The more layers of abstraction, the less likely you'll be able to deduce why something happens!

​@@JeffGeerling like Ansible ;-)

My exact reaction when I set up pi vpn and it just worked.

Many people (Me included) use home assistant as the hub that brings together lots of different components, then use NodeRed as an automation engine.

I think Home Assistant is an example of developers building something they want and not really listening to end users. I think it's great but I'm a developer and I often just write yaml files to do what I want. Not a very friendly solution to anyone that doesn't know the system. Now my SO just puts in feature requests 😂

Been using home assistant for years. It has come a LONG LONG way since the early years. More and more stuff is being brought into the GUI. I personally love the YAML style configuration but hey, I am a developer. It is really nice to be able to click through the GUI and only get into the YAML stuff when its required for advanced cases.

Same boat here.. Node-Red and mqtt are so flexible and easy to configure. I have bunch of wifi plugs and few 6 port extensions all configured just the way I want..

I'm using HA for quite a while now - and still frequently get stung by things like "what's that on/off value called again", or having to resort to templates to implement a missing brightness attribute of a lamp while the lamp is off. The YAML is nice and powerful - but the documentation makes learning it not easy. And somehow some actions got a lot of love - like the very magical service action, while others like setting lights directly are really cumbersome.

Normal switches aren't dumb, they're doing their job 99% right after installation. You know what's dumb? Needing internet connection to turn on your light. Smh

Me too I'm so hyped about this, I LOVE new tech and automation, but I will never willingly install listening devices and wireless cameras in my home lol anything that has an always on speaker MUST be local, or it's not an option. Ill finally be able to move beyond basic smart home crap

@@stellviahohenheim You know being wifi enabled doesn't somehow disable the physical switches right? Lol it ADDS functionality, it doesn't take any away. Idk exactly what you were talking about tho cuz OP edited the comment lol

@@stellviahohenheim private and local is offline it runs off the servers you have in your house you can connect to internet but you can do what I do and have it only connected between my own servers so I have full surveillance of my 20 acres in my hands only and i can connect everything and make it all automated like some tony stark shit and it would be all offline all in my hands with a solar system array all off grid data transfer through all my servers photos videos movies anything you can think of in a digital format will go on a server.

omg, this seems more like what Jeff started talking about at the beginning of the video, and why I decided to watch it, so it was a bit batey :P Could you give any examples/links on it? And @Jeff Geerling it would be amazing if you could get more into it please!

A mechanical switch under his seat or floor mat if he is not moving much might be better but I understand his pain at work on pc you don't move much all lights go out..

some sort of pressure sensor on his chair, although it would be funny if he got off the chair and the light went out.

Did not knew that was a thing so thanks.

@@affieuk lol that would be fun :P but for real, there otta be a better/simpler way to do this. Incl. the same IR sensor but just measuring the amount of IR and sound in the room maybe.

I often try (but don't always succeed) to document the first time using anything - that's basically how I ended up writing Ansible for DevOps, it started as a series of my own notes to help myself... then I polished them a bit and a book popped out after a while!

😆 I was doing the same Rob! Great to see you get on board Jeff, I feel you can add SO much value once you get your head around it. Thanks for your work!

I hope that the HA devs look at this video with the same eyes. It used to be a lot simpler for new people and I know it’s possible, I just think the devs have gotten too deep to remember what it’s like when you don’t already know how things work.

Oh YES ! this is a super useful video for the Home Assistant Usability team (assuming there is one). The video showed several occasions where a small change in the UI would provide great benefit for a (new) HA user. Excited to see Jeff, the RPI and YAML master, doing HA videos.... All the ingredients are here for super content in the future. Mark my words. @Paul Hibbert: take a look at this video. You will enjoy it as much as I do enjoy yours.... The HA, the HA, the HA... Oooh the HA

I admire Jeff with all his knowledge, but I too was like... no!!!! I'm more of an MQTT guy, now I see why more people don't use it. zigbee seems pretty easy to set up.

Glad it's not just me. ;)

Home assistant has literally saved the food in my fridge. It is so cold right now the fridge in my garage is not working, by putting a light in the fridge to warm it up (ironically so it will work better) and controlling that light based on time patterns I have kept my fridge at 32 and my freezer at -10. HA also reminds the family about chores via an integration with a custom discord bot, turns on my office lights after my morning alarm goes off and I have my phone off of charge for more than 60 seconds. Along with a whole slew of other useful things.

