 Welcome to the homelab show episode 87 with a quick title change because Tom got something wrong Well something right because it is about mycroft. It is about home assistant, but mycroft. Is it going away Jay? Is that why do we describe this? Yeah, it's a developing story but it's something that I wanted to talk about after the ad read because We talked about mycroft before we had a whole episode dedicated to it and We had the whole episode title if I remember correctly of hello mycroft We thought about Huddling this goodbye mycroft, but that wouldn't be enough of a topic to carry the show We have a lot more to talk about but we'll cover it. Yeah, we'll be covering that But that's episode 24 is the one that this happened in and now it's going away here We've we've now outlasted mycroft It's a bad guest and what helps us outlast that is paying the bills which is gonna be a big Thank you to Linode. They've been a sponsor for a long time. They were sponsored before the mycroft and after mycroft So we thank them for being a sponsor great place to run a lot of the projects we talk about in here If you need a public infrastructure to put some of these things on we've talked about a lot of projects That'd be great in there and the project today interesting and I bet Jay doesn't have this integration But we'll find out later You can integrate Linode is one of the connected apps that you can add to your home assistant It will actually check the status of your load. I learned that today when I was doing some of the extra notes and research So we'll we'll be talking about a little bit more on that topic later But thank you Linode for sponsoring. We have an offer code down in the links below Go to Linode comm slash home lab show if you like to get started with them We think they're for being a sponsor and yeah, let's just jump into this and the first thing We're gonna talk about is the going away part of what well first What is mycroft and we can I'll let Jay sum that up So mycroft is and this is why this is so sad to me because it's one of my favorite open-source projects ever and you know, of course There's some there's others on that list too because I'm a fanboy when it comes to open-source software I just love it when people create something amazing, but mycroft was the potential that it had was to maybe Maybe possibly challenge the big players when it comes to smart speakers You know Alexa and all those others that they have out there, but this one is open-source So you can hack it. You don't even you didn't even have to buy one You could just download the software you could run it on your computer You can have a voice assistant anywhere on your, you know, Raspberry Pi x86 PC Anything that runs Linux basically the voice engine was open-source so you could download just that part if you want so It was a very professional experience because It was one of those that I think anybody could set up it acts just like the proprietary ones where Mycroft would spin up a web server or something to show you that are actually an access point You connect to it and then it asks you to give it your actual Wi-Fi SSID and password then it joins the network and it does that all just like a You know device that you bought from Best Buy would do and it offers the same features You could ask a questions. I can search for you. You could integrate it with your home assistant Or whatever you want and since it's open-source you could create your own skills as it's called So you can extend it further at one point. I had it connected to my Volumio so I could say hey name of assistant play, you know name of band or whatever and it would actually do it It was pretty cool. So the mark one is the device that's been in the background of I Want to say the majority of my videos at this point are getting closed It's on the top of my desktop if you are watching the video version. You could probably see it when people ask me What is that? Yeah, it's right there. That's the mark one the very first one I think I bought that in 2019-2018 I can't remember is a long time ago and then that was going well Then they came out with or they were coming out with the mark to which is an upgraded device Would have you know faster processor and some other features added different design and okay, that's cool. It's moving along so Basically, I was going to get a review unit for the channel, but that never came But I but it's fine because I figured they were you know really busy. They have an open-source project or maintaining no problem I'll just buy the mark to myself out of my own money And then I'll review that because either way I wanted to have a review of the mark to I mean I bought it I may as well Put out a video if I spend money on something But then I just randomly checked their blog and they're shutting down and I'm thinking well I Can't review it because why you can't buy it Well, you might be able to buy one if they have one in stock But I don't know why anyone would if it's shutting down so that's sad No, I could figure out something else to use the mark to for but It's still developing because I feel like so far. They're saying the right things They're they're coming out with an alternative operating system that should be supported I don't really know the full story on that It's neon OS which is weird because we have KDE neon as a distribution and I kind of thought that's what they were doing like KDE neon for Mycroft why? No, it's just called It's like name collision right so neon OS and they're They sent a coupon code to anyone who bought one of these devices for a free flash drive with that preloaded on there It basically you put in the coupon code and it's a zero dollar order, which is really nice of them to do that But at the same time I really hope this gets forked because I feel like there's so much promise here And they've pushed this so far that someone could conceivably take the software