Smart Home Automation

[ChaoticUnreal]

So I made a small post about if this was a valid topic in the musing thread but finally got it mostly done setup (there is no done) so figured I'd make a post.

So to start these are the definitions that I use

Smart Device = any device that allows remote control of any type including voice via Alexa/Google Home, This is what most people think when someone says smart home.
Smart House = uses sensors & automation to control Smart Devices
WAF = Wife Approval Factor = How Non-techies approve of the smart home

Also my current devices make use of the following protocols Wifi / Z-wave / Zigbee / MQTT

Some history I got started on the smart home thing last christmas (2017) when my wife bought me a Smartthings hub and 4 sengled white light bulbs. I expanded this to a couple motion sensors to control the lights and then quickly realized that while Smartthings is good for simple things if you want to do more complex things or use multiple conditions to trigger things you need to use their webcore platform which shifts all the logic to the cloud and honestly I'd rather have my house controlled from my house. So this recent August (2018) I built an actual server for various things (plex / nextcloud / NAS) and bought a zwave & zigbee usb stick so I could eventually replace the Smartthings hub. The server is running Unraid for the base OS and everything runs in docker containers so it should be runnable anywhere.

Anyways I decided to use Home Assistant (HA from now on) as the brains for my house. It is an open sourced python software that uses Yaml files (text files with formatting requirements) to configure everything and has components to interface with pretty much any product you could want. Bonus points every single thing runs locally on the server (There is a cloud component but the logic still runs locally). Since everything runs on text files I can use Github to store my config in.

So to get into my full set up this is the hardware I currently have

Smart Plugs
3 Wemo mini plugs (wifi)
3 Gosund (wifi) (not in use yet)

Lights
4 Sengled Light bulbs (Zigbee)

Switches
2 Zooz dimmer switches (Z-wave)

Sensors
2 Bosch Motion sensors (Zigbee),
2 Zooz 4-in-1 sensors (Z-wave),
2 smartthings door sensor (Zigbee)

Speakers
Sonos speakers (wifi)

Media Players
3 Chromecast (wifi),
Samsung Smart TV (wifi)

Other
Xiaomi Smart Cube (Zigbee),
SmartThings Hub (Wired),
Tomato Router (Wired),
3 Pixel Phones (Wifi),
1 Amazon Echo Dot (Wifi)

On top of the hardware I have a few notable software pieces in use. I'm using Owntracks which sends gps from the pixel phones back to a secured MQTT broker running on my server which then sends to an unsecured internal only MQTT server (the smartthings bridge doesn't support authentication) which HA then reads. I use MariaDB to store all the data from HA (purging at 5 days old) I also have a few other software tied into HA that I don't do anything with (I'm still in get all the data setup mode ) Plex, Tautulli (plex monitor), qBittorrent, Transmission.

Also have a bunch of components not currently being used (same logic not sure what I'll end up wanting), ISS (let me know when ISS is overhead), Space Launch (Lets me know when the next launch is), Moon/Sun/Season (Moon Phase/Sun rise&set/Season), YR (Weather from Norwegian Meteorological Institute), Darksky (weather from darksky)

So I do still use the Smartthing Hub but I found a piece of software that takes events from Smartthings and sends it via MQTT to HA and then sends things from HA back to Smartthings. This is due to the fact that zigbee IMO sucks as a protocol since it is open for anyone to modify you end up with each developer making a slightly different version so getting them to talk to each other isn't the easiest and while the light bulbs should in theory work directly from what I've been able to find online the motion sensors don't currently so I just left them all on the Smartthings hub for now.



Since they are somewhat odd these are the setups for my living room lights coming from smart things

---
#
# MQTT virtual light from smartthings
#
platform: mqtt
name: "Living Room"
unique_id: "Living Room"
state_topic: "smartthings/Living Room/switch/state"
command_topic: "smartthings/Living Room/switch/cmd"
brightness_state_topic: "smartthings/Living Room/level/state"
brightness_command_topic: "smartthings/Living Room/level/cmd"
brightness_scale: 100
payload_on: "on"
payload_off: "off"
retain: true

So smartthings post on the state topics and then HA posts on the command topics, HA uses a brightness scale of 0-255 while Smartthings uses 0-100 so need to set that

When I was just starting to set this up I luckily found someone else who had set up the files in a way that make sense and split them up so each file does 1 thing, since the standard way of doing the config for HA is to just use 1 or possible 2 files. Since I didn't have many files done yet I converted and it is so much neater. HA does have a nice way of storing "secrets" in a separate file that you can then reference which is useful when posting them online or getting debugging help so there are several times in the files where I have !secret X that means it will go to the file and get that key and replace it.

Anyways I'm not going to post all of my setup files here but I'll post some of my automations.

---
#
# Code to dim the living room lights when I start playing a video
#
id: Wacth the Movies
alias: "Media player playing"
initial_state: 'off'
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    to: 'playing'
    from: 'off'
  - platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    to: 'playing'
    from: 'paused'
  - platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    to: 'playing'
    from: 'idle'
action:
  service: scene.turn_on
  entity_id: scene.movie_mode_on

---
#
# Code to return the living room lights to normal after playing a video
#
id: The player Stopped
alias: "Media player paused/stopped"
initial_state: 'off'
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    from: 'playing'
    to: 'idle'
  - platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    from: 'playing'
    to: 'paused'
  - platform: state
    entity_id: media_player.living_room_tv
    from: 'playing'
    to: 'off'
action:
    service: scene.turn_on
    entity_id: scene.movie_mode_off

---
#
# Scene to dim the lights when watching movies
#
name: Movie Mode On
entities:
  light.living_room:
    state: on
    brightness_pct: 35

---
#
# Scene to return the lights to normal
#
name: Movie Mode Off
entities:
  light.living_room:
    state: on
    brightness_pct: 100

So these two automations work together (and I need to tweak since they currently have a low WAF hence initial_state: 'off') with the two scenes to when we start playing something on the chromecast in the living room it will dim the lights to 35% and then when we stop it will put them back on at 100% This is something that was not possible with smartthings.