The problem with HA is that is begining of the end of this platform unfortunetelly - pletny of boomers asking for more Google, Amazon integrations and that will turn HA (already turning) into another spying no privacy platform. I strongly suggesting to find alternative because way too many westerners got "involved" and crack in HA are already visible. Sad but true.

I really don't see the point in any of these technologies. Seems more like technology for technologies sake. But then again, I'm in my 50's. But don't call me a boomer. I was born in '70, gen-x and proud of it.

@@peterbelanger4094 I'm in my 50's and I don't have enough of this stuff

When forums started in the early internet, they were completely insecure. Any user could inject html. When Bitcoin wallets started, they just stored the key on the drive in a perfectly easy to find folder. When smartphones started, they didn't even have a password by default. Hell, https is *recent*. Security is never the first step of a new market

Totally obvious. It's not like people use the term device completely different 😅

Yeah I have had HA installed for a year now, and everytime I go into it I just give up after staring at it.. lol I just dont get it

Jeff got the hang of things Way too easily for my liking, took me far longer than I'd care to mention. The penny only dropped regarding Devices & Entities, when I built my automatic gate opener. That thing has more entities than a 747 cockpit after I was done with it (Slight exaggeration there..... Obviously). But the "Device" at the gate, now has an entity for sensing if the gate is open or closed, the entity for a trigger to open or close the gate, a link to the doorbell in the kitchen (which was an awesome addition... Loudest doorbell in the southern hemisphere I think), an entity for the beams when there is a vehicle obstructing the gate and a few other nicknacks like the gate lights etc. My current project is the solar array I have for the battery bank I use to keep myself and the rest of the family connected to the internet, local network and wifi. Let's just say it's been more of a headache after it was set up than what it was doing the actual installation, as now you have graphs and stats that give you endless sleepless nights, worrying if you have enough battery storage, and wondering if there are enough hours in the day to get solar batteries charged before sundown :/

@@-Gadget- Used to work with a guy who hankered after a '30s motorbike where you took the cap off to see how much gas you had and if your knees burnt the back wheel was about to stop, no HA for him😅, cheers.

one gotta wonder why they don't just called it "activators" or something

As an electrician's apprentice who has been (literally) shocked when the journeyman didn't check, your comment needs WAY more likes!

@@LabGecko Live-dead-live testing is a *very* good idea. Check the tester on a known-live source - nearby extension cord, outlet, whatever. Check the circuit or device to be worked on is dead. Check the tester again on known-live source to ensure that the tester is still functioning correctly and didn't give you a bum read. That was the way it was taught to me years ago in the Navy, and it's kept me from getting lit up (too much) since then working with much higher voltage circuits.

Ooh nice! That's news to me.

@@JeffGeerling Probably Aqara. They make zigbee stuff. I never heard Aquara.

I have battery operated motion sensors, 6 of them, none of mine operate like that, and they are zigbee technically.

I have a few Hue motion sensors which are zigbee - just tested and once I stopped waving at it it was less than 10 seconds before it reset to "clear", after which it was able to detect motion again immediately. I believe different devices do have different capabilities and Hue seem well regarded, so worth doing some research as clearly this makes a big difference to how useful they'll be for a given use case.

Caseta makes great quality no neutral switches. But you need their hub. They will however last for years, wont void your insurance, and will be supported for years.

Well..... As a kid before single board PCs were real......

@@danielstellmon5330 as a kid I could do automation with a C64 and accessory boards attached to the user port. 😁 Things got boring after the 8 bit era, reason why the raspberry pi came to be.

@@danielstellmon5330 When I was really little my parents had a commercial gadget on the light switch which is basically this. While I couldn't reach the switch itself, I could reach the handles hanging on the strings.

If only someone could invent a roof mounted switch with a string built in you can just pull to toggle.

@@tin2001 that would be like living in the future... 🤣 😂

I've done exactly that and kept a spreadsheet ... my house only has a single switch and 1 or 2 power points per room :)

This is a good idea

Yep, I think it's fun to see the learning process. We all try to get things fixed our own way and I've learned a lot over the years just 'watching over someone's shoulder'. The little tools they use, the way they get from point A to B, the way they search when they hit dead ends. I try to add some of that in my videos, but sadly I'm not always recording so I miss a lot :(

Because apparently you need a device in which you'll constantly run the HA server. In cloud servers you don't need to do that....