and continue it along I don't know what's required to make that happen, but I don't want to see this go away So one of the reasons why I wanted to mention this one because I'm not going to do reviews So anyone who's doing a who's been following my channel and is wondering where the mark to review is well It's just not going to happen because of that reason But also I wanted to mention this just in case anyone listening is You know an open-source developer Maybe wants to become one has a team or some people that want to work on something that might like this kind of thing Just to throw this out there see if anyone wants to and I'm not saying this on behalf of mycroft, right? I don't even know if they want me to say this I don't care I mean this is just a project and a personal thing if there's any way we could keep this idea going I think that'd be really amazing I think voice assistants that are open source could be a major boon to home assistant I mean just imagine being able to voice control everything without having to sell your soul to Amazon or Google Yeah, and I just I realize I want to make sure I add this as show notes specifically the link to that blog post that Jay's referring to Just so you guys can read it in its entirety so you can understand what our thoughts are on it And of course read the read it all for yourself as well So yeah, and one of the things that's really cool about the voice engine that they released is you can have it actually Process everything offline. I mean sure it's gonna by default or maybe not by default But depending on how you set it up it can go out to the internet and obviously get some things But you could totally just cut that off and make it only answer on the land And not even go outside your internet or your local area anyway. So there's a lot of promise here I just really hope that happens but as far as like why did this happen, you know, why are they going under? There's nothing clear yet. There's no real answer I mean, there's some things in the blog post but nothing incredibly clear It's really strange how this works out when you have a Project that does everything right but they they still don't make it another one is the gene pad the Linux tablet I reviewed which was Apple quality. I couldn't believe it. This was an amazing tablet Super durable build quality. Did you see that while you were here Tom? Yeah, I did I was actually impressed with the build quality on that Yeah, and they the developers disappeared Do they go did everything just gone like what they had like the best Linux tablet ever made and they just disappear and Wow, weird. So there's just this weirdness about open source projects that develop a hardware product that generates profit that It's really hard for these people to do it. Obviously because they're not the big box retailers, but at the same time if People can't step up and challenge those companies then well, we're always going to be at their mercy So I hope I hope something good comes out of this Yeah, there's it's interesting but being an open source being a self-hosted project There there's a good likelihood that'll be someone to pick it up and fork it now The likelihood of being one of the big guys like Google is pretty zero because they're like, hey, welcome to our ecosystem I'm I'm also For all the home assistant stuff we'll be talking about next I've never been being on the voice integration for it because it just I honestly one of my favorites is the fact that I have It on my phone and I'm able to Be able to just to switch things on and off via phone via web interface phone is probably the most because it's just conveniently in there but of course and something that's just out of view over at jays is a screen and This is becoming a popular option where you have a control panel Where you can set automations or build automations off other things matter of fact the whole concept of automation I'll dive into where I've built things like how it watches my synology and my synology triggers on things that then tells Home Assistant to do a thing Presence sensors and things like that. So, um, yeah, we'll talk a little bit more of that next Yep, so yeah, that's the story about uh, mycroft and and I totally agree. I mean the likelihood of You know countering one of the big companies like that is very much nothing But would it just be so cool if someone did, you know, I just yeah We'll hope to see that like what one of the underdogs just rises up and just you know Becomes a more popular option. I guess we'll see how it goes Yeah, now on to home assistant itself because mycroft was just an extra integration for home assistant You know, you don't need it. Well, it's a want not a need. So it's not a requirement It's not a prerequisite. So this does not affect the home assistant project, which by the way is doing really well I've actually been impressed. There updates come Rather frequently the updates with the exception of one in my few years of using it I've had a single update that broke one minor integration Which was my analogy integration didn't work for I think it was almost 16 hours before they fixed it Like that's how fast they fix problems. That's better than most companies They they knew it broke one at update options were rollback options were waiting till the developers who were aware of it And by the way, it broke on a friday But they managed to get it fixed. I think it was sunday Um by sunday like broke on friday updated on saturday and on sunday. There was a fix for it It was still happened relatively quick, but the overall um, I would really rate home assistant as a very high quality well-developed very active community project so I wonder if their developers use it a lot and when there's a bug it affects them too You know, they have to get it going because their significant other is probably, you know upset that the lights don't work Fix the thing. Okay, fine. And then