For those who don’t know, Home Assistant is a Home Automation Hub which can interact with just about any smart device in the home. It can, for instance, turn on lights in a room when a human is detected or set a scene for watching TV when Netflix ix selected on the TV.
Apart from running all this stuff in the background there is the option to create fancy dashboards to monitor the home and interact with all the cool stuff.
This is the dashboard for my office …
… with which I can adjust the heating and monitor my 3D printers from anywhere in the world.
Or the kitchen dashboard …
This is the main area of the house so on one screen, I can check the weather, control the robot-vac and see that I have an appointment at The Griffin tonight !
The interface is very customisable and I have spent many hours, recently, getting this look. Each tile can be customised using code like this …
To achieve the look that I sought, I added a lot of the same code to each tile before I discovered that a lot of the code can be stuck into a template and referenced each time it’s needed, cutting down on the amount of code.
To most people this post is just a load of geeky nonsense but by making it, I can, at least, remind myself as to how I did it so that in a few months time when I need to change something, I’ll have a bit of a head up.
While I’m prattling on about Home Assistant, I received this device via Ali Express, today.
It’s a presence detector. Not the old fashioned PIR which detects movement but using radar technology, this will actually detect when someone is within range – even if they’re sat still watching TV.
I can use that information to automate lights or heating in a room and switch things down/off when the room is vacated.
Another great thing about Home Assistant is that a lot of the controlling is done locally without reliance on the internet and without Jeff Bezos spying on me (tin foil hats to the ready).
impressive Kev! Love all that