This is completly unneeded server. You can put your smart devices off cloud and use it http commands with more parameters. A pi server will make it more complicated and more errors to come up. There are presence sensors for the lighting and you can put it on a smart device input...

@@szgege32 Jeff made it clear the reasoning is security. Keeping everything internal to the house/network is perhaps a worthy trade off to running it on a pi rather than cloud etc

@@ottermanuk use a presence sensor, put it on directly input of the smart relay and you don't need to put it online and only you can reach it in ap mode near to the relay. It is much more easy to install and simple use and that sensor work better and longer than any iot movement sensor.(iot sensors are a bit bad in presence sensors items) Pi solution is over complicated. When you put more of these in the house, then you are in trouble, the simple solution is easier to fix..

And after you test node-red you start thinking where you even need HA and why to waste time with mashing head to wall with it ;)

Look at the container install option or use esxi and HA/failover; however, the latter would leave you with a nested AND emulated setup with the core (their own home rolled kernel). This is a perfect use for the esxi arm fling but mileage may vary due to it not being a supportable product. I'm not dissing on it bc I have a mutli-ISA cluster in my home lab. I just noticed qemu underneath the other day on my soon-to-be trashed x86/64 Home Assistant. I'm probably going to get flamed but I'm giving up the home assistant due to too much time to build and maintain. Just to levelset, my smart device collection covers everything but 433mhz. I also have a very nice collection of debuggers, mcus, and sdrs with various limiting factors. Its been fun but the last update that killed both zigbee and zwave was the last nail in the hass coffin. Now I'm into custom ethernet gateways which as a person that reads assembly while on the toilet, fits me better.

@@PBRichfield I have two frames running ESX but I'm trying to NOT use that for these "home production" VMs/containers. I think I'll soon be turning them off 24/7 and only booting when needing the 64cores. I'd rather Proxmox it. I'm going to see how well HA works in my home, but from what I have seen, at least I can hack it to do just about anything. I do want ZigBee and Zwave running and stable. I have a lot of IOT objects. We'll see. I'll put out the final (working) design on r/homelab and perhaps r/homeautomation. Thanks for your input. Helps to have others who have been through the grind.

@@Doesntcompute2k my pleasure. I found out this morning while applying to be officially sanctioned/ordained as a VMware evangelist that there is a non 4 letter word for people like me. Am I terrible to even go as far as filling out the form just for the off-chance the 'prize' if I even get nominated is the Arm fling API? That's all I want. Well that and this remote and it's all I'll ever need. Oh and this chair... This apj, remote, and chair. Yep, that's all - bastardized dialog from Steve Martin in The Jerk. Fun fact: I regret not getting the e3 127/8x v3 for my 2u shorty x86/64 host instead of that 4970k... But then I wouldn't ever had to opportunity to run my azure ad connected server 2022 headless dc on water-cooled 10yo silicon! Thats where the HA is spending it's twilight years too. If you need a fully updated 700 series coordinator, let me know. I might have one for sale cheap.

@@PBRichfield I was going to put the stack of 1u Dell 1650s and Dell 1750s "into MAAS service," then I sat there and couldn't figure out WHY. DDR2. Seriously. And the power they take. :( They're going to the recycler with all of the old Cisco 10/100Mbps switches. I'm trying to get rid of all Xeon 5Ks, keeping the Xeon 2600s where the cores make sense. I have full VMWare enterprise, XCP-ng, and Proxmox. Liking Proxmox a lot. I'm pretty sure I still have a (huge Sony WXP) laptop downstairs with an Intel Quad Q9600/9650. So I get your 4970.

nah, it should be in milliseconds. let me decide if I want to wait 60000ms or 1!

Yeap, Node-Red and VS Code add-on for configuration editing when needed.

Yep, Node-Red is more powerful and more intuitive.

Node Red is great, if you know how to use it. The less technical people will probably just use automations from the GUI. It depends what you are use to using. I use all HA automations and don't use Node Red. I just never found Node Red that intuitive and the learning curve to both install Node Red and get it working is higher than reading the documentation and learning how to use the inbuilt automation. It all depends what you are use to using, and how much you want to tinker. Also depends if you are the average end user looking for something out of the box, or if you are putting hours into the tinkering to get it to work right.