they fix it then send the pull request Obviously have no idea that that's even true But it would just be kind of funny because I'm sure they use it because unless they really love for the sake of developing probably not Yeah, but um home assistant kind of in a nutshell is a Self-hosted does not need the cloud by default. You can connect it to cloud apps It does have lots of extensibility But in a nutshell you're talking about a system that you can host yourself now you can host this on different things Uh that includes a raspberry pi which before you throw a bunch of hate in the comments It does not require a raspberry pi. That's just what i'm hosting mine on are you hosting yours in a raspberry pi j I have the home assistant blue which is the dedicated device. So they put out that's based on odroid Got it. So yes, you can use odroid. You can use other single board computers for it I don't have the entire list but they do on their website, but you can also run this as a Docker container you can run this. I believe there's even I haven't really done much testing with it But I will soon a true nascale even added this as part of their officially supported packages and uh as the app So there's actually a lot of different places you can run home assistant. It's not limited to We have chose to put it on a raspberry pi But I know uh, we made those choices because I've been using it for a while when raspberry pies were plentiful and now they're not so We will completely admit to being aware of that one advantage of running on small single board computers Just as in general is if you're doing things like for example The studio computer that is bringing you this podcast right now and doing the recording That was woken up be via my Raspberry pi sending a wake on land over to it. This is actually a nice feature is You can take this low powered device because this is a question that comes up and with power concerns being Also greater here in 2023 You can have a lot of things just turn off and then you can build the wake on land and once again I'm using my phone so I have my phone and I go I'd like to turn things on like computers and I have this, you know low powered couple of watt device kicking out some Wake on land. That's one of the first easy automations to build into it If you want to do that it will go further and I might do this. I actually I'm not the biggest windows person anymore But my studio computer runs windows to get it to shut them down again You have to load up rpc commands in there and set up users So I haven't really experimented much for that I've looked into it But that actually is a further integration you can do where it actually you can make any rpc commands from it So in you're looking at a nice self-contained update Hell is a really nice update mechanism operating system wherever you decide to load it And can give you a lot of control and it's all self-hosted. It's all things that are local on your network It does not need internet In order to well needs an internet update, but it doesn't need internet to uh operate but you could probably figure out a way to Limit how it can reach out to the world if you wanted to to say it can only reach its update servers, but it's it's just a really Solid platform and I got to give a warning here. It's a time suck Man the more you learn how you can build automation the more you can't stop building automation and integration It's like, oh there went a saturday. What'd you do? I started reading home assistant I started wondering what everything in the world I could connect to it And then you find out how big the list is so then you start connecting it And even jay didn't know until before this podcast that you can connect it to have it monitor Via api he your linoad instances. I'm like really this is this is cool There's an integration for pfSense and unify and you unify protect as well. Um go back on what you're seeing about windows my Recording pc is currently running windows. I haven't had time to switch to linux yet because it's one of those Weird things where I set up the pc in a build video And then I was going to go back and switch to linux But I'm creating content with it and I can't just like shut down operations So at one point I just need to go ahead and do it anyway I found a solution for managing windows through home assistant There's actually a package you install in home assistant And you also install this service on windows And it'll just make the integration work with wake on land shutdown on all that stuff You don't even have to make your own rpc calls. You just install that on both sides Make sure they can communicate. You're done and I can wake on land all of it works just fine So that'll probably cut that down the workload on that down by like 75 if you use that Oh, cool. Yeah, it's uh, send me the link so I'll make sure I've added to the show notes and added to my to-do list Yep, absolutely Now some of the other integrations work. It's really cool. And this is We're going to talk about some of the things we and jay are doing with it because sometimes you're like, okay Cool, I can turn lights on and off now what and me and jay are going to dive deeper into it But one of the things I want to mention right away. I put a link to the list of things That me and jay are using is in in the description as well One of the values you'll find is there's plenty of youtube channels going over how to do things in home assistant You know, everyone has their own idea or own thing they want to integrate one of the biggest and hardest and challenging things though right off the rip is what works with home assistant and That is not made clear by home assistant and let me explain why when home assistant says they work with something That doesn't necessarily until you dive into the details of that device tell you how they work with it For example, they will say like hey, we can integrate with this particular