The Jimmerness - Adventures in Home Automation

Project Overview Turn on door alarm alerts to the phone when not at home, and turn off door alarm alerts when at home. Receiving alerts outside of the home assistant's network requires some kind of remote access for your phone app. Nabu Casa is an easy and secure way, but there are other methods. The Panel This is from a dashboard. "Door Alarm Notify Only" is an input boolean. When this is on, doors being opened will trigger an automation to message users whenever a door sensor turns on. When it is off, no messages are generated. This is called Door Alarm Notify Only, as opposed to when the security alarm is engaged. (Code was removed from this blogger post.) "Smoke Alarm Notify Only" [clear] is not part of the automation. (When it is not clear, it uses an automation to send a notification.) "Door Ajar Notify" is an input boolean. When on, if a door sensor is open for more than 15 seconds, it generates an alert. (This is always on, but if it is generat...

A situation came up - my Octoprint/printer page wasn't working like it should. Power could turn on and off - not a problem Sensors would show temperatures and status - not a problem Buttons that sent commands back to Octoprint no longer work - PROBLEM The electrical power for each printer is managed by a TP Powerlink, each plug is managed by a different entity. It does not use Node-Red, and buttons for the power worked for both printers. This was not helpful. The Octoprint integration shouldn't be touching the button flows. The sensors were live, so the HA integration was probably not the case. This is using Home Assistant Core 2022.5.3. With a recent release, the developers changed things up. For example, to check your configuration.yaml and restart your server - previously it was found at Settings>System. (As a caution, the "help" text for that option still indicates the reboot is found there.) Instead, it is found under Developer Tools>YAML - both the confi...

Sadly, I didn't take screenshots of the immediate issue. But fortunately the solution is simple once you find it.   Temperature Problems Temperature numbers from printer bed AND printer nozzle, for both printers were no longer registering any data. (Instead, they read -18 degrees, which is what the Farenheit-to-Celsius template sensor returns when it doesn't have any data.) It had been working several weeks ago, the last time I printed. It could have been a Home Assistant or Octoprint update, or some kind of data corruption. Regardless of the cause, it needed to be fixed. Start in Configuration Go to Configuration>Integrations>(Choose a printer)>(Select the entities).  In my screenshot, you'll notice 7 exclamation marks in red circles. This is normal, as the printer is not connected - it doesn't have any temperatures to report or printer states. When I was working on the problem, the 4 temperature rows - instead of an exclamation mark in a circle - there were e...

So, Home Assistant has an integration for Octoprint. Seems like it would be really solid - a great thing! Well, it is, unless you already have two printers set up in Home Assistant. I considered tearing it all out and rebuilding it. Delete it, and see what it comes back as. That probably would have been more sane. If you go this route, skip to Octoprint side fixes. Identify what needs to get changed The first step was that none of my sensors were correct. Fortunately, my input booleans (buttons for turning things on and off, retracting - those all go through MQTT topics in Node Red and were untouched.) Octoprint side fixes First, I went to two Octoprints and their Home Assistant Discovery plug-ins and changed the device name to be unique. (The names of the two printers showed up as "Octoprint", resulting in "Octoprint****_2" for some of the entities.) Next, you do NOT need to change anything in MQTT. These are untouched. Back in Home Assistant In the configuration.y...

As someone living in the United States, we use Fahrenheit for temperatures and imperial measurements for measuring things. (Including measuring ingredients by weight or volume, depending!) Which is why my HA uses Fahrenheit/imperial. But in 3D printing, I use Celsius. Sometime in August/September 2021, Home Assistant broke part of my process. It could be that my customization.yaml file's "C" designation broke, or that Home Assistant figured out what was going on and decided to "help" me by converting Celsius from the printer into Fahrenheit. Doesn't matter - end result: my Octoprint sensors were reporting Fahrenheit temps instead of my desired Celsius. First step: Create conversion template entities I added this to my configuration.yaml file: sensor:   - platform: template     sensors:       octoprint_micro_actual_bed_temp_c:         friendly_name: "Micro Bed (°C)"         ...

Setting up an alarm system is fairly intrinsic to a lot of Home Assistant implementations. If you're looking at ADT, Simplisafe...other options, you get their system and their controls - and you pay a monthly subscription for the good stuff. Home ownership, you get a discount on your home insurance if you have a security system that hits a third-party reporting service. Home Assistant doesn't get you there until you add something like Noonlight. Noonlight will be a future addition - this is already a long process. Materials: Door Sensors (I used Ecolink Zwave Plus [DWZWAVE2.5-ECO], $30 for each set of sensors - so $60 for front/back door) A Z-Wave USB for Home Assistant (I used Nortek HUSBZB-1, $50) Speakers (I used some early-model Sonos speakers) Probably a tablet to act as a disarm/arm location (I used Amazon Fire 7 (2019) $50 on Amazon) - you can also use any phone with the HA app, or any computer. Steps to get it working: Get your door sensors connected to your Z-Wave coor...

The project: "I need a button for the bedroom, so I can get your attention when you're downstairs." I looked for a button that was inexpensive and could link up to my existing home assistant setup. Sadly, it took awhile to get a Tradfri - they were frequently low or out of stock at the IKEA 60 minutes away. I eventually just mail-ordered two when they got in stock. Nice size. Good weight. Uses Zigbee. Did not come with real instructions (probably supposed to install the app). Zigbee pairing modes for Home assistant and IKEA Tradfri Configuration > Integrations > HubZ Smart Home Controller (add it if you don't) > Configure. To have Home Assistant go into pairing mode, click on "ADD DEVICE" in the lower-right corner.  Eventually I figured out you needed to click the button next to the battery 5 times in succession to be in discovery mode. A small red LED will blink through the front case when it starts trying to pair. First Roadblock I use a Nortek HU...