How to simplify your home automation :)

2. Who am I?
● Chief System Architect of
● I teach Network Security and Linux System
Administration

3. ● Why am I talking about home-assistant.io ?

4. ● DEMO

5. ● I was showing off my interface upgrades in the
office

9. ● Told me about a software he had been using at
home, that:
– connects all of his switches
– connects all of his video cameras
– have motion detection
– have vacation mode
– have modules for everything he uses

10. ● I was like...
– OK I have interface for my lighting and heating
– I have ZoneMinder for video..
– I DON'T have a nice interface... and my phone
experience was NON-EXISTENT
● So I MUST check this out :)

11. ● Welcome to Home Assistant:

14. Installation
Install Hassbian on your
Rapsberry Pi 3
Install Home Assistant
in your home directory

15. home folder setup
$ pip3 install homeassistant
$ hass --open-ui
● Home Assistent runs in Python VirtualEnv

16. Hassbian
http://hassbian.local:8123/
/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/
configuration.yaml
YUP its YAML configuration file

17. homeassistant:
# Name of the location where Home Assistant is running
name: Sara
# Location required to calculate the time the sun rises and sets
latitude: 00.00
longitude: 00.00
# Impacts weather/sunrise data (altitude above sea level in meters)
elevation: 542
# metric for Metric, imperial for Imperial
unit_system: metric
time_zone: Europe/Sofia
frontend:
http:
updater:
discovery:
# Enables support for tracking state changes over time.
history:
logbook:

18. Let me show you MY additional configuration :)

19. # Track the sun
sun:
sensor:
# Weather Prediction
- platform: yr
# house temperatures
- platform: command_line
name: Kitchen temp
command: curl -s http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/8 2>&1|awk '{gsub(/C/,"",$2);print $2}'
unit_of_measurement: "°C"
# Text to speech
tts:
platform: google
light:
- platform: lifx
broadcast: 10.2.2.255
media_player:
- platform: kodi
name: Bedroom
host: 10.2.2.245
- platform: kodi
name: Livingroom
host: 10.2.2.246

20. switch:
platform: command_line
switches:
kitchen_light:
friendly_name: Kitchen
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.177/1/2
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.177/1/2
kitchen_table:
friendly_name: Kitchen table
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.177/2/2
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.177/2/2
livingroom_walls:
friendly_name: Livingroom walls
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.177/3/2
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.177/3/2
livingroom_table:
friendly_name: Livingroom table
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.177/4/2
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.177/4/2
stairs:
friendly_name: Stairs
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.177/5/2
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.177/5/2

21. heating:
friendly_name: Heating
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/7/0
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/7/1
command_state: curl -q http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/7 | grep -q on
underfloor_pump:
friendly_name: Heating underfloor pump
command_on: curl http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/6/0
command_off: curl http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/6/1
command_state: curl -q http://10.2.2.195/arduino/digital/6 | grep -q on

22. Management
● systemd shit...
– when restarted via the web interface, with broken config,
systemd does not detect that :(
● some helpful commands:
– systemctl reset-failed home-
assistant@homeassistant.service
– systemctl stop home-assistant@homeassistant.service
– systemctl start home-assistant@homeassistant.service

23. Management - via web

24. Management - via web

25. Management - via web

26. ● Grouping switches and/or lights
● Triggering actions, based on sensors
● Scheduling actions

27. Problems
● Almost everything requires a state
– the state takes too much time to be verified(if at all
possible)
● There is no button functionality
● The kodi component has extremely basic
functionality
● Broken configuration crashes the hass daemon
● No native app for phone or tablet

28. ● I'm currently
– adding powered window blinds
– moving the video cameras to HA
– adding more temperature sensors
– adding the water heating controls

29. Thank yoU!