thermostat But the way they integrate with it is via api key. So now it's not locally controlled at that point. So Is saying there's a few other like online devices that you have to register with some company's cloud to get it working But then have an api key to the cloud I don't really like things that loop out of my network go to the internet come back in and talk So let's talk about a few things I have and jay does too that don't need internet access in order to work You can disconnect your internet and these devices will continue to function I wish they had a button on their on their list of integrations that say integrations that do not require External api keys or internet access to work and we're going to start with The fact that I put in it's it's a link to this one specifically because weirdly It doesn't always show up in amazon searches, but I put a link to the amazon So you can find it directly. This is the nortech quick stick combo z-wave and zigbee controller Now the reason I went with z-wave and zigbee those are the two common protocols and I know Matter is a new one coming out But it's cool as it is coming out and home assistant has support for it The devices are not yet So we'll stick with one that there's plenty of devices for which is your zigbee and z-wave Zigbee and z-wave are wireless protocols that Are their own thing they are not Normal wireless or not like your standard wi-fi don't require any access points and kind of interestingly the way and z-wave Both work a lot of devices can act as a relay. So let's say I put a zigbee or z-wave light switch in First we start with that little nortech stick I have in my usb port of my raspberry pi it then Links up with the light switch. Well the other switches that you add after or light bulbs or whatever They actually all act as relays So you kind of create their own mesh network and what they're doing is relaying commands To be simple about how it works I send it the command and it can actually if one of them is too far away because it's several You know Extensions removed so to speak. It's a couple hops over The way that works is it goes hey, I can talk to this one and this will also relay the command So some of the devices don't just act as a receiver. They'll actually just relay the commands to other joined devices This actually gives you a really solid network So you don't have to put a bunch of repeaters for zigbee or z-wave the devices themselves can act as repeaters This is really convenient. I really Thought this worked well The next couple ones and these are ones we're using for Higher wattage devices. They're called zoos Z-wave like I said all these are linked down below to make it easy to find We even use these in my office We make sure everyone's way my office is a little bit drafty because it's an older building And a couple employees want to be able to warm their offices I just don't want to Worry about them forgetting or leaving on like a small space heater We actually have home assistant automated. It warms up their office just before they get there So it actually kicks on which turns your space heaters on automatically Prior to them coming in and then automatically turns them all off So I never have to ask the question to everyone turn your space heater off It just automatically goes through and turns them all off. This is a really nice plug That'll do that's all based on z-wave The next one is the in brighton switches. I've had good luck with those and those are linked down below Those are like regular replacement light switches They've worked great to build some of the next automations. We'll talk about later But I can turn lights on and off inside my house But they're regular light switches. So for some reason if I am goofing with my raspberry pi No one's left in the dark. So that's They do work in normal switches as well, and I'll mention to that zoos one. There's a button on it So for some reason the home assistant has been taken apart because tom did a stupid thing You can press the button on it and override it. The next one is going to be the Honeywell ultra pro honey well makes some z-wave things which is kind of cool Honeywell the the company good brand name. They're a little bit more expensive But nonetheless they support z-wave now one of the things you have to look and I specifically link to the z-wave model And I'll do the same thing for the hues lights that I use I bought the hues lights and before someone starts hammering that they're overpriced I will a hundred percent agree with you. I found them on clearance for one quarter of their retail price at lows So my hardware store was had them on clearance So I bought some of them but occasionally you can find deals on them If you get things like the hue or the honey well or some of these that are brands If you look in the corner of them and this I can't say this for every one of them But I can tell you for the ones I bought I made sure when I was purchasing them They say z-wave on the box. They'll say requires the honey well hub or requires the hues light hub They actually don't because they support zigbee As long as they're supporting one of these open protocols or documented protocols I'm not going to go as far as they open because uh Zigbee one of them is open one of them has a license and I don't want to conflate which one But either way that's not something you have to deal with but what this allows you to do Is just attach them to your home assistant So you're never reaching out to the phillips hue network if phillips hue decided to and this is the fear in Reality for a lot of people I should say where you buy a device that connects to the cloud And then that cloud company goes, you know what we don't want to do support this device anymore Good news or bad news for you guys. It's all bricked So that's been kind of you know a big annoyance on there And what this allows you to do though is say, hey, I