Another automation I have slowly fades in bedroom (and my kids bedrooms) lights on over 30 mins (for me and 5 for the kids) using a python script (its not natively supported by the lights I have)

This makes use of a condition and the Workday sensor which takes into account holidays and weekends to know when it is a normal work day (it doesn't account for vacations) and I need to actually wake up

---
#
# Fade in the master bedroom lights over 15 mins
#
id: Master Bedroom Wake up
alias: Master Bedroom Light Fade In
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: "05:30:00"
condition:
  condition: state
  entity_id: 'binary_sensor.workday_sensor'
  state: 'On'
action:
  - service: python_script.fade_in_light
    data:
      entity_id: light.master_bedroom
      delay_in_sec: 18
      start_level_pct: 5
      end_level_pct: 100
      step_in_level_pct: 1

And the actual python script

entity_id  = data.get('entity_id')
sleep_delay = int(data.get('delay_in_sec'))
start_level_pct = int(data.get('start_level_pct'))
end_level_pct = int(data.get('end_level_pct'))
step_pct  = int(data.get('step_in_level_pct'))

start_level = int(255*start_level_pct/100)
end_level = int(255*end_level_pct/100)
step = int(255*step_pct/100)

new_level = start_level
while new_level < end_level :
	states = hass.states.get(entity_id)
	current_level = states.attributes.get('brightness') or 0
	if (current_level > new_level) :
		logger.info('Exiting Fade In')
		break;
	else :
		logger.info('Setting brightness of ' + str(entity_id) + ' from ' + str(current_level) + ' to ' + str(new_level))
		data = { "entity_id" : entity_id, "state" : on, "brightness" : new_level }
		hass.services.call('light', 'turn_on', data)
		new_level = new_level + step
		time.sleep(sleep_delay)

So it takes as input the entity_id (all devices in HA have an entity_id to define them) (light.master_bedroom in this case), a start / end % (5/100), how much to increase each time (1 % in this case), and how often to increase (18 for this one)

So that is the basic config / automations done and at this point I've replicated everything that Smartthings was doing (and then some extra) so I still need to do the UI aspect (again via text files, I've been the only one looking at it the others in the house just want it to work) but HA lets you have multiple UIs and I've seen a few examples I'll probably be going over again to get ideas.

Along with HA I also have plans to go making some arduino sensors which talk over radio (nrf24L01) and to a controller and then over MQTT so I can get more data about my house and whats going on in it. I also want to get some raspberry pi zeros and use those for room presence detection. This is all in addition to buying more lights and motions sensors to go along with them.

Anyways this is getting long enough already so I'll end it here but if anyone has any questions or comments I'd gladly answer them the best I can.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Tell me more about Home Assistant.

Currently I have an absolutely ungodly amount of Hue bulbs (seriously, these things rock), countless Caseta switches, a Homekit-compatible fan, and two door locks. One lock is Homekit (a Kwikset) which works but I don't really like it; and a Schlage (bought before I decided to go Homekit, so it's only Z-wave compatible; I bought it just to avoid having to use a key), and some Best Buy homekit switches from Ebay (they cancelled them but they seem to work decently for me for things like basements, etc). I have other random items that I've not yet setup or only partially setup - a Z-wave flood sensor, some Tuyo (I think) switches with a silly "Smart Home" app (super cheap compared to Homekit ones; I'm hoping to bridge somehow).

I have a Raspberry Pi with a Razberry Z-wave board running Homebridge, and I'm trying to decide if I want to make the jump to Home Assistant in full - or continue to use Homebridge to get more controls. The automation programming capabilities of Homekit itself are ... limited (you can't have two conditions for an automation beyond X + time of day, for example).

So Home Assistant really can interface with pretty much anything, and there is a Raspberry Pi image to run it in (Hassio) which has addons (which are different from components) that run in dockers.

It looks like there two HomeKit components one that lets you control HA things in HomeKit and the other that lets you Control HomeKit things in HA. There is also a component that will interface with the Hue hub to allow you to control the bulbs direct from HA. I already touched on Z-wave but those should interface easily with HA. As for the Tuya switches there is a component for them as well (I just got some for xmas but haven't opened them yet)

So all of those devices should integrate well with HA and then you can do lots of automations (and can interface with Node-Red for even easier automations)

Going to touch on the Bulb vs Switch debate. I'm strongly on the Switch side with the exception being colored bulbs. The reasoning behind it is simple everyone already knows how to use a light switch. If you have bulbs (like I said I have several) your at the mercy of the power switch. If someone flips the switch because they don't remember or don't know your fancy smart devices no longer have power so you can't do anything with them. Now my house has overhead lighting everywhere so that could be another factor since most of my lights are 2 bulbs.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

The bulb/switch is currently my biggest "regret" I have - as the Caseta switches are pricey but wonderful - however, they won't let me do things like color-change the bulbs and I'm really getting a kick out of daylight white during the day and yellow/orange white at night.

What I've found for the Hue bulbs is that you can buy things like this really help - I just "hardwire" the light on and put the dimmer control over it, most people can figure that one out.

Some have made a shim so you can install the Phillips Hue dimmer thing over a normal decora switch, which is pretty nice.

I'd really like a "hardwired" switch with a smart bulb that talked to the switch, but such is life in the first world with its problems. A switch that could alternate between on-daylight, on-amber, off would be just about perfect for me.

Yeah like I said with the exception of colored bulbs I'd prefer switches any day. Currently the 4 bulbs I have 2 are in the master bedroom closet with a motion sensor (where the switch still gets flicked off on occasion) and 2 are in the living room with a motion sensor and alexa near by that can shut turn them on/off via voice.

I am tempted to get a few colored bulbs for the living room so I can say have them be blue in the morning if its going to rain so I know to grab the umbrella.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

My condo is 95% smart now - most bulbs and switches are WiFI although there are couple of light switches that don't have neutral wires and the lights themselves use odd bulbs that don't come in WiFi. Got an August smart door lock for Christmas.
I'm running Homeassistant with HADashboard as the front end on a Nexus 7 tablet.

My biggest accomplishment to date was writing automations that will turn off the Wyze camera (connected to a TP Link wifi plug) when we get home and vice versa. I looked into Owntracks for presence detection but so far NMAP + Bluetooth detection is working great.

Yeah I've been working on the UI now that I've got all the automations moved out of smartthings.

