Currently my HA homepage looks like this:
Let's first go over the various parts of the UI, and how my setup is currently working befor diving into the configuration file details.
By default there can be a lot of other things showing up, with pretty awful names, for example the Fibaro Z-Wave switch has various sensors and parameters, they all appear in there but you can rename them to friendly names and hide the unused ones in your configuration.
I have only a few automation for now, but they are actually pretty handy, most of them are based on the custom Input Select.
If the automation based on media centers is enable there is: when a media player starts playing dim the light when paused or stop, raise the light to its usual level
It may sound like I didn't setup much, but just that is actually really nice, we actually don't use the wall switch anymore, and only on a very few occasion change settings manually, it just works and we don't have to do anything, that's pretty awesome.
Now for the ugly, if you just wanted to know what I did with HA quickly, that's about it, you can stop reading here :).
The configuration isn't very hard to understand, but it still does require a bit of fiddling and tweaking before getting things right.
Most of the components pages explains pretty well what to do and how to configure you devices. In addition there is the Examples or Cookbook page where you can find configuration from other people and snippets of automation for some commonly used cases, like dimming the lights when playing a movie.
The configuration is in YAML and can be splitted in multiple files using !include, I didn't do it myself yet, but will probably have to go this way if it gets any more complex than it currently is.
homeassistant: # Name of the location where Home Assistant is running name: Home # Location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets latitude: 48.80569 longitude: 2.130699 # C for Celsius, F for Fahrenheit temperature_unit: C # Pick yours from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones time_zone: Europe/Paris # Discover some devices automatically discovery: # Allows you to issue voice commands from the frontend #conversation: # View all events in a logbook logbook: # Enables the frontend frontend: # Track the sun sun: # Prediction of weather sensor: platform: yr # Show links to resources in log and frontend #introduction: # Enables support for tracking state changes over time. history: # Checks for available updates updater:
You give your setup a name, a location (to fetch sunrise/sunset), unit for temperature and your timezone.
Then in my case: enable discovery (that's how the chromecast is found), disable conversation: you can give voice command to HA from the webui, but I'm not a native english speaker, so I don't like talking to my phone in english, plus I do hope to do a better voice control system (always on) at some point. enable logbook, frontend, history and update checker enable sun tracking, based on location, that will create the sensor on top of the web UI and allow automation based on sunset and sunrise times * disable introduction: that is a nice to have at first when learning HA, but after that it mostly get annoying to me.
When using Z-Wave, you have to configure your dongle, as explained on the Z-Wave page:
zwave: usb_path: /dev/cuaU0 config_path: /usr/local/lib/python3.4/site-packages/libopenzwave-0.3.1-py3.4-freebsd-10.3-RELEASE-amd64.egg/config polling_interval: 60000
As explained earlier, by default, all sensors, switches, and their various settings will show up once HA detects them, the annoying part is that can create a lot of clutter and be pretty ugly as the default names of some devices are pretty awful.
To solve this HA provides the customize: section, where you can hide some devices, and change the friendly_name too. In the configuration you will still have to reference the original name, but at least for the UI you'll get a nice name.
Note that this is a subsection of the homeassistant: section, this one would be a good candidate for the first !include in my configuration file.
customize: sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_energy_3: friendly_name: Total Salon sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_power_3: friendly_name: Instant. Salon sensor.yr_symbol: friendly_name: Meteo sensor.everspring_ad147_plugin_dimmer_module_alarm_level_2: hidden: true sensor.everspring_ad147_plugin_dimmer_module_alarm_type_2: hidden: true sensor.everspring_ad147_plugin_dimmer_module_power_management_2: hidden: true sensor.everspring_ad147_plugin_dimmer_module_sourcenodeid_2: hidden: true sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_alarm_level_3: hidden: true sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_alarm_type_3: hidden: true sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_heat_3: hidden: true sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_power_management_3: hidden: true sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_sourcenodeid_3: hidden: true sensor.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_system_3: hidden: true light.everspring_ad147_plugin_dimmer_module_level_2: friendly_name: Lampadaire light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3: friendly_name: Salon light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3_2: hidden: true light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_step_size_3: hidden: true light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_step_size_3_2: hidden: true
I don't think it is worth going over every part here, it is pretty clear, and definetily won't match anyone else setup, it is just here as a reference.
Here I use the sensor word in as a generic term, I'll include quite a list of various things within it, first the device tracker: I currently don't use it but it can be a great way to automate things based on weither you're home or not.
device_tracker: platform: nmap_tracker hosts: 192.168.0.1/24 home_interval: 10 track_new_devices: no
There are other possibilities as you can see on the Presence Detection section of the components, one of the most popular being owntracks. But I went for a simple nmap on my local subnet, this will create a known_devices.yaml containing the list of the known hosts. As you can see I used the track_new_devices: no option, to avoid having any new device showing up, a friend who borrow your wifi for example etc, by default they will all show at the top of your homepage, that's why I used this option and the track: no option in known_devices.yaml file to limit to only tracking our two phones.
I also added speedtest to test our link speed periodically, and transimission to see if torrents are actually doing anything:
sensor 2: platform: speedtest minute: 30 hour: - 0 - 6 - 12 - 18 monitored_conditions: - ping - download - upload sensor 3: platform: transmission host: 192.168.0.2 port: 9091 monitored_variables: - 'download_speed' - 'upload_speed'
And that's it.