want to buy these devices I want to time into my network now one more device that I have on the list here and it's the cough I'm going to guess on pronunciation here k a u f power monitoring smart plug with esp home Now there's a few other ones and this is something else that supported some of the esp home stuff They're they connect to your wi-fi network and it builds you go ahead and describe it You're better at describing because you you're the one it has these ones. Yeah, so these are the ones I have So quick quick background. I used to use a brand called tech in it sounds similar to the popular fighting game series But it's not it's t e c k i n and i'm not recommending those ones don't buy those I was using a script to basically jailbreak those and install esp home, which is a alternate firmware that you can load that's open source And that was going well, but then they changed the firmware that it comes with to lock out said script which has been a whole move in my opinion So I found the uh, I don't know cough cow for I'm so sorry. I can't pronounce this well But they're great. They actually come with esp home built in out of the box So you plug them in And you check your list of wi-fi networks You join the one that it creates and then give it the information for the wi-fi network that you use for iot And then it'll reboot and then connect to That wi-fi network if you fat finger the password or something and it can't connect it'll reset itself And then create the access point again and give you another chance to another password So it's super easy to install and once you once you do add it to the network home assistant sees it immediately It says hey, I found a new device in your network to want to add it It's the smart plug So what I do is add them one by one because you'll have like a bunch of the same name It gets very confusing So I add one rename it add one rename it and it's so easy that it I can't imagine any way to make it easier than that you just add it to your wi-fi network And they just show up in home assistant. It's like magic Yep And like I said, that's another way to do it. You can certainly do those and it just comes down to If you have wi-fi coverage and then that may be something that's no problem for you So you can put the plugs anywhere provide they have wi-fi coverage For me I went with the z-wave and the zig b ones because the range is good and because they relay and someone as they point It has to be a a device that continue they can't they actually specify whether or not the vice can relay It also has to have continuous power obviously To be able to do that But the different approaches to it it kind of depends on your use case in which way you want to go But by the way, they can all live simultaneously if I want to buy a few of these You're not limited to one or the other you can use all of them at the same time Which is actually really kind of a neat feature as well To be able to use all of them and a few people have commented about the Things like the tp links. Yes tp links Um There is uh A little bit of a fundamental problem with the tp link and this is where I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole Watch the age of the video that you're watching it on because There were certain firmwares. There was some debate and I this is one of the reasons I didn't order some of the tp link like there was some firmware changes you had to make But you didn't have to make them unless they were a certain age like The older ones had an easy firmware that would support it and then tp link because they want you to buy their stuff Apparently had a firmware change that Made it harder to make them integrate to home assistant. Uh, those are weird little details That's why I mentioned stuff that works right off the rip versus companies that kind of want you to use their cloud So they'll do firmware things like they they want to make it Maybe it's by accident, but I really don't feel this way. They may want to make it harder to do The integrations Because they want you to use there because a lot of these companies they they sell their own stuff They're not just on the plug the plug is the cheapest part. They usually want to sell you on their services Their cloud and get you tied into an ecosystem And this is one thing home assistant really helps you defy Is that ecosystem and lock in those companies want to like burden you with going you have to use our stuff and Yeah It's I see someone said firmware update equals the taz moda firmware and this is where that challenge comes in of Yes, you can flash them but somewhere easy to flash and I watched someone in at least a couple forum posts like If you buy them and they're after this firmware version They made it harder to flash them to the other firmware Also, how much time do you want to spend flashing firmware? That's a you question not a me question Because my answer was I don't feel like flashing firmware. I want stuff to work matter of fact one more thing I'll mention they're called gid Giddy lid. I don't know how you pronounce that but well, there's a link in there 4 pin rgp Color changing stuff. So this is all my under desk lighting a matter of fact my kitchen lighting is done And I did it all with z-wave these little boxes worked fine And I bought them because I knew I didn't have to do firmware changing on it No surgery just basically plug them in press button. They get detected and joined Now I will admit this In this do take a look at the number of zigbee or z-wave devices that you can have in a network There are limitations. I forget that number is it's something like 64 devices But if you do have more than 64 plugs, yeah You may have to look at other solutions for for that I don't know exactly what that number is, but if you look it up, it's easy enough to find Don't exceed the number of A lot of devices. So probably a little pre-planning Is a good idea And also No, how