I’m not a Dwelling Assistant skilled, but it surely’s clearly an enormous and highly effective ecosystem. I’ve interviewed the creator of Dwelling Assistant on my podcast and I encourage you to take a look at that chat.
Dwelling Assistant can shortly change into a pastime that overwhelms you. Each object (entity) in your own home that’s even remotely linked can change into programmable. All the things. Even individuals! You may declare that any title:worth pair that (for instance) your telephone can expose could be consumable by Dwelling Assistant. Questions like “is Scott residence” or “what’s Scott’s telephone battery” could be related to Scott the Entity within the Dwelling Assistant Dashboard.
I used to be amazed on the units/objects that Dwelling Assistant found that it may automate. Lights, remotes, Spotify, and extra. You may discover that any internally linked gadget you’ve gotten doubtless has an Integration out there.
Temperature, Gentle Standing, certain, that is simple Dwelling Automation. However integrations and third occasion code may give you particulars like “Is the Residing Room darkish” or “is there movement within the driveway.” From these constructing blocks, you possibly can then construct your personal IFTTT (If This Then That) automations, combining not simply two methods, however any and all disparate methods.
What’s one of the best half? This all runs LOCALLY. Not in a cloud or the cloud or anybody’s cloud. I’ve obtained my stuff operating on a Raspberry Pi 4. Even higher I put a Energy Over Ethernet (PoE) hat on my Rpi so I’ve only one community wire into my hub that powers the Pi.
I imagine establishing Dwelling Assistant on a Pi is one of the best and best approach to get began. That mentioned, you too can run in a Docker Container, on a Synology or different NAS, or simply on Home windows or Mac within the background. It is as much as you. Optionally, you possibly can pay Nabu Casa $5 for distant (outdoors your own home) community entry by way of clear forwarding. However to be clear, all of it nonetheless runs inside your own home and never within the cloud.
OK, to the primary level. I used to have an Amazon Ring Doorbell that may combine with Amazon Alexa and once you pressed the doorbell it might say “Somebody is on the entrance door” on our all Alexas. It was a beautiful little integration that labored properly in our lives.
Nonetheless, I swapped out the Ring for a Unifi Shield G4 Doorbell for numerous causes. I do not need to pump video to outdoors providers, so this doorbell integrates properly with my current Unifi set up and data video to a neighborhood exhausting drive. Nonetheless, I lose any Alexa integration and this good little “somebody is on the door” announcement. So this looks as if an ideal job for Dwelling Assistant.
Here is the final todo listing:
- Set up Dwelling Assistant
- Set up Dwelling Assistant Neighborhood Retailer
- This permits third occasion “untrusted” integrations instantly from GitHub. You may want a GitHub account and it will clone customized integrations instantly into your native HA.
- I additionally advocate the Terminal & SSH (9.2.2), File editor (5.3.3) add ons so you possibly can see what’s taking place.
- Get the UniFi Shield third occasion integration for Dwelling Assistant
- NOTE: Unifi Shield help is being promoted in Dwelling Assistant v2022.2 so you will not want this step quickly because it’ll be included.
- “The UniFi Shield Integration provides help for retrieving Digicam feeds and Sensor information from a UniFi Shield set up on both an Ubiquiti CloudKey+, Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine Professional or UniFi Shield Community Video Recorder.”
- Authenticate and configure this integration.
- Get the Alexa Media Participant integration
- This makes all of your Alexas present up in Dwelling Assistant as “media gamers” and likewise permits you to tts (textual content to speech) to them.
- Authenticate and configure this integration.
I like to recommend going into your Alexa app and making a Multi-room Speaker Group referred to as “in every single place.” Not solely as a result of it is good to have the ability to say “play the music in every single place” however you too can goal that “In all places” group in Dwelling Assistant.
Go into your Dwelling Assistant UI at http://homeassistant.native:8123/ and into Developer Instruments. Below Providers, strive pasting on this YAML and clicking “name service.”
service: notify.alexa_media_everywhere
information:
message: Somebody is on the entrance door, it is a take a look at
information:
sort: announce
methodology: communicate
If that works, you realize you possibly can automate Alexa and make it say issues. Now, go to Configuration, Automation, and Add a brand new Automation. Here is mine. I used the UI to create it. Observe that your Entity names could also be completely different in the event you give your entrance doorbell digital camera a special title.
Discover the format of Information, it is title worth pairs inside a single area’s worth.
…but it surely additionally exists in a file referred to as Automations.yaml. Observe that the “to: ‘on'” set off is required otherwise you’ll get double bulletins, one for every state change within the doorbell.
- id: '1640995128073'
alias: G4 Doorbell Announcement with Alexa
description: G4 Doorbell Announcement with Alexa
set off:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door_doorbell
to: 'on'
situation: []
motion:
- service: notify.alexa_media_everywhere
information:
information:
sort: announce
methodology: communicate
message: Somebody is on the entrance door
mode: single
It really works! There is a ton of cool stuff I can automate now!
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About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, marketing consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft worker. He’s a failed stand-up comedian, a cornrower, and a guide creator.