I've also moved all the zwave things out of smartthings and they are not connected directly to HA. I had them coming through the MQTT bridge for a little while but it was causing issues when my kids were supposed to be sleeping and it would just keep turning the lights on. My 7yr old and my wife were not happy about that.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So onto the UI aspect Here is the UI for my first floor

---
id: First Floor
title: First Floor
icon: mdi:sofa
cards:
  - type: vertical-stack
    cards:
      - type: entities
        title: Lights
        entities:
          - type: custom:slider-entity-row
            entity: light.living_room
            toggle: true
  - type: vertical-stack
    cards:
      - type: entities
        title: Media
        entities:
          - type: custom:mini-media-player
            entity: media_player.living_room_tv
            show_tts: false
            show_source: true
            show_progress: false
            hide_controls: false
            power_color: true
            more_info: false
            volume_stateless: true
          - type: custom:mini-media-player
            entity: media_player.livingroom_sonos
            show_tts: true
            show_source: true
            show_progress: false
            hide_controls: false
            power_color: true
            more_info: false
            volume_stateless: true

and this is what it looks like

Little too simplified for how I want it to be but it works for now.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

HA is great. For quite a while I was using openHAB, but it is all written in Java, and me and Java.. well we dont get along. I've been programming in Python for over a decade, and when I discovered a python based home automation package, I was thrilled.

We have all of our lights (a mix of Insteon switches, Philips HUE bulbs, some Z-Wave stuff, and a custom bridge using an ESP32 to some MiLight stuff), our home theater (I had to write a module to integrate my projector's serial communication with HA, and our Denon receiver was already supported), Nest thermostat, and some custom blind motors. It is all running from a raspberry pi that lives in a server closet. I really need to dive back into it and see what is new (haven't messed with it for a year now).

Quite a bit new. They just released a new version today (or last night) they are on a 2 week update cycle so new things are always being added.

In my own house I finally got around to adding an extra wire to my thermostat and installing the zwave one that I bought so I can now control my thermostat automatically and have some simple automations to set the heat/AC (they are separate entities in HA) based on time of day/occupancy/season (winter for heat, summer for AC). I might try my hand at writing some more complex ones that take into account the external temperature since I had been dropping the heat to 50F at night (11pm-5:30am) but the wife complained the house was too cold at night when it was 4F outside at night.

I'm still on the search for some time to get a mysensors gateway up and running so I can add even more sensors to my house and then I'm thinking of getting some sonoff/shelly 1 wifi relays to connect to the rest of my dumb switches since I don't need dimming everywhere.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Minor update.

So the wemo switches had been pissing me off recently and I got these (3 pack not 4 but same plugs) for christmas but they phone home to china all the time (someone claimed every 10 secs) but thankfully they just use a ESP8266 so they can be flashed to internal only.

It seems that Tuya has a site where you can design the switches/plugs and then sell them so there are lots of devices that work with this flash.

So I just flashed 3 of them and have replaced the 2 wemos that were in use (the 3rd was for a xmas tree). So now that they have been flashed they talk over MQTT to HA and work flawlessly (it was a 50/50 if the Wemo showed up).

Github to the flashing code Then just need a linux device with wifi and a second network connection (I used a raspberry pi 3), another device with wifi, and the plug.



The only thing I had to do after flashing was track down what the wiring is inside the plug (google for the plug and tasmota it was on the first page.) and then I had to flash the sonoff firmware since the OTA flasher flashes the sonoff_basic which doesn't suppport MQTT Discovery and I was feeling lazy

I really wish I had a use case for more plugs because they are so cheap. In theory the same firmware / flashing tool should work on light switches but I haven't gone and tracked those down yet.

I found this whole thing when this video showed up in my feed and I already had the plugs.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I’m boring and just use SmartThings (ST) to connect Z-wave and Zigbee devices. I favor switches over bulbs to keep the family happy. Accent lights and bulbs are Hue based, which ties into ST as does my Nest, Sonos, and Echos. The Samsung smart buttons make lamps with bulbs easier to control rather than relying on a smartphone or voice control. We also have a few Sylvania outdoor lights that work really well with the system.

We’ve gotten some good use out of water sensors in our sump and under a few sinks and I currently have my garage doors tied into the system with contact/motion sensors so I can see if they’re open or not.

I know cloud services are not preferred over local control, but I didn’t want the system to rely on me or any shared hardware. I might change in the future as I play with Raspberry PI but for now we’re pretty happy with the system.

So the thing that pushed me away from Smartthings and cloud based control was a string of ST outages and of course it happened after finally training the wife that the living room lights would just come on when you walked in the room (motion sensors controlling smart bulbs) and then complaining to me that its not working.

As it stands now that I've moved (almost) everything to run on HA locally (I have 2 motion sensors still on smartthings cause they aren't supported yet) if something isn't working it is something I'm responsible for and could go fix. So far the only times the lights haven't worked either we didn't have power to the house (or had lost power and my server hadn't restarted) or I was activatilly adding more features to HA (changing things requires a restart for lots of things so if the timing just right it can cause automations to not work)

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So new updates.

Got TTS working with my sonos had to play around with the settings on my nginx proxy and change the ssl_ecdh_curve because it seems sonos doesn't support the most secure possible one.

Found a nice script that saves the state of the sonos, unjoins it from any group it happens to be in (I don't really group mine since they are on different floors), plays the messages (calculates the length of the message), and then restores the state from before. So I've now gone and updated a few automations that had been using pushbullet to notify me (mostly door open for too long) to also announce to the living room speaker. I'm also working on getting it to read out the weather for the day so I can have it tell me what to expect in the morning.

I've also find Picroft and ordered the USB mic needed to play around with that. Not sure if I'll end up building or even keeping it around but seems like a fun project to play with.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Just want to see if I'm following this correctly this basically allows you to interrupt whatever Sonos is playing, play the message and then go back to what it is doing? Kinda like how the GPS direction will do when I'm listening to music? That is really nice. Can't wait for my home to be finished.

Yes I did notice that when listening to pandora (what I was testing with) that the song will change but I think that is more of an issue with the fact you're playing the pandora station and not any specific song

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So new updates.

Got TTS working with my sonos had to play around with the settings on my nginx proxy and change the ssl_ecdh_curve because it seems sonos doesn't support the most secure possible one.

Found a nice script that saves the state of the sonos, unjoins it from any group it happens to be in (I don't really group mine since they are on different floors), plays the messages (calculates the length of the message), and then restores the state from before. So I've now gone and updated a few automations that had been using pushbullet to notify me (mostly door open for too long) to also announce to the living room speaker. I'm also working on getting it to read out the weather for the day so I can have it tell me what to expect in the morning.

