20200210 Home Assisttant CLEPy Demo Talk

20200210-home-assistant-clepy-notes.txt

Home Assistant Demo

Hi, my name is Brad. 
When someone said, "I have a nephew that does websites." or "I know a guy that could hook that thing up." That was and still is me. Sorry about that.
At the ripe age of 16, I got B's or better in high school so I got to go to college for Information Systems and my insignificant remaining High School education requirements.
I worked in construction to pay the bills for a spell when the Department of Education stopped footing my post secondary education bills.
I graduated just in time for the huge recession and bubble bursting when nobody was hiring and I was competing for entry level jobs against people with decades of experience. Not great.
I became a marine mechanic installing all kinds of weird analog equipment, on boats... Not marine as in military, marine as in watercraft. Radar, sonar, motors, auxillary systems...
I did wind up getting back into development. A lot of PHP and jQuery.
But, I am "fixing stuff" legacy. And I found my way into an Instrumentation Department working for Lubrizol. So... many... miles... of... wire... Digital, analog, lasers... all of it. HART, Fieldbus, Modbus... All feeding into Delta V...
Back into more traditional tech. Angular front end, more Linux, Federation/SSO, centralized logging, deploying separate environments... But, my heart wasn't in it anymore and a busy family life made a regular 9-5 not "optimal".
So, now I put all those parts together and specialize in automating people's homes...


What is a SMART Home?

Smart home technology which may also be termed Home automation is the use of devices in the home that connect via a network, most commonly a local LAN or the internet. It uses devices such as sensors and other appliances connected to the Internet of things (IoT) that can be remotely monitored, controlled or accessed and provide services that respond to the perceived needs of the users.[1] It stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. (Wikipedia)


What is the "heart" of a SMART Home?
Amazon Alexa
Apple Homekit
Google Assistant
Samsung SmartThings
Home Assistant
Hive
Control4($$$$$)
-----
IFTTT
Logitech
Yonomi*

And you know what...
Everything always integrates quickly and easily with all these systems and there is never any problems with technology younger than some of my shirts.
--Sorry, we're not quite there yet.

Edit:
...Or, maybe we are. I had trouble experiencing the problems I had over the prior decade. A demo it is then... I can't even seem to integrate the workarounds from my old notes. Great.



You will be seeing Home Assistant installed on a nothing special inexpensive, old Thinkpad Netbook running Ubuntu Bionic Beaver Server 18.04 LTS.

I recommend not installing it on a Raspberry Pi. There are plenty of low power consumption boards that have more oomph for a reasonable price. For dirt cheap you can get x131 or S-10 netbooks. I run my Home Assistant installation with a few other things on a 60 Watt Asrock Q2900M. It is a fanless Intel Pentium J2900 (quad core) based board. The newest successor is the ASRock J3455B-ITX for roughly $80 now. 

I have also set up my Hue Bridge/Hub device with my phone for a "Room" and a "bulb" in that room with the Android Hue app so that it is ready to be imported as such into Home Assistant.


The github repo: https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant


https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/installation/#alternative-install-on-a-generic-linux-host
The install was simply as such from the official website install instructions:


$ sudo add-apt-repository universe

$ sudo -i
# apt-get install software-properties-common
# apt-get update
# apt-get install -y apparmor-utils apt-transport-https avahi-daemon ca-certificates curl dbus jq network-manager socat
# systemctl disable ModemManager
# curl -fsSL get.docker.com | sh

# curl -sL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/home-assistant/hassio-installer/master/hassio_install.sh" | bash -s

(* the instructions don't tell you that you need to have super user rights to add the universe repo-- just a note for people not familiar to *nix and worth noting)

Navigate to: http://{{IP Address}}:8123/onboarding.html

Add your first human user. (I used U:user and P:password)

There are four ways to add devices.

Auto Discovery, UI Integrations, Platform Integration, and Manual Integration -- I used the UI Integration for the Phillips Hue Hub/Bridge.

We can get information into cards shown by the Lovelace UI.

The huge file that is the 600lb. gorilla is configuration.yaml . Home Assistant is a Python applicaiton. You can peruse the source code on github is you so desire.

Let's watch a video...


Okay, what can connect that you know works and recommend...?
I receive no sponsorship or external motivation for the following products-- they are specifically devices that have been easy to work with and a good value from my own experiences.


Switches:

TP-Link HS200 (Decorative)
Sonoff Wifi Switch (Hidden retrofit)
Sonoff "Mini" Wifi Switch (...Not actually smaller, also accepts input from manual light switches)


Light Bulbs:

Wyse (White) or Lifx (RGB)


Smart Plugs:

TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini


Doorbell:

RemoBell S (Ring works great, but the privacy invasion is too much for me. ...And I am aware I am not a HVT.)


Door & Window Sensors:

Wyze Sense


Door Locks

Schlage Products Currently are my Favorites


Security Cameras:

Wyze Cam


Robotic Vacuum:

Ecovacs Deebot N79S