loses connection with lights that are functioning properly in both the Hue and Aidot apps. If the lights are from Hue, the app doesn’t allow me to remove them entirely; I can only hide them from view. Consequently, when I ask Siri to ‘turn off all the lights,’ she informs me that 15 accessories aren’t responding. Even if I remove them from the Hue app and re-add them, the old ‘phantom’ lights still appear in the Home app. Deleting and reinstalling the Home app, which I’ve done about four times recently, is a huge hassle and requires me to set up everything again from scratch. My biggest gripe is the lack of fun and delightful preset color schemes available in Home. It doesn’t recognize when lights are set to certain colors through other apps, preventing me from saving those colors as a theme. Additionally, the color picker in the Home app is subpar.
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My personal home assistant kiosk display
A few friends asked for me to walk through how I set up the dashboard I have in my kitchen, so I figured I'd share it here, too. Here is a barebones walkthrough with config files.
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Home Assistant 2023.8: Translated services, events, and wildcards!
www.home-assistant.io 2023.8: Translated services, events, and wildcards!Sentence triggers can now contain wildcards, a brand new event entity, all services are now translated into your language, generate images with OpenAI's DALL-E using Assist, and more!
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I heat my home with BOINC/Folding@home and made a script to tie it to a thermostat
github.com GitHub - makeasnek/BOINCThermostat: A simple script to resume/suspend BOINC based on ambient temperatureA simple script to resume/suspend BOINC based on ambient temperature - GitHub - makeasnek/BOINCThermostat: A simple script to resume/suspend BOINC based on ambient temperature
Hopefully this is helpful to somebody else here. For those who don't know, BOINC is a tool that enables you to donate your computer's spare computational power towards scientific research. Cancer, alzheimers, climate research, you name it, there's a BOINC project for it. And when your computer is computing, it generates heat. It's as efficient as using a space heater or any other form of "electric resistive" heating aka anything that's not a heat pump/reverse ac. 1 watt into your computer = 1 watt of heat, same as any space heater, electric baseboard heater, ceiling heat, etc.
In winter, BOINC and Folding at home make up 100% of my indoor heating, and I wrote a script to tie this all to a thermostat. It will turn BOINC on/off depending on the room temp, and if you have multiple machines you can have each at a separate setpoint to give you slightly more granular control than "off" vs "full blast". The script can pull in data from a web url (what I use), a command-line command, or a custom python function.
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Smart switch module that works as a Thread border router
Hello team,
I'm looking for a smart switch module like Sonoff MINIR4 https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switches/minir4/ that could work as a Thread border router.
I came across an announcement of MINIR4M that would support Matter but it's supposed to communicate over Wi-Fi. Alternatively, I've noticed that some users flash their Sonoff devices with Tasmota to enable Thread communication but I'm a complete newbie here and have no idea whether some version of this firmware could extend MINIR4 with Thread.
Do you know any devices like this. I'm happy with any example, not only Sonoff. Also happy to spend a whole flashing custom firmwares.
Thank you!
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2023 Prime Day Deals - Home Assistant Compatible, 100% local only.
cross-posted from: https://lemmyonline.com/post/53654
> I dug through the prime deals and picked out the relevant devices, for which I have personal experience using, and would recommend to others. > > Every device linked, will work with home assistant, more or less natively. The majority of them, are flashable to esphome or tasmota. And ALL of them will work 100% locally.
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Getting amazon smart thermostat data to influxdb
Is there any way to get data from an Amazon smart thermostat (eg. Heating/cooling state current temperature, etc) into influxdb? If so, how? Thanks.
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The Verge: How to start a smart home using Home Assistant
www.theverge.com How to start a smart home using Home AssistantHome Assistant is the smart home ecosystem for nerds who like to really personalize their tech.
"I am one of these people, and I am only getting worse over time, which is why I have converted my smart home to Home Assistant, the home automation solution for true freaks."
I'm OK with that. 🤣
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Aqara announces their U100 Smart Lock with Matter and Apple Key Support
www.theverge.com Aqara’s new $190 smart lock works with Matter and Apple’s Home KeyIt joins the Yale Assure SL and SwitchBot Lock as the only smart locks that work with the new smart home standard.
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Smart Home Week at The Verge
www.theverge.com What is a smart home, and do you need one?The ABCs of smart homes, along with their pros and cons.
All this week, The Verge is reviewing their picks for the top 5 smart home platforms - including Home Assistant.
Their list:
- Amazon Alexa
- Apple Home
- Google Home
- Samsung SmartThings
- Home Assistant
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Preferred Voice Assistant For Home Automation?
Just wondering how everyone is controlling their smart home these days. Do you use Alexa, Google, Siri or something else?
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Home Assistant 2023.6 now supports network attached storage
www.home-assistant.io 2023.6: Network storage, favorite light colors, new integrations dashboardAdd and use network storage, the integrations dashboard got a revamp, add your favorite colors to your lights, copy & paste support for automations, blazing speed through Python 3.11, and Matter an...
If you're running Home Assistant on an SBC other storage constrained device, you can now use available storage elsewhere on your network. Game changer, at least for me. Lots of other updates in this release, too.