I've also find Picroft and ordered the USB mic needed to play around with that. Not sure if I'll end up building or even keeping it around but seems like a fun project to play with.

As if this whole topic didn't grab my attention, this post definitely did. Interested to see how you get this integrated.

I'll be sure to post once I get something working. Was an easy choice for me to play around with at least since it only required a 7$ USB mic (PS3eye) since I already had a pi and speakers (which I need to find but worst case I can play around with headphones)

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

More updates.

So I recently started running a minecraft server for some friends however they keep crashing it, it is heavily modded. Since I'm running it in a docker I was able to installed HA-Dockermon which exposes the status of my dockers to a rest API that I'm then able to use in Home assistant. So now all of my dockers are switches in HA and I can stop/start them from the UI and automation. So I was able to write a simple automation that restarts some dockers if they are off for more than 5 mins. Most of my dockers are fairly stable so I don't feel I'll actually need to keep track of most of them and they tend to only stop working if I lose power/internet (Or I'm breaking something)

I finished writing automation for a bunch of TTS things with my doors (when they are open for more than 5 mins it yells at you to close them), and then have one that will tell me the weather but still need to figure out the best way to trigger that so it doesn't upset the wife (she can sleep in more than I can).

I was finally able to play with picroft and set up was simple enough (after determining the microsd card I was trying to use was corrupt but I had another one that worked fine) I am currently having issues getting it to work with Home Assistant (I had it working once but then it stopped). It seems to not want to save the ip address of HA (and the docs aren't that good on if it should be my external address or my internal one). I still haven't found my small speakers (I may have got rid of them in a cleaning purge) but I've been testing with headphones for right now. Not sure if I'm going to keep picroft around honestly. The cost of making one is about the same (if not slightly more) than the cost of an amazon echo/google home mini so while its a cool concept and if I wanted to 100% remove every cloud device I'd be all over it. Still I'll probably keep playing with it for a little while longer since I have all the parts already.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So I'm at the point where I'm just giving up on zigbee and looking for deals to replace all my zigbee devices. I had been having an issue where when HA was updated it would lose my zigbee bulbs but I got that fixed.

Now they are just dropping off randomly and not repairing at all. Thankfully I only have 4 bulbs (2 in my closet and 2 outside) but I now have price alerts on some wifi bulbs that can be flashed to local control only because this is bothering me this much. (And of course I get to here from the Wife about how "My dumb lights don't work" right after I finally got her used to the lights in the closet turning on/off by themselves. The 2 wifi bulbs that I've flashed (and the switches) have been rock solid with the only annoyance (and I could probably script it) is if my entire server goes down the states (and discovery) get lost due to the MQTT being down. But that takes all of 5 seconds to fix and they go back to working like flawlessly.

Honestly the reliability of the wifi things I have is making me rethink using them over Z-wave devices (which have also been rock solid but cost more)

Beyond troubleshooting this zigbee issue I haven't done much with my HA system since we are in the get the house ready to sell phase so I don't want to be putting new switches in the walls.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Hmm, quality really fluctuate between makes and models on zigbee. The IKEA bulbs were a PITA to pair due to like ~5cm range, you need to press them on the hub, and even after that, hop limits of ~10m line of sight. Philips ones are said to be much better, but they are like 3x the price... Home automation is still very wild west...

But once the IKEA stuff work, they work well. I never had any issues running my timers to turn all the garden light on and off in months.

Yeah Zigbee is an open "Standard" so each manufacturer makes them slightly differently.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Minor update.

So the wemo switches had been pissing me off recently and I got these (3 pack not 4 but same plugs) for christmas but they phone home to china all the time (someone claimed every 10 secs) but thankfully they just use a ESP8266 so they can be flashed to internal only.

It seems that Tuya has a site where you can design the switches/plugs and then sell them so there are lots of devices that work with this flash.

So I just flashed 3 of them and have replaced the 2 wemos that were in use (the 3rd was for a xmas tree). So now that they have been flashed they talk over MQTT to HA and work flawlessly (it was a 50/50 if the Wemo showed up).

Github to the flashing code Then just need a linux device with wifi and a second network connection (I used a raspberry pi 3), another device with wifi, and the plug.

The only thing I had to do after flashing was track down what the wiring is inside the plug (google for the plug and tasmota it was on the first page.) and then I had to flash the sonoff firmware since the OTA flasher flashes the sonoff_basic which doesn't suppport MQTT Discovery and I was feeling lazy

I really wish I had a use case for more plugs because they are so cheap. In theory the same firmware / flashing tool should work on light switches but I haven't gone and tracked those down yet.

I found this whole thing when this video showed up in my feed and I already had the plugs.

So minor non-update. Had need for more smart plugs and bought some more of these and it seems they have updated the stock firmware so you can no longer use the OTA flash as of right now.

So now I have 4 smart plugs I don't really want since they require connecting to some chinese companies cloud.

So if you were planning on going that route I'd double check before buying.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So finally found time to make some things and found a ~11$ camera online and cameras are useful for home automation things.

images spoilered for hugeness

Spoiler

Please ignore my cluttered desk and shitty solder joints it's been awhile

It is an ESP32 board that I got off amazon (2 pack for 22$) It is pretty plug in play (there are examples on the esphome site for all the types of ESP32Cams out there). I soldered on a usb plug to power it and stuck it in a project box that I had with some sugru to hold it in place. I did have to buy an FTDI adapter to flash it since it doesn't have USB built in but it is useful for other things.

Anyways the actual code is espHome which lets you create it via a yaml file and it creates all the actual code for you. I have the docker image running which lets me easily get logs and do OTA updates to it.

From the HA side of things, esphome hooks into Home Assistant via an API (that was created just for that) so it pulls in all the abilities of the unit (camera/flash/status led in this instance (through the flash/status aren't useable in the box)). I then just put a picture card on one of my lovelace interfaces and it just works.

I might play with the code on the camera a bit more since others have reported it has issues overheating but I haven't run into that yet.

I have another camera to build still and then 2 more modules I'm planning on setting up as sensors (need a new freezer temp sensor) so I'll hopefully find time to make that sooner rather than later.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So never posted about them here but I finally fixed my issues with the zigbee lights. I bought an Ikea Zigbee repeater and Zigbee outlet that both function as repeaters and that improved the mesh in my house letting all my lights work flawlessly now.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Fun fact I just had brought to my attention because of my smart home. Astronomical winter doesn't start for another month and according to my wife that is too damn long to wait for the heat to turn on.