@@EsotericArctos I find this exactly the opposite. I am a visual learner and I find built in automations very confusing and cumbersome. When I installed Node Red, I quickly understood the concept, Node Red works just like Lego in my mind. The only thing you need to understand is the concept of a payload and use debug node to see how a particular message is constructed, then it is easy to manipulate that. It is definitely more powerful, not only you can build automations but also the UI if you wish. I understand some people prefer HA automations, but I don't find them to be easy.

that is dope I didn't realize it could be further integrated like this

This is good to know! Didn't even know that was a thing, but now I do.

@@JeffGeerling I think it's mostly a power-saving thing so it's not turning on the ZigBee transmitter every time that you twitch. My el-cheapo 433MHz wireless sensors do the same thing; I think with a 5 minute cool-down time. I use those, hard-wired PIRs on my Elk alarm system, a couple of Z-Wave sensors and some PIR sensors on ESP32 sensors around the house to sense motion/occupancy. That's ultimately the real power of Home Assistant, as it abstracts all the different technologies used to integrate the sensors into those abstract entities, making it effortless to work across different technologies. You don't have to pick and join a single technology/religion for the stuff in your home.

Well, add a counter and send a notification when the cat's taken too many trips and you can stay on top of keeping things clean

@@UNSCPILOT What gives you the impression that I do not keep it clean?

@@mosth8ed wasn't saying you didn't, just considering what else I would add to keep myself organized. Or TL;DR: I was thinking out loud in a comment like a goofball

lol yeah! I have had so many years of total fun mastering every kind of control system there is. no you don't want to be on line with any of this! But if you pull power from the grid you are owned. I just got a screen capture for typing this comment. know there is more then just cat6, wifi, and blue tooth at work in your PC. Hello 5G 😂 there is nothing we can do to change it.

This all or nothing attitude towards user friendlines and power user features is little more than logical fallacy, you can always have both, the alternative is death by obscurity. In this case it just requires a public library of Blueprints, which looks like the direction they're already going anyway.

FWIW, the integration page for any given device on the Home Assistant website will list whether the integration requires internet access for it to work, or whether it’s local only. Since discovering that myself, I’ve been slowly replacing the IoT devices in my house with things that work locally and don’t require access to the internet. Everything is becoming more reliable as a result!

Now you just need to check if your devices support names with left-to-right Arabic script. 😁

@ClintonJudy I couldnt find the information on the home assistant integrations page. Is it still there? It s hard to know which device can be conpletely setup offline...

Reloading was only necessary when editing yaml files to define automations. When using the web UI, you only need to click on the save button for it to take effect.

As a Australian. What's that's. Here it's boiling hot to just cold. Unless you're in the Australian Alps.

Wait I can use YAML for all the things???

@@JeffGeerling For everything

@@JeffGeerling indeed, not the way a non-programmer mortal like me runs it but I'm sure you'll enjoy. Looking forward for the projects you'll be able to pull off

@@JeffGeerling Not sure if you can use it for *all* the things. I think I remember some integrations having their YAML config being deprecated in favor of the UI config flow setup. (While some still only has YAML config because nobody has gotten around to them.)

Jeff also has a 3d printer so I expect a custom wall panel (cm-based, of course) before Christmas!

I believe some people have already been doing it. And I should probably follow suit (see github.com/mpataki/ansible-homeassistant for example!).

Yes and probably a great idea after you get your version control and CI/CD pipeline setup.

Look at terraform also for your ipmi enabled boxes but i'm curious if you could jumpstart a Pi with an SSD to be used as a stand in ipmi to provision the others. Once all the clients check in, it runs a script to kick start itself into an NFS target for your vms?

Along with it's cert from the domain CA

not sure I like being irradiated 24/7, but I guess a wifi camera would hit you with similar exposure.

Thank my daughter-and also ask her to help interpret it :D

It was getting so annoying. In the 5 days since setting up Home Assistant, I haven't had to wave my arms once. Win!

It's still YAML!

You're my favorite commenter on this video :)

I remember the first time I discovered node-red and realizing all the possibilities.

We are all beginners at most things ;)