Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Anyone up for a bit of home assistant configuration debugging?

I'd like to have a three scenes that cycle when a button is pushed.

I've created an input_select to store the state. The options there are named to matched the scenes.

I then have two automations. Automation 1 is triggered by the button press and runs this action:

action:
      service: input_select.select_next
      entity_id: input_select.scene_select

This works fine.

I then have a second action, triggered by the state change of input_select.scene_select. I want the action here to call scene.turn_on for the relevant scene but this is where I'm stuck. Can I use templating here? Everything I've tried so far has just broken the HA core.

I can't help you but have you tried the Home Assistant forum? I've found it very helpful when I've been stuck

I got it to work in the end.

I needed three separate automations though which seems a bit hacky.

Drayton wiser TRVs are on offer in Toolstation for £33.18 each for anyone looking for them.

I've just ordered the multizone kit 2 and 5 trvs.

Looking forward to having a slightly less cold office space while everyone else is out at school.

Thanks for the heads up. That sounds pretty reasonable.

Having a howler trying to connect my Sonos to my BT Smart Hub 2 since they changed the settings yesterday because my speeds were rock bottom....etc. Anyone had a similar issue?

I had a workaround a while back where I changed a few settings and split the 2.4/5GHz channels, but I'm unable to do that now for some reason?

https://cybersecurity.att.com/blogs/labs-research/att-alien-labs-finds-new-golang-malwarebotenago-targeting-millions-of-routers-and-iot-devices-with-more-than-30-exploits

The not smart bit on my smart thermostat system.

Sigh this is the nearest the previous owner/installer got to fitting a proper wiring centre.

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Here's you're answer.

(I had to completely rewire my boiler / water / heating when I went smart)

Flameport.com has some good wiring diagrams if you need them - mine was s-plan, yours may obviously vary.

pay for the home/away assist

Is that new? Would explain why I got a radge text from the missus asking why the heating wasn't working the other day and couldn't see myself or her as 'home' despite being in my lounge later.

Mines y with zero slack in the cables. I'll be digging walls out at the weekend and fitting a proper wiring centre.

Chromecast at £18 for Black Friday. Handy.

Not as handy as the old Chromecast Audios though. Glad I bought 2 extra when they were discontinued.

Nest minis also £18,, Chromecast Google TV £45, all the Google's are on some sort of offer it seems.

I wish I had a couple more Chromecast audios

Installed the tado kit today: wireless thermostat, receiver and four TRVs. Very straightforward, had it all done in the breaks between some meetings. 👍

Discovered my boiler only needs switched live so a tasmota relay would work just as well as the dedicated wireless receiver. Kind of glad I didn't roll my own though as I can only imagine how complicated setting up central heating schedules in home assistant is.

Getting the cover off my boiler and poking around the electrics felt so naughty.

So we're a week from getting the keys to our new place and I now have literal boxes of kit ready to go in.

full ring alarm kit w. doorbell and indoor cam plus spotlight cam for back door.
fire tv cube (living room), echo show 8 (office), 2x echo show 5 (bedroom, loft room), 2x echo dot 4 (dining room as a stereo pair), 1x echo dot 3 (spare bedroom), a handful of echo flex for halls and entrances and I'm working on approval for a show 15 in the kitchen.
hue white colour ambience and white ambience for all rooms, hue white for transitional areas. 6x dimmers & 1 smart button for now but probably need a couple more.
some tp-link kasa and tapo led light strips for study and under cabinets in kitchen.
a slew of tp-link slim wifi plugs for non-connected devices.

definitely went ott during black friday but anything i don't use will be returned well within the returns window so not an issue.

need some kind of lighting for back garden, there's an old porch light hanging off the wall out the front i want to replace with a small hue version to pair with the ring doorbell motion sensor.

monday 13th the internet gets turned on (and our sofas get delivered and i need to book an electrician to check out kitchen cooker electrics so busy day) but I have the whole house to myself so will have a fun evening getting the whole lot setup so we have some wow factor when the gf moves in on the thursday (once i'm done unpacking and building new furniture).

will probably get electrician to check out the boiler for smart thermostat installation potential while he's there too. any recommendations for an alexa friendly kit with smart boiler unit and basic thermostat we can easily replace existing one with even if it's just control wires behind there? only looking to be able to turn on and off and control global temp.
answered my own question almost immediately. grabbed a tado v3+ wired starter kit to replace existing thermostat. should be all I need but will return if not. £115 currently which seems to be an ok price for it so will roll the dice and see. gf is obsessed with heating being on/off at very specific points in time and being able to control via voice from bed will probably be the star feature for her out of everything.

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/uk-cybersecurity-legislation-iot/

Better late than never (maybe)

PSA for Amazon Alexa users.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29561997

We use Alexa a lot, but this week I had to unplug every Alexa in the house because a distant family member had gained access to the family Amazon account and was trying to use the “drop in” feature to listen to our conversations. In the course of our investigation I found out that Alexa does not log privacy related events at all (there is no record of a drop in stored anywhere), and the UI for locking down which profiles and contacts have access to which feature is unbelievably bad. At this point I can’t prove that this person doesn’t still have access somehow (every single contact taken from your phone has unique permissions to drop in) and I can’t delete the profile this person created without contacting customer support. So the devices are going to stay unplugged until I have time to nuke the Amazon account and create a new one.

Your devices allow spying on you by remote family members and anyone connected to your Amazon or Prime accounts and turning it off is perhaps impossible.

Why anyone would trust Amazon with anything home automation, voice or video related is beyond me.

Unsure, but people do. And I guess the price point is the reason why... it's very cheap.

Well I'm glad I never enabled that feature or gave it access to my contacts.

The algorithm is real.....

Can someone explain how sanding/spraying a bike relates to a warm house?

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For me it's less about price point, more about ease. Trying to do your own voice recognition system with the features of Alexa isn't easy. There certainly aren't any plug and play options.

We have an alexa thing that is really only used for voice controlling the lighting state in the living room - is there an alternative voice controller to use that is less morally reprehensible?

Spray.bike cans have a recommended room/booth temperature for application. Not sure how important that is