So I've gone and rewritten my thermostat automations to trigger off the expected high/low temp (AC/Heat) instead of the season. After rewriting them I posted on the HA forums about a better way to handle the set points (both when to turn on and what to turn it to) so might rewrite them all over again to make use of the suggestions I got but right now I have 10 different automations (5AC/5Heat) and I think I'll be able to consolidate that down at least a little bit.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Wait - you had your heat based on the SEASON and not the outside temp?

I'm intrigued but simply cannot comprehend that - it's already hit NEGATIVE ZERO here.

For some reason in my head "winter" started next week and not in ~5 weeks. And we have good insulation and blankets and normally don't turn the heat on till after Thanksgiving anyways (it's a NE thing) but we have got a massive cold front recently that has dropped the temps in the house too low for the wife.

And when I wrote the automations it was like 70 daily so heat wasn't that high on my list.

Now have it set to turn the heat on when it is expected to have a low below 50 and the ac comes on when the high is expected to be above 85, which I wouldn't be too surprised to have them both trigger on the same day at some point in the future (NE weather )

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I am just getting started with some home automation stuff. I am starting out with some wifi/mqtt devices such as Sonoff Mini, Shelly 1, and Wemos D1's controlling some outdoor LEDs. In playing with this stuff I realized the same control stuff could solve an annoying problem I have elsewhere in the house.

We have a room that was added on to the house three owners ago that has three doorways into the room. When they added this room they were cheap and only put a light switch next to one of the doors. It would of course be very useful to have switches by the other two doors. Obviously this can be taken care of by home automation.

So my question is does anyone have any recommendations for remote, wireless switches to use for this? Ideally they would be wifi, because I can then easily control this room lighting with something like Home Assistant.

Honestly I'd ignore the switch (or put in a smart one) and motion sensor so the light comes on when you enter

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Now have it set to turn the heat on when it is expected to have a low below 50 and the ac comes on when the high is expected to be above 85, which I wouldn't be too surprised to have them both trigger on the same day at some point in the future (NE weather )

Just as long as they're not both running at the same time That would be an annoying power bill to receive!

It is one unit that I leave on auto and set the high/low temp (even when off I just set the high/low to extremes (50-90)) so it shouldn't be an issue.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Responses inline

NecroThread, ARISE!

Necro image tax first

Brought to you by KnowYourMeme

OK, so necroing this thread because I'm about to jump in and start in on this. Consider it to be a fresh, greenfield apartment. Nothing 'smart' about it in any shape, manner, or form. Except possibly the sole inhabitant, although there remain some questions.

Yeah kind of put a pause on new Smart home stuff since planning on moving soon so don't want to make any major changes that I'll then have to undo.

My thought is probably just jump all the way to Home Assistant. Debating between a VM on my NAS, or just straight RPi4 so I have it as a separate device so it Just Keeps Working(tm). There's no way to cluster/HA them, right? Guess I'll have to automate the config backups and some extra hardware around. Also planning on getting Zwave & Zigbee adapters for Home Assistant. Prefer no additional hubs for other things, but if I need to, I need to. Can stick them out of the way pretty easily.

I haven't fully looked into it yet (they just released the first version today) but there is a new Z-wave intergration that looks like it offloads Z-wave to another controller and then sends commands to HA via MQTT. There is a docker image and a Home Assistant addon so it can all be the same system as you HA instance but could also be another system.

Also since I first made the thread they have decided to rename HA (IMO in the worst possible way) so what was HASS.io (the image for raspberry pi that managed dockers as addons) is now Home Assistant and Home assistant (the actual software) is now Home Assistant Core so something to be aware of.

Devices:

First, light bulbs. RGBWW (warm-white/cool-white) is desired, mostly in standard A19 or so Edison screw, but I do have some indoor in-ceiling lights in the new place. Haven't gone up to see the exact size, but I assume their whatever standard size, possibly Edison screw but not certain. Also have a great private outdoor back patio, I'll be doing a bunch of stuff out there, but for now holding off on anything major while I work out my awning/shade situation, then planning and doing the entire lighting situation. Hue, something else?

I'd advise really thinking if you need the colors and if you don't just get smart switches. It is really frustrating to expect your lights to turn on and they can't because someone else flipped the switch and killed power to them. Also switches can be cheaper if you have multiple bulbs off one switch (most rooms in my house are 2 bulbs per fixture so a switch costs about the same as replacing all the smart bulbs)

I just did a quick search for colored bulbs (not even sure if they are RGBWW or just RGB)
Z-Wave were ~30$
Zigbee were ~25$
Wifi (flashable with a custom FW when I got them) were ~9.50$ (2 pack for 19$)

And those are just the cheap ones the Phillips Hue bulbs are 90$/2 they are zigbee and I think they work directly with HA but honestly haven't looked into it.

Sensors/cameras. I do plan on a camera out in the back to capture the critters that stop by, daytime at the hummingbird feeder and rest of the day in general. Possibly even a camera at the gate into the back alley looking out over the edge. Otherwise, what's fairly common? It's a modest size 1 bedroom, have separate living room, bedroom (with closet), kitchen/dining area (where my desk is), small hallway with built-in shelves/closet, small bathroom.

I don't have any cameras (yet). I played around with the ESP32 cam but it kept overheating so it is currently non-functional.

I have a few motion sensors that trigger lights (one in the master closet when you walk in and then shuts off after 5 mins no activities, one in the living room with a 20 min timer for shutting off, and then one in the kids room that just shuts off if no activity in the middle of the day)

I have a few temp sensors (most zigbee sensors come with a temp sensor as well) around the house so I can get an average temp of my house (right now it is 73F average in my house but 70F down where the thermostat is) I currently don't do anything with the various temp sensors but it is on my todo list.

Audio, low priority for now. I have a receiver & 5.1 speakers in my living room, and am planning on putting a couple of speakers out on the patio, and some at my desk/kitchen area. Would like to possibly have them all as separate zones but centrally controllable. Sonos? Something else? Would stream Pandora, SoundCloud playlist, from 1 (or more?) phone/tablet type devices, such as from guests.

I had Sonos speakers from before I started the whole smart home thing (relative used to work for them and they were a gift) and they work decently well. Sonos's recent attitude towards loyal customers has soured me on them so I probably won't be buying more or recommending them.