many amps you are planning on running through that smart plug before you get it because there's a limit You have to look at that because it'll actually be rated for a certain number of amps and you will overload that if you To go about that, but it's it's actually a very um, you know, it's it's a it's not an easy limit to hit most of the time But uh, don't add your dryer to it or your vacuum or any of those weird things because you're going to have problems You know, just just take a look at that. But yeah, definitely those are good ways to go Yeah And the zoos one I mentioned and I said zoos and then space heater because it's actually a higher amperage one The same with the in brighton switch. That's actually controlling the outside lights in my house And there's a lot of those so that switch also has a relay click type relay in there That was made to handle the higher amperage of running I mean my lights are led so they're actually not that many amps, but you know, they're The um, what are you all I forgot how many lumens they are but there are a lot of lumens because they're outdoor lights There is a wattage associated with that so you do have to Uh, think about a lot of those things Yep Yep Um quick side note i'll make in the hard to pronounce part of this I learned and uh, I actually think linus tech tips. They did a short video on this of why there's so many weird names To these companies on amazon. Uh, this is how they avoid trademark They they just put they're not names that have been lost in translation Like they mean something in the and maybe because like a lot of these brands might be from china It's not like they have some meaning in their native language. They just make up and mash words together That way there's never any copyright or trademark infringement. So they just invent a name that they You know, uh, how power monitoring system And there's probably not a company called this because it's not a real word And now they don't have a name collision when they set up an amazon store to sell these so that's a little Learned about why there's so many weird names on there. It's how they avoid it Also, by the way, if you know how they spell this weird name because you click on a link You you implicitly find it because there's nothing else with those combinational letters. It's not a word Literally why the band churches replaced the u in their name with a v because you otherwise wouldn't be able to google their name So they made that one change to make sure you could, you know, people do things like that all the time for seo It's actually kind of funny. Yeah so it's just kind of a Kind of fun little tidbits on there, you know, it's kind of weird to see someone ask and I don't know which companies have declared like singing the praises of home assistant friendly but There are companies that are more friendly than others the nice thing is the companies that do things like z-wave don't care Or zigbee because they they know you got to connect to a z-wave or zigbee And us technical people will build our own hub in supposed to using some cloud-enabled one So those companies to me are like the least like the care by the way z-wave and z-be You're not talking about a standard tcpip style protocol So these there's never an opportunity for these little z-wave plugs to call home to some external thing There's no internet access on your z-wave controller. That's not what z-wave does. It's not how it works so you kind of I seen someone say well, isn't there some risk about the wi-fi ones eventually trying to be on a network and call home I guess because technically you're giving them that's up to you then and it's relying on you to design your firewall rules properly for those that is on you Because yeah, they you're giving them internet access or you're not based on your firewall rules not based on device policy at that point So just a few things to consider on there Yeah, uh firmware rules. So those are important. That's how I fixed my Uh smart tv that has built-in ads. You cannot disable. There's no way to disable the ads at all And firmware updates constantly that probably just give you more ads And it just keeps reaching out and eventually you can't even turn that off either It's ability to reach out to the internet unless you just disconnected from the wi-fi and I wanted to the home assistant So I literally just added a firewall rule I think you were the one that read that gave me the idea to block all outbound traffic from that tv Absolutely works just fine. I get no more ads. I can't download anything every now and then it might give it might complain about internet access But yeah, that's tough. You don't get internet access. You're naughty. Yep All right onto the automation side of it And I'll I'll admit I don't you're are you using node red at all right now j No, all right I me and j have built our automations using the native built-in home assistance Automation tooling and it's good. It's got a lot of features But I will admit and I do not have any documentation or videos on this But I believe the hookup does if you type in it's one of the great It's a it's one of the top videos what last I searched if you type in home assistant node red tutorial He's got a great tutorial that walks you through what node red is I found the home assistant automations adequate But if you do not find them adequate, um node red is an automation that you can integrate completely in there It's just a package plugin that you can go through the web interface and turn on but it offers Extensible like chain of events type of things that can happen Timing on those events conditions triggering multiple events and it's all kind of visually drawn It's really clever how it works. So if you have a more extensive need It's beyond the scope of this particular podcast, but yes, I'll I'll admit It's a it's a new rabbit hole you can go down where you know Jay could build an automation