The chromecast is automatically detected via the discover: module and there is no configuration entry related to it, except for the automation which is another part of this post.
So I only had to configure our Openelec media center, which is based on Kodi, which have its own component:
media_player: platform: kodi host: http://192.168.0.X port: 80 name: Kodi
I have 2 switches added manually in the configuration, the wake-on-lan for my computer:
switch 1: platform: wake_on_lan mac_address: "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX" name: PC raton host: "192.168.0.X"
The host ip is used to check if it is up for the switch in the web UI.
The second one is the input select to choose mode:
input_select: current_mode: name: "Mode" options: - Jour - Soir - Soiree - Nuit initial: Jour icon: mdi:power-settings
It creates a current_mode device you can refer to in the automation, you simply list the options and the initial setting to use when restarting HA, I added an icon, but that's optional.
You can also add sliders or boolean input, they are listed in the Automation components page.
If like me you use HA as your browser homepage, it can be useful to add links to some often used website or services, this is where you can use the weblink component, I simply added my transmission url:
weblink: entities: - name: Torrents url: http://192.168.0.X:9091 icon: mdi:download
That's it about the devices and sensors we can now dive into the automation, I'm not sure it is really worth to detail everything, it can help getting a grasp of how it works, but every setup will be different, and most Examples will cover this better than I'll be able to. So what I'll do is simply explain what part of the automation I'm talking about, and paste the configuration part related to it.
All the automation rules will reside in the automation: section (who whould have guessed?)
So, most of my automation is based on the mode the setup is running at, and when switching from one to another changing the light accordingly.
Switching to day mode, turn off all the lights. Currently we only have 2 lights both in the living room, so it make sense to simply use the service light witouth parameter so it act on all the light:
- alias: Jour trigger: - platform: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: "Jour" action: service: light.turn_off
Switching to evening or party mode, turn the living room above and behing tv to 90/255 setting, only difference is that the media playing automation won't trigger if mode isn't evening:
- alias: Soir trigger: - platform: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: "Soir" action: service: light.turn_on data: entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 brightness: 90 - alias: Soiree trigger: - platform: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: "Soiree" action: service: light.turn_on data: entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 brightness: 90
Switching to night mode, set the light to the lowest level, we generally leave it running overnight, at this level, the consumption is about 2W, which really isn't much:
- alias: Nuit trigger: - platform: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: "Nuit" action: service: light.turn_on data: entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 brightness: 10
To automate switching from one mode to another, we have 3 time triggers, one for the evening, starting 2.5 hours before sunset
- alias: "evening time" trigger: - platform: sun event: sunset offset: "-02:30:00" action: service: input_select.select_option data: entity_id: input_select.current_mode option: "Soir"
One for the night, with a hard limit set at 1:30am:
- alias: "night time" trigger: - platform: time hours: 1 minutes: 30 seconds: 0 action: service: input_select.select_option data: entity_id: input_select.current_mode option: "Nuit"
And one to go back to daytime mode, using the sunrise time:
- alias: "day time" trigger: - platform: sun event: sunrise action: service: input_select.select_option data: entity_id: input_select.current_mode option: "Jour"
Now we have the mode switching automatically, let's handle the dimming of lights when watching movies!
Now based of if we are in the evening mode or not, we want the media players to trigger dimming the light. I tried to add a check on the content type for kodi, to avoid the dimming when listening to music, but it apparently dosen't work, and I didn't find out why yet.
For kodi:
- alias: "Kodi paused/stopped" trigger: - platform: state entity_id: media_player.kodi from: 'playing' condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: Soir - condition: template value_template: '{{ states.media_player.kodi.media_content_type != "video" }}' action: service: light.turn_on entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 data: brightness: 90 - alias: "Kodi playing" trigger: - platform: state entity_id: media_player.kodi to: 'playing' condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: Soir - condition: template value_template: '{{ states.media_player.kodi.media_content_type != "video" }}' action: service: light.turn_on entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 data: brightness: 30
For chromecast:
- alias: "chromecast paused/stopped" trigger: - platform: state entity_id: media_player.ratoncast from: 'playing' condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: Soir action: service: light.turn_on entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 data: brightness: 90 - alias: "chromecast playing" trigger: - platform: state entity_id: media_player.ratoncast to: 'playing' condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_select.current_mode state: Soir action: service: light.turn_on entity_id: light.fibaro_system_fgd212_dimmer_2_level_3 data: brightness: 30
Currently one thing I would like to automate is running a script that would switch off the tv/amp when both media player have been idling for 30 minutes and if my wife computer isn't on.
For the light, I would like to replace the modes/timeslots in most cases except the night by a lux detection, and adjust brightness based on how much light there is in the living room.
I want to add other light in this room for other situation, I would love to have some sensors for temperature and humidity both inside and outside, automate the curtains too, and add some kind opened door/window detection too.
The possibilities are endless, only money, and ability in diy is the limits!
And that wraps it up for this serie of post on home automation, I'll try to keep posting the changes and hopefully my DIY sensors/controller based on ESP8266 in the near future.
31 juillet 2016 12:42:45 -- tags [ home-automation , home-assistant , light , dimming , configuration , yaml ]