Switches. If I have all the bulbs connected, I should replace my switches to allow for the 'smart' control setup, right? Although my front/rear door lights I might just leave on their own switches and simply get 'smart' switches to allow remote control of them lights.

I'd recommend smart switches over smart bulbs unless you need color. If you want color you can install a smart switch as well but if you want a cheaper option you could also wire the switch to always be on and put a blank face plate where it was.

For outside lights I currently have smart bulbs in the fixtures (1 in the front 1 in the back) because I had them after switching to a switch inside and it would have cost more to do switches in those locations since they are single bulbs (~8$ bulb vs ~30$ switch last I looked)

I saw some folks have a 7-9" Android tablet of various kinds as a controller without needing to go to the computer/browser, how's this work out in practice?

Most of the ones I have seen (for HA) just have the browser full screen there is custom integration that will let you control the browser from within HA (pop open a window if someone rings a smart doorbell)

Other devices? Thoughts?

You didn't mention a smart thermostat that is a must (IMO) for a smart house.

I'd recommend HACS be the first custom integration you install. It provides you with a tab on the left that lets you search and easily install other integrations and lovelace cards (The frontend is called lovelace and each displayed this is a card) as well as themes.

HA has been doing a big push to make set up easier and has recently passed developer guidelines that all integrations going forward have to be configurable via the UI so it is some what easier to get going on things.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

NecroThread, ARISE!

My thought is probably just jump all the way to Home Assistant. Debating between a VM on my NAS, or just straight RPi4 so I have it as a separate device so it Just Keeps Working(tm). There's no way to cluster/HA them, right?

It looks like you can run it in Docker, so you could have whatever Docker calls a cluster, either Docker native or managed by Kubernetes. Then you just need a method to have multiple synced copies of your config data.

I don't have experience with clustering but not sure that would work with z-wave/zigbee things since they are normally paired to a single controller at a time. There are ways to do Z-wave/Zigbee via MQTT into HA however so that might work. But then you still have a single point of failure in whatever device is handling that.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

OK, light bulbs, I'm thinking Sengled or Lifx. Anyone have experience with either? Or other, preferably moderate cost RGBW bulbs? Needs to play well with https://www.home-assistant.io as that's what I'm planning on using.

While this is from a year ago, the chart with lumens/etc I expect to be largely accurate. The Lifx and Sengled both seem pretty good in terms of lumen/control, although Lifx has a much wider color temp they claim to be able to reproduce which is nice.

I'm OK with zigbee stuff as well, there's a variety of HA zigbee/zigbee2mqtt hardware/hacks out there for me to try.

I figure I'll start with 1 bulb, get it integrated and working, and then move on from there.

I have 4 of these which can (could be when I bought them in January 2020 anyways) be flashed with tuya convert and then controlled over MQTT. I also have 4 of these Sengled ones. They were the first bulbs the wife bought me with a smart things hub (~2 years ago now) I had some issues with zigbee range but after adding a zigbee repeaters and zigbee wall plug (both from ikea) they have been rock solid. Those ones don't do color however.

I use Home Assistant with both of those so can attest they work fine.

I've mostly switched off of using bulbs since I didn't need RGB (the 4 RGB bulbs are in side lamps, 1 of which is used as a sleeping clock for my kids (dimmed red when they should be sleeping and green when they can be awake)) besides the specific use I just don't use the colors as much. I've thought of using the ones in the lamps near my bed as an indicator of the weather for the day (blue for rain/snow, red for over XXX temp) but I haven't got around to that yet.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I really prefer a well defined standard. All the Zigbee Lightlink stuff can be connected to a Hue bridge, or a USB stick / Home Assistant. Z-Wave is another big one.

The wifi ones are often hopeless security wise, while the ZLL/ZWave ones are relatively well protected (requires a reset / physical access to (re)pair).


You can also get a ton of accessories for ZLL, like random wall switches (from Busch Jaeger, Gira etc) that you can pair without going through a gateway and they all work well together.


As I posted before I got a bunch of IKEA Tradfri lamps, switches etc that speaks ZLL. If I ever get bored with the built in hub/app, I can script that myself in HA.


The problem with wifi is that everyone is reinventing the protocol on top of udp/tcp and be stupid about it. Nothing works together.

So most of the no-name wifi lights switches are running Tuya which is a company that just rebrands things. They even have a site to order them. At one point there was a fairly easy process to flash custom firmware onto them. That was fixed and then recracked but I'm not sure of the current state of it (I haven't needed new things) That said I have 4 light bulbs and 7 switches that do not communicate outside of my network that I flashed with Tuya Convert they communicate with a local MQTT broker that I have running and then my HA picks them up from there.

Are they less secure than Z-wave/Zigbee yes. But I don't need to worry about someone hacking my whole network from them since they don't talk outside my network. So someone is either already on my network or my network is down (they fallback to broadcasting an AP if they can't connect to the designated network)

My personal usage is a mix of wifi bulbs/wifi plugs/zigbee bulbs/zigbee plug (mostly for range extension)/z-wave light switches

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Wow, so you buy Tuya (or rebranded), super insecure stuff that can be exploited OTA and rewrite the firmware to an open source ROM like Tasmota? That sounds like a lot of work for a light bulb / smart plug but hey, everything except a single brand Hue / IKEA Tradfri setup is a lot of work to be honest. Just don't leave them on the default ROM.

It might be some work (it's like 10 mins) but it's also half the cost for a tuya bulb compared to the first zwave one on Amazon probably 4x cheaper than hue/ikea bupbs

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I've recently purchased a string of these LED strings that I plan on turning into Christmas Tree lights (I'll buy more strings once proof of concept).

Current plans is to use use ESPHome to drive it and hook it into my HomeAssistant.

Also working on getting NFC tags working since they recently added support for those to the official HA apps.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

How are you going to use NFC tags?

The only actual use case I can think of currently (long story short don't have as much smart lights/things as I'd like due to planning on moving) is on the washer/dryer to set a delayed notification on when they should end to the cell phone that scanned it.

But yeah I bought a bunch of stickers back when I started looking into tasker and never had a compelling use case for them so they have just been sitting on my desk.

I can think of a few places around my house that I might put some to control smart lights / switches where I don't have a physical switch because it would be slightly faster than opening the HA app. I'm not sure if I can have an NFC tag and scan it with a device that doesn't have HA on it allowing others to control smart lights without giving them full access to my HA so might see if that is possible.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

My (albeit poor) experience with strip lighting, was that getting it to resemble any real white color is an expensive challenge. I did some RGB lights at one point, and the whites were so blue they were hideous. RGBW is a slight improvement, but I'm still just trying to settle on a pleasing color instead of a real white.