where we monitor his lanode instance And it comes down and blinks different lights based on presence detection of what room j is in Or maybe he had to fire off a speaker j the homelapse show doc The homelab that show has gone down Due to this error and reads the last error log You could probably write that entire automation error, which is awesome, but Yeah is it's it's pretty neat, but it comes down to what your use case is I try to go for Myself the minimum amount of complexity and when I get to where I need cool and as much as a rabbit hole as this was I feel happy with the automation I have but that doesn't mean there's not a future where I'm unhappy and going I would like more automation in my life and no red could be the facilitator for that extended So all depends on how deep you want to go with it And I think that's a perfect segue right into this because What I'm finding out more and more is that if there isn't a way to do something there actually is You just have to adjust your thinking a little bit Because we were we were talking about some things like you mentioned an ir blaster because I was talking about my monitor When I switched from one computer to the next there's a couple things I have to switch There is a remote to my monitor so I could integrate that I didn't think about that until until that happened So um, sometimes you just have to think about it in a different way and you might find a solution that'll help you You know Basically automate something that you didn't think would be able to be automated and another example Is the camera that everyone sees me on right now it um, and that's something that you and I discussed because there's no remote for this camera There's so an ir blaster will not work And that's that's sad because what I want to do is be able to just hey say hey personal assistant time to record and everything come on But the camera has always been the thing that doesn't the tv will come on Recording pc comes on lights come on all of that works But the camera has a physical on off switch. You have to toggle. There's just no way around it So then that's when you mentioned a fake battery, you know on a on a cable Yep, and I just leave the camera on all the time and then plug it into a smart plug And I'll automate that and because it's a fake battery hooked up to a you know power cord essentially It's just feeding power off of a c No problem. I just hit the button it cuts the power to the camera Um, I hope that's not a bad idea if the camera needs some kind of a shutdown thing I'll have to look into that so yeah a little bit more research is needed, but at the same time You know, this is the The mindset that you go through as you start to think about these things when something seems impossible You're like, oh right like in your case you are thinking about rpc calls And I'm sure that'll absolutely work But there's a there's a plugin just download the thing and it works and sometimes you just have to know what to search for because different search terms will Decide whether or not you actually find what you're looking for but there's so many different Combinations of settings and I think that's where it starts to get really fun when you start to put things together and something cool happens Yeah, and this is where like especially me and j because we we want to in Everything else is is the pain in between me and j really love technology me and j really love teaching about technology The pain in between is anything we have to do from editing to The recording to how do we build an automation around that? So one of the things we did Was we build automation like j comes in and tells his system to record time And it goes through and sets the lights to a certain setting It sets the color range of the lights you can get that specific with it So instead of him making sure that's all in check the homeless system is now doing all that as an automation His studio what it looks like when you see it now versus when I come over and we're not recording Finner for jays is a different look you have different sets of lights on and things like that We have these studio lights around us. I've done the same thing You you build a scene and you say this is the thing I wanted to do I'm lucky that this camera All I had to do is take the battery out the one I'm on now I took the battery out and I leave the power button in the on position And then I have a switch on the plug that uh fires up the camera because it's got an external power source And it remembers all the settings because as long as it powers on All the settings were always at last known setting. So I built automation into that So it's kind of cool that we you know, these are one of those things think about what your goal is What's the outcome or what's the pain point you have? With these and then that's how you start your automation journey is going. All right I've started with a goal I know home assistant has a million ways to do it and you keep adding into home assistant until you've reached That goal and neither one on me or j needed node red to reach that goal But hey, there may be a feature tape where we do But I want to discourage you because if you want to build something complicated Hey, I like to mention that it's there for the extra things you may want to do And shadowy mentioned in the chat room about the stream deck and there is an integration for that So that's how I have mine set up. So I have an obs button when I press it All the obs controls come up like which camera is on me You know which scene if it's a screen capture or the camera that's on me I do all that from the stream deck where I hit the home assistant button And then I have my individual controls there. I can hit the main lights on and off or do whatever I want to do And that's just something you install And it integrates it with home assistant, which is pretty cool. It just makes a call out to your