Smart Home Automation

[gregatron5]

@KingKrayola How are you controlling the lights? I got some Zigbee Tuya bulbs from Ali Express (don't think I'll ever do that again…) for Home Assistant. I use them in my kids' rooms so I can have their bedside lights red when it's time to be in bed and green when they're allowed to go downstairs in the morning. I use Home Assistant and initially I had ZHA setup. I was baffled because there was an audible click when the lights transitioned from red to green and there was no brightness control when using a color. Any temperature of "white" would respond to brightness control, but colors were either on or off.

I switched from ZHA to zigbee2mqtt and all the sudden I got nice transition fades between colors and brightness control, too.

Anyway, that's just a lot to say that how you're controlling your lights could affect their functionality.

 

[gregatron5]

I am just learning Docker (for other things) and I'm confused as fuck. I'm also fairly competent technically. I understand the concepts, but getting it to work correctly has been a huge PITA. That said, I'm running HA on an ODROID and it works just fine, probably almost identically to how it would work in a VM. If I was trying to use HA in Docker I probably would have given up a looooooooong time ago.

The only people who can start out using HA on Docker are people who already know and use Docker. It may be easy for you because you've been doing it for such a long time, but it's not that easy for most other people. The level of effort to get comfortable with Docker is significant, and the time and effort to gain the proficiency it sounds like you have is likely well beyond what people who don't use Docker for a living are willing to put in.

 

[gregatron5]

Something went wonky with my z2m. I can control my lights in both Home and HA. Sort of. I have to change color or settings or something to knock them back into working, but then they mostly work. Except HA shows them as "Unavailable" for hours or days despite having just controlled them.

 

[gregatron5]

I've been thinking about getting into ESPHome stuff, but I think I'll pass. For now, at least.

 

[gregatron5]

Is there a "smart" thermometer, preferably Home Assistant compatible, that can use the temperature of sensors instead of itself? The thermostat in this house is just a sheet of drywall (and maybe a sheet of aluminum ductwork) away from the air return, which runs down the wall directly behind it. This makes the thermostat read 3º F cooler than the rest of the main floor. The problem is once the sun stops heating things up and the rest of the house cools down, it would get too cold if I left it 3º colder than I want it. So I want a thermostat that can ignore its own readings and only use those of remote sensors. Does such a thing exist?

(It's a rental, so I'm not going to think about relocating the thermostat or doing anything with the A/C unit otherwise.)