I'm looking into a couple of projects now. One is one that I mentioned a while back in the all-purpose thread.

Looking at getting an IR break beam sensor to kick on a light in the litter box area of our utility room. I found this project which looks easy enough, but I'm completely in over my head when it comes to programming any of this stuff. I've never really played with electronics, and I'm barely functional at coding. I can cookbook something all day long though. Is there an easy/good resource "for dummies" on what's going on with these ESP chips and how they interact with other things? I've come up blank when searching, but I'm sure I'm just missing a simple keyword or two to get to the right resource.

I would check out ESPHome (https://esphome.io/) makes setting up ESP based projects super easy. Just need to create a yaml file (formatted text) and it does all the heavy lifting for you.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Does it matter which chip you buy? Adafruit has a bunch of $20 ones, and aliexpress has a bunch of $3 ones. I assume there's a middle ground that's easy enough to work with.

Doesn't matter for ESP Home. Might matter for what features they have ESP32 is the newer one that has bluetooth while I think the ESP8266 just has wifi.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

The Wemos D1 mini and various clones are cheap and good, I got some for Esphome for temp/humidity sensor project.

I just purchased a 4 pack of the xiaomi temp/humidity BLE sensors for ~16$ (it was ~8$ before shipping) and plan on using a NodeMCU / ESPHome to read them and get the data into HA. I don't think I could make a temp/humidity sensor for 4$ and saw a video about using ESPHome to read the sensors. With this 4pack I should be able to get a temp/humidity from most of the rooms in the house. (I might buy more to fully cover the house but I think it will just be hallways/bathrooms left to cover.) and I can use the NodeMCU to do other things as well.

According to the video I watched the newer Xiaomi ones require flashing a custom firmware (via your phone) but it seemed simple enough.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I managed to get it working. It ended up being a longer process than it needed to be because of things I've been putting off (namely an upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 on my home server).

Installing Home Assistant was super easy, and the interface is actually really good. I'm considering trying to replace my smartthings hub in order to keep things local. Most of my automations are pretty simple, and HA would handle them easily. HA is providing tie-in between the ESPHome devices and the Hue bulb that I put down in the basement, and the routine/automation programming was very powerful. Lots of options. You can sequence things out. You can filter the break beam break timing so that it has to be broken for X seconds to do anything.

Cool project. Now I just need to make the installation more permanent and get things lined up downstairs. And I'm looking for other fun stuff to do/automate now. Into the rabbit hole I go.

That's how I started with HA. There is actually a tool (our was anyways) that will act as a go between HA and smartthings. It was called smarter smartthings or something like that. Googling should pull something up. I fully moved off ST awhile ago so not sure if it's still functional.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

So I mostly finished making the Christmas lights I mentioned up thread.

Images spoilered for size.

The actual ESP8266

Spoiler

Excuse my poor solder skills I am so out of practice.

Here they are at white full brightness

Spoiler

And here (through you can't see cause its a picture) is a rainbow fade at 20% brightness

Spoiler

I'm using ESPHome for the code of it so it was super easy to set up (code under spoiler tag)

Spoiler

# WS2811 Christmas Lights
#
substitutions:
node_name: christmas_lights
ap_name: "Christmas Lights"

esphome:
name: $node_name
platform: ESP8266
board: nodemcuv2

packages:
wifi: !include common/wifi.yaml
api: !include common/api.yaml
ota: !include common/ota.yaml

# Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
captive_portal:
web_server:
port: 80

# Enable logging
logger:

light:
- platform: fastled_clockless
chipset: WS2811
pin: GPIO4
num_leds: 50
rgb_order: RGB
name: $ap_name
effects:
- addressable_rainbow:
- addressable_rainbow:
name: cust_Rainbow
speed: 10
width: 50
- addressable_color_wipe:
- addressable_color_wipe:
name: cust_Color
colors:
- random: true
num_leds: 50
add_led_interval: 100ms
reverse: False
- addressable_scan:
- addressable_scan:
name: cust_Scan
move_interval: 100ms
scan_width: 50
- addressable_random_twinkle:
- addressable_random_twinkle:
name: cust_Twinkle
twinkle_probability: 50%
progress_interval: 32ms
- addressable_fireworks:
- addressable_fireworks:
name: cust_Fireworks
update_interval: 32ms
spark_probability: 10%
use_random_color: true
fade_out_rate: 120

I'm still playing around with effects but I currently like the rainbow twinkle and will most likely use that. I've bought 4 more sets of lights (50 LEDs each) to use on the actual tree since I can daisy chain them. Not sure if I'll have to add more power in but the strings have wires for that so it shouldn't be to hard to do.

I am running into an issue with getting HA to turn them on via NFC tag. Still working through that I'm reading the tag correctly and the command is making it to the lights but they don't actually turn on.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Nudging this thread since it looks like I might need to change up my relatively simply home automation stuff.

I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant since I switched to it from Smartthings ~2 years ago now. The only thing I don't like about HA is the stupid naming scheme they have now (I technically use Home Assistant Core in a docker on Unraid)

I have the same Zwave/Zigbee stick and it works great.

HA recently did a large overhaul on the Zwave subsystems, Long story very short they deprecated the Zwave integration and are recommending Zwave2JS. This mostly works for me there is some issues with the docker image I'm using for the Zwave2JS server getting out of sync with the current version of HA but I don't think the Addon has this issue since they are both controlled by the HA team, and it was mostly fixed by sticking the version to the previous one. (The Zwave2JS has updated the websocket API (I believe) and the next version of HA will use that correctly but it is still Beta on HA end and the new API is not backwards compatible) The new integration does have some benefits like the ability to do firmware updates on the devices so I was able to update my light switches to enable multi-tab events. This functionality hasn't been exposed in HA yet but they claim it is coming (it is in the server for it)

HA also has a few Zigbee integrations. I've used the ZHA and the HUSBZB-1 stick works great for it. The only issue I had was due to having no repeaters and that was solved by buying a cheap ikea repeater and a ikea zigbee wall plug (each was like ~20$ IIRC and I could probably get away with 1).

