Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Not sure if the price difference between an alarm and a Home Assistant set-up is much if you keep an eye out for deals.

Given the cost of Raspberry Pis at the moment I can believe that! I think Aqara hubs are a bit cheaper though but not sure if they need internet, presume so.

I'm in the process of de-clouding my Home Assistant setup but fundamentally most key things don't depend on the internet and that's a big attraction of Home Assistant for me: keeping things (and my data) local. Don't have a UPS but am planning to add one and prices have come down a lot since last time I looked.

I picked up a Unifi Cloudkey Gen2+ controller recently to replace a Raspberry Pi which was running my Unifi controller and I'm planning to get a Unifi Protect doorbell and an external camera but no internal cameras. Even when the video will be stored locally I'm not comfortable with internal cameras.

not sure if they need internet, presume so

They use zigbee to talk to the devices and my HomeKit hubs so can work fine without internet.

Do you have this? Is it any good with just the devices or do you need to pay the sub? Doesn't seem to integrate that well with things like Google Home etc but I'm looking for something like that to install

I do, I have a Simplisafe system with a few sensors, outdoor and indoor cams. It's pretty good with just the devices and the hardware design/quality is good. We don't pay for the sub so the main limitation of that is that the cams dont record events. But you do still get instant push notifications, so if anything is triggered/motion detected etc you get a warning on your phone so you can dive in and check the camera feeds manually which has been enough for us so far.

When we've been away for long holidays we've signed up for a single month of subs to get the extra recording, cover and monitoring for peace of mind without the expanse of paying it all the time.

Another vote for simplisafe. We have entry sensors, motion sensors, outdoor wireless cameras, glass break sensor, additional siren and a panic button (now lost). Can set to Home or Away mode. Home means only entry sensors are armed so you can move about indoors. Away means motion sensors are also activated. They also do indoor cameras but we didn't want that. They also now have a camera doorbell which took ages to come to the UK but now available. We haven't bothered with that but the front outdoor camera still alerts when someone comes to the door.

If you sign up for the monitoring, make sure to A) answer the phone if something triggers the alarm and the security team call, and B) remember the safe word or else you'll get a visit from a friendly security guard and a £120 call out bill.

So I appear to have screwed up my Home Assistant access a bit.

I previously accessed it through DuckDNS. I think I set it up with a security certificate and disabled http access as part of that.

That meant I couldn't access HA using the local IP address on my network as it wasn't https. Didn't think much of that as could access through the DuckDNS address.

I now have a new ISP with CGNAT where things like DuckDNS are knackered so I can't access the HA interface.

HA is still working fine, I just can't access it. Any bright ideas? Cheers

SSH to the HA, and edit the config file to repair it?

Good idea.

Now need to try and find the SSH password and which configuration file to edit.

Hazy memory says http.yaml

Try 12345 as the password - it's the same one that I have on my luggage.

000 tends to be my luggage password as I lose the instructions on how to set it.

Turns out I made a note of my password. Not my username though ...

So it seems that if you plug your homeassistant directly into a monitor you can get access to a shell to do shit.

I'm fucked if I can find where the HomeAssistant stuff is though. I've got bin, etc, var, usr, lib and all that crap but a bit of hunting hasn't found me anything useful.

Depends how you're running it. Hassos, hassbian, docker etc.

I run a VM, which has proven to be the easiest way to get things done. I run it headless using VirtualBox & systemd, from a laptop in a cupboard.

VBox forwards the HA ssh & http ports to laptop ports, and I ssh into those.

Then all the config is in /root/config

Mine's on a pi. I tracked it down eventually by searching for the file. It was buried about 8 folders down.

Now my pissing 2FA isn't working which I'm guessing is a clock issue.

Edit: Turns out the dns server was still on my old ISP so there was no internet connection so the time server wasn't working.

I'm becoming jaded.

My Google Hub that I was using as a bedside clock / alarm / radio has slowly been misbehaving. The alarms wouldn't always fire, the brightness became a bit random (bright in the middle of the night, or so damn dark I couldn't see the time), the "listen to music whilst falling asleep and then turn off after 1 hour" stopped turning off.

So my new alarm clock is this: https://braun-clocks.com/collections/digital-clocks/products/bc09-digital-alarm-clock-white

I feel like I went too far on the smart home (absolutely everything) and am slowly walking back the more fragile and silly things.

The most fragile and silly thing, voice control and multi-purpose smart devices.

Everything that is single purposed, i.e. lights, heating, appliances, network, doorbell, etc are all doing brilliantly at their function.

But the multi-purpose "this device does all these things"... those seem to be the ones that degrade the soonest and misbehave the most.

I use the basic Lenovo smart clock. As this is nicely basic and seems to work without issue for me

Old Apple Watch, wakes me up with a tapping on the wrist so no noisy alarm to wake t’wife. Not quite as old Apple Watch then gets put on to tell me to do shit like stand up and breathe.

Added bonus, it tells me how often I got up for a piss. This is useful for those times when you don’t and need evidence that it could have been worse.

I got myself an Amazon Echo yesterday to replace an older Echo View.

The older Echo view was able to connect and control my Philips Hue lights via the Philips Bridge (V2) however, the new Echo doesn't seem to be able to connect with the Bridge.

When looking for a specific skill linked to Philips Hue, I yield no result. When trying to add a device from the Amazon Alexa app, it tells me the skill has been removed.

When trying to connect via the Philips Hue app, it's not able to locate the Echo device.

Am I missing a step or is there a difference in compatibility between the new Echo vs the older gen?

Cheers

there's definitely a hue skill i reinstalled it the other day but all the reviews from 2 days ago say it's stopped working.

i think they may have introduced a bug rolling out new hue security changes. one of the reviews mentions removing both hue and alexa apps and re-installing them to get it working.

Hue recently forced accounts for the Bridge, perhaps this has resulted in you needing to ensure you have a Hue Cloud account + a recent add-on to make it work?

I briefly looked at my Hue skill on Alexa yesterday as my lights aren't flashing when an Alexa timer finishes now.

The skill is still working, I could turn my lights on and off using Alexa. Although, now I'm typing this I have a feeling that the flashing lights on timer end may be based on IFTTT which I haven't looked at for years.

Ah, bugger:
Earlier this month, the Amazon Alexa team communicated to IFTTT that on October 31st, 2023 the Alexa service on IFTTT will no longer be available.

The Alexa IFTTT service was built and maintained by the Amazon Alexa team who have decided they are no longer supporting the IFTTT integration.

Now to find another way to make my lights flash when an Alexa timer hits zero.

Earlier this month, the Amazon Alexa team communicated to IFTTT that on October 31st, 2023 the Alexa service on IFTTT will no longer be available.

The Alexa IFTTT service was built and maintained by the Amazon Alexa team who have decided they are no longer supporting the IFTTT integration.

that's fucking mad. what a stupid decision.

If you have the Hue app then I think you can set up an automation to run for the lights when the timer is up. But it may have to be a timer in the Hue app. If you have apple HomeKit then that’s an option, Hue seems to play nicely with that (at least for scene setting and automations based on time of day)

This is what I’m getting when I try to add a Hue skill

1 Attachment

In my Hue app on iPhone I don’t have the option to use Siri & Apple Home as a voice assistant.

I want to see if I can add our Hue bulbs to the Home app basically and can’t seem to find a way. Am I missing something simple ?