I’m not a Residence Assistant professional, but it surely’s clearly a large and highly effective ecosystem. I’ve interviewed the creator of Residence Assistant on my podcast and I encourage you to take a look at that chat.
Residence Assistant can shortly change into a interest that overwhelms you. Each object (entity) in your own home that’s even remotely linked can change into programmable. The whole lot. Even individuals! You’ll be able to declare that any title:worth pair that (for instance) your cellphone can expose could be consumable by Residence Assistant. Questions like “is Scott residence” or “what’s Scott’s cellphone battery” could be related to Scott the Entity within the Residence Assistant Dashboard.
I used to be amazed on the gadgets/objects that Residence Assistant found that it might automate. Lights, remotes, Spotify, and extra. You will discover that any internally linked gadget you may have doubtless has an Integration accessible.
Temperature, Mild Standing, positive, that is simple Residence Automation. However integrations and third get together 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 individual IFTTT (If This Then That) automations, combining not simply two techniques, however any and all disparate techniques.
What’s the most effective half? This all runs LOCALLY. Not in a cloud or the cloud or anybody’s cloud. I’ve acquired 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 organising Residence Assistant on a Pi is the most effective and best option to get began. That stated, it’s also possible to 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 (exterior your own home) community entry through 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 will combine with Amazon Alexa and once you pressed the doorbell it could say “Somebody is on the entrance door” on our all Alexas. It was a stunning little integration that labored properly in our lives.
Nevertheless, I swapped out the Ring for a Unifi Shield G4 Doorbell for various causes. I do not need to pump video to exterior providers, so this doorbell integrates properly with my present Unifi set up and information video to a neighborhood laborious drive. Nevertheless, I lose any Alexa integration and this good little “somebody is on the door” announcement. So this looks as if an ideal job for Residence Assistant.
This is the final todo record:
- Set up Residence Assistant
- Set up Residence Assistant Neighborhood Retailer
- This permits third get together “untrusted” integrations instantly from GitHub. You will 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 occurring.
- Get the UniFi Shield third get together integration for Residence Assistant
- NOTE: Unifi Shield assist is being promoted in Residence Assistant v2022.2 so you will not want this step quickly because it’ll be included.
- “The UniFi Shield Integration provides assist 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 Residence Assistant as “media gamers” and in addition lets you 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 it’s also possible to goal that “All over the place” group in Residence Assistant.
Go into your Residence Assistant UI at http://homeassistant.native:8123/ and into Developer Instruments. Beneath Providers, attempt pasting on this YAML and clicking “name service.”
service: notify.alexa_media_everywhere
information:
message: Somebody is on the entrance door, this can be a check
information:
sort: announce
methodology: communicate
If that works, you recognize you possibly can automate Alexa and make it say issues. Now, go to Configuration, Automation, and Add a brand new Automation. This is mine. I used the UI to create it. Be aware that your Entity names could also be totally different if you happen to give your entrance doorbell digital camera a unique title.
Discover the format of Knowledge, it is title worth pairs inside a single area’s worth.
…but it surely additionally exists in a file referred to as Automations.yaml. Be aware 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 e book creator.