Having said that there is another Zigbee integration that I haven't tried that works sends the commands over MQTT, last I looked the HUSBZB-1 was not supported for it. Given that both Zwave and Zigbee now have a way to detach the control from HA a case could be made for having separate Zwave/Zigbee sticks but it is not needed.

I've never run HA on a pi but I believe the suggested way to run it on a pi is to use an SSD drive and not a memory card. I just run it on my NAS which has a much higher uptime than my computer can hope for.

I know you said you wanted to move away from the smartthings hub and that is a great long term goal but you might want to take a look https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016 ... Assistant/ Which will let you slowly move devices over to the HA and then get rid of the Smartthings hub all together.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Ordered that GoControl stick and it's on the way. On the HA site under the ZigBee section where it lists compatible devices it mentions that they recommend updating the firmware on the stick, but it's not needed. On the page they link to do the updating it mentions that version 6.x of the firmware requires HA 0.115 or higher. I haven't gotten HA running yet so can't look at the version listed there, but from the various links for the HA software I keep seeing 5.12.

Soooo, does that mean it's above the 0.115 version then or is this some kind of odd mismatch in version naming? Also has anyone even bothered with updating the firmware on the stick or are you just using it stock as you got it?

Plus assuming I'm reading it right this firmware is only on the ZigBee side of the stick and doesn't do anything with the Z-Wave side which seems kind of odd. But I guess each radio type could be running on their own chips and there's no real connection between them internal to the stick.

And I think Smartthings has figured out I'm thinking of replacing it and all of the issues I've been having recently have disappeared suddenly.

HA redid their version scheme recently (either december 2020 or Jan 2021) to be year.month.point. So the most recent one is 2021.2.3 they are in a monthly release so another one should be coming out soonish (normally the first week of the month). And that is above the 0.115 version

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I think the ZWave JS is the future in HA, but I haven't done much of any reading on it in HA.

But awesome! Sounds like some good progress.

Yes that is the new recommended method.

Also I believe a new version of HA is due out today with more fixes for ZWaveJS. But I haven't run into any breaking changes when updating in at least 6 months so upgrading should be fairly easy.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Ran into my first issue with migrating over to HA. I have a number of Osram Lightify 2-button switches that I use for controlling lights. And since these switches have been giving me issues with Smartthings recently figured I'd start there. Now I don't actually have the Lightify bridge or use their cloud system at all, which is good since it looks like they'll be shutting that down this year, but with Smartthings they worked right out the box and could use the Smart Lighting SmartApp to get them controlling things.

I didn't have an issue pairing the switches with HA but the only entity it showed was battery level. Tried removing it and re-pairing it but still just got the battery level entity. Poking around I found an add-on, hassio-zigbee2mqtt, which is a HA add-on that I guess mirrors zigbee2mqtt, but in HA add-on form, which has support for this switch. I'll need to dig into this some more since I also will need the Mosquitto broker add-on as well to work. It's kind of odd since the Smartthings sensor worked so well and it detected all of the options on the device so was kind of expecting similar results. Poor assumption on my part I'm sure since I only had a sample size of 1 to go on.

I also had an odd issue with the switch I wanted to control. It's a Leviton plug-in Z-Wave device and didn't have an issue getting it paired with HA. I added a card to the Overview page and it seemed to work. If it was on and I clicked the card it turned off. But clicking it again didn't turn it back on, but it would turn on if I grabbed the dimmer slider and pulled it to 100%. Is this a weirdness with the card/device? Or is that page more just for displaying information and not interacting with things?

Edit: Did some more playing around and it looks like zigbee2mqtt isn't compatible with the GoControl stick. So looks like I either need to find some new switches or get a different stick to use for ZigBee devices that works with it.

Edit2: Looking at it some more and it does seem like it might be better to go with getting a different stick to use just for ZigBee stuff. Was also looking at deCONZ since it also supports many of the ZigBee devices I have but like zigbee2mqtt it doesn't work with the GoControl stick. So it does look like the best thing might be to buy a ZigBee only stick, leaning towards the ConBee II right now, so that I can use one of those for my ZigBee devices instead of ZHA.

The problem with ZigBee is it's an Open Standard so while everything is Zigbee everything is a slightly different flavor of Zigbee so you end up with devices that don't work with each other.

I've been lucky in that all of my Zigbee devices work with the goControl stick I have.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

I know I was able to adjust some parameters via the ZwaveJS server UI but I haven't tried it via HA and don't have any experience with the RPi version or addons.

That said I found this
https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/47640

So it might be a larger issue.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

Nice find. Out of curiosity do you recall what your search was for that? Guessing that since I was using stuff like Z-Wave JS that it didn't come up due to not matching exactly. Plus I'm not using the zwavejs2mqtt add-on either, though wondering if that could be something to look at as there seems to be some interesting features to it.

And of course as part of preparing to add to the thread I went and did it again and now it's working... Trying to think of what I did since my post and I the only thing that comes to mind is restarting the Z-Wave JS add-on. For some reason in the configuration for it there was no device listed (even though it is working) so I changed it to point to the stick and due to the change it restarted the add-on. Though oddly looking at it now the device field is blank again so maybe that is just what it does.

I can't remember if I restarted (or if it forced a restart) after updating the core last night, but maybe that was all it took to get it to work. Oh the irony of the "shutdown and restart" solution actually being the solution.

So funny enough I was looking for Zwave_js issues since my thermostat is not updating in HA (it updates the thermostat but doesn't reflect the change in the UI).

But if you click on the integration:zwave_js label it should pull up all the other ones and that one seemed to fit the issue you were having.

 

[ChaoticUnreal]

*sigh*

Might have to re-install HA from scratch, shouldn't be that much of a surprise to me. So the couple of devices I had flashed with ESPHome a loong while back and hooked up to my old attempt at HA found the new HA, and connected to it. However I don't seem to be able to delete the entities/devices associated with it, even after I take it offline and re-flash it with a new config for the IOT VLAN and such. What a PITA.

Good thing I don't have a whole lot hooked up. I hope the few devices I have, currently, I'll just be able to make sure to copy the configs & names over to a new install, which I can then still do OTA flash/update with.

Better I realize this now, and fix it all up, rather than find it after I've got a ton of stuff associated and setup and working.

Might be too late for this now but if you go in HA and go to configuration devices you should be able to delete anything. Also if this is your only ESPHome device you should be able to just delete the integration. I've had to manually go and delete devices when I changed them physically (went from ESPHome to WLED for some lights)