Aotearoa Daily Kōrero 22/8/2023
Aotearoa Daily Kōrero 22/8/2023
Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So, how’s it going?
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@[email protected] (or anyone else that can help), I finally got around to playing with the home assistant stuff. I got one of these, plugged it in, and it didn't come up as a device to add. I can't seem to find instructions on adding it manually. Any tips?
Home assistant is great isn't it? I started with it a couple years ago, it can be as complex or as simple as you like. I haven't added anything new to it for quite awhile though
It's a rabbit hole :D I'm no longer allowed to talk about it at the dinner table.
Automated the lights, device usage for kids (mostly), garage door, my standing desk with height sensor & relay, IR blasters, and panel heaters with thermostats. That's enough for now :)
Similar here lights, heaters and heatpump, IR blaster, some other misc notifications and speakers and things. No money for more fun gadgets at the moment though :(
How do you do speakers? I've got a bluetooth speaker but couldn't find a way to control it via HA. It's too far away from the HA server, tried to connect it to a tablet I'm using as wall panel, but then couldn't play music through it. Tried with DLNA apps but that was slow/unreliable. Also tried Browsermod but that didn't work either. Also saw people using a Chromecast with HDMI to Audio splitter and then cast to the Chromecast, seemed overkill to me. Finally, saw some ESPHome projects connected via aux to the speaker, but didn't seem very reliable.
Think best way is to get proper smart speakers like Sonos, but I find them too expensive.
I would love some smart speakers but I find them pricey as well.
I'm using a Chromecast audio with an old pair of speakers on a smart plug. The speakers are old enough that it only has an IR remote.
I have it setup so:
- Chromecast is detected as Playing, speakers turn on.
- IR blaster sends commands to set the volume and bass level I like.
- Dashboard displays additional buttons for controlling volume via IR blaster.
- If Chromecast stops casting, the speakers turn off and buttons on dashboard disappear.
Main reason it's setup this way is I already had the old speakers and getting a Chromecast audio and IR blaster was much cheaper than getting good smart speakers. Although you're right it would be much simpler if I just get some decent smart speakers.
That's a nice automation. Where did you get CC Audio? As they are no longer sold.
I got it shortly after I heard they were discontinued, so there was still some stock floating around. I think it might have been through Dick Smith/Kogan at the time?
If you're willing to go down the Amazon route, I think Echo Dot's have an aux out? They had a device called the Echo Input as well which was like and Echo Dot without the speaker, doesn't seem available anywhere though. I would probably only try this if I could be sure I could disable the microphone and smart speaker functions.
Thanks. Yeah I don't want any cloud based stuff, especially not from Amazon as I'm afraid they will shut down Alexa if they keep losing money on it.
Guess I'll wait for now. Thanks.
Understandable. I feel like there must be something out there that works as a replacement, I just haven’t looked very deeply into it.
Sorry one more post :) I just found this one on Aliexpress which seems promising. Works via a dedicated app but it seems compatible with HA. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003331228026.html
Could be an affordable alternative.
This is an ESP32 solution: https://www.instructables.com/MQTT-Audio-Notifier-for-ESP8266-Play-MP3-TTS-RTTL/
I saw ESPMuse, which is an ESP32 based speaker, but has terrible reviews.
I just checked TM, CC Audio is sold for $200 there. Crazy. https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace/electronics-photography/media-streaming/chromecast/listing/4278960673
I don't know if it's great, this is my first foray into it, and I've fallen at the first hurdle 🙁
I think it's strength is the amount of integrations they have, you can just mish mash devices from different systems and get them all under one dashboard.
For example, in mine I've got devices using Hue, Smart things, Tuya, Sensibo etc.
I'm hoping to get a bunch going but I'm starting with baby steps 🙂
Hope you enjoy it!
I found this guys channel great for giving me ideas on what could be done: Smart Home Solver
The Home Assistant forums have loads of info too.
Thanks! I'll check them out.
What device have you installed it on? I've got it on a Raspberry Pi4; I had to reboot it before it showed up. It should show up automatically in Home Assistant, otherwise something is not right.
I'm also using a Raspberry Pi 4. I've rebooted and still nothing. I'm running the linuxserver.io docker container, if that helps.
I'm running the official HA docker image, perhaps that could be the difference? https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/raspberrypi#docker-compose
On the host, if you run
lsusbit will display all connected devices. I'm pretty sure it should show up as "Silicon Labs CP210x UART Bridge" Perhaps also try a different USB port, and don't forget to use the extension cable.Finally, it could be that the device is bricked, I've seen a couple of mentions of that on the internet. Seeedstudio is a respectable shop so should resolve that.
Cheers, looks like it's showing up fine with that command so must be an issue with the privileges or image. I'm currently rebuilding using the official docker image/docker compose.
I just checked the docker-compose from linuxserver and they don't have "privileged: true" which could be the issue.
While linuxserver is awesome, I use it for all other stuff, I'd recommend to go for the HA official docker compose.
Thanks! Updating to the official HA image and docker-compose seems to have worked (like you mentioned, it was probably the "priviledged: true" missing that was causing the issue.
I've just worked out how to add the sensor, and it seems to be working! Although the button is not working very well. I popped the cover off and it seems the button is not attached properly to the circuit board, I managed to use a screwdriver to get it into pairing mode but I'm gonna try to get a replacement one.
Awesome, glad that it's working. Please add mains powered devices to increase range and stability. I've got these smart switches which are awesome.
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMg26em
Good luck
Bought one of those as well! You previously mentioned them so I got one.
With the humidity sensor, it reports the last update was almost an hour ago. Does that mean it's no longer connected? I can't seem to see any indicator in HA as to whether something is currently connected or not.
In HA if you go to the device, there's an option Zigbee info which shows latest seen.
If humidity doesn't change it won't update it, to save battery, at least that's how I understand it.
At the start I've struggled a lot with devices that became unresponsive. Adding a bunch of mains powered devices solved that.
Thanks, I'll keep an eye on it. It's literally sitting right next to the Skyconnect dongle so shouldn't be a range problem. I'm pretty sure the temperature would have changed so I'll try re-pairing and see if that helps.
If it goes out of range then back in, does it automatically reconnect? And do you know if the button on the humidity sensor does anything other than holding it in for 5 seconds puts it in pairing mode? Wondering if you press it briefly does it turn it off or reset the connection or anything.
So... Zigbee should be self correcting / fixing. But I've had sensors become unresponsive and had to re Add them to ZHA. Don't have to delete them first.
The button wakes up the sensor if pressed briefly, something you should do when you click reconfigure. I've never had luck with reconfigure though.