home assistant box And that that's also really fun just to have a little stream deck So I have the dashboard that tom was referring to that's out of frame in the camera That's just dangling from the wall. I just go up there. It's a touch screen I just do whatever I want But if I if I'm too lazy to get up even though it's like three feet away I just hit the stream deck and then it does the same thing So there's all kinds of cool stuff you could do Yeah And one of the integrations where I went further is I love the fact that they have built in and this can be done completely locally is have webhooks and webhooks to describe them simply are A special token or key that you touch So you make a command you may use curl if you're doing from the command line You can just drop this webhook in a browser and doesn't really do anything It just says hey make a request and touch this Key now that key can be treated more or less like a password But then you say when this is touched this is the trigger event to do other things I mention it because I have a Synology and then I have my Synology I create the webhook on my home assistant on Raspberry Pi and my Synology is running my camera system and Synology can do um triggers based on The event that's going on so if you detect a person or a vehicle in my driveway But not the squirrels and raccoons that are wandering around But if you detect a person specifically or a vehicle And then you kick off that webhook and that webhook then brings it to home assistant Which then asks a couple questions Of itself like some conditions Is it after dark because there's probably not a reason to turn on my lights after dark The next question is where the lights already on we don't need to turn them on if they're already on So that would be two conditions it meets and if neither one of those conditions are met It says turn on the lights around my house So if there's a person Detected my lights all come on and it may surprise the person or it may not or it may be me pulling into my driveway Uh, because it's actually kind of a nice thing as soon as I start pulling my car I got a bigger driveway as soon as I pull in my car on a driveway It goes I see a car and all my lights come on so I never come home to a dark house Just kind of fun automations, uh that you can do Oh, yeah, it's just it's just so much fun I just have I think actually when I do take a vacation It's actually going to be like a oh my gosh. I got time to work on home assistant vacation I'm just going to probably automate everything that I haven't automated yet And uh, it's just convenience. Like like you were saying some people might think why I could I can hit a light switch It's no problem. We'll show you again It's you're not thinking about it right like some of the things that I do for example Is I have monitors on the sump or you know to make sure it's actually you know has power and it's on I get alerts that that thing goes down. I know you have to know about your sump I mean if you have one Yep, you know, you don't want a basement flood So you need to know about that and I have a knock you also learn on my sump pump and I have home assistant watching it too And um home assistant also has a check that if the smart someone just you know Accidentally bumps it and presses the button on the smart plug turns it off Then every five minutes home assistant is checking. Are you on are you on are you on and if it finds that it's not It'll turn it on another trick that I like to do is I don't know if everybody how many people know this But you can set up a conditional in home assistant. So let's say you have a television So you add the media player thing for it So it shows you like what channel it's on and and what you're watching you control the volume and everything That's pretty cool. But when your tv is off, that's a waste of space on your home assistant Why why do you have that there? But what you can do is add a conditional if the tv is on then show the media player Widget for it and then when the tv shuts off it takes that off the dashboard So your dashboard isn't wasting any space You just have a button to turn the tv on and then it changes to a media And then it just kind of changes state based on that which is a lot of fun So that way you can make clever use of conditionals to have different things showing on the dashboards whenever the status changes Yeah, it's it's really handy and being able to create multiple dashboards and multiple users by the way This is something my wife's not a particularly, you know, she's not tech savvy She's not into tech but she as a general user. She has her own dashboard that's separate from mine She doesn't need all the studio controls and it might be annoying if she had them She accidentally hit ones on recording that could create really inconvenient So I have a you know all the different things that we've built for home automation And to top that off synology's integration is really nice because it will pull The cameras and give you the last image that each camera recorded So if they're without happening to go to the synology dashboard at all She just needs home assistant and she can see the temperature of the house furniture Furnace temperature what it's all set at for our hVAC. She can see the light settings She can see the synology who's if there's a package got left on a porch and a little literature for that And it all does it right through home assistant. So she doesn't even have to go to any other service So now instead of going to different apps to do different things home assistant becomes an integrator for those things This is a nice thing about where I do like the fact that it has the ability to reach out to other cloud services Because maybe whatever that thing is you're doing just doesn't have a local integration option But you have it you want to be able to access it and bring it all to one dashboard. So yep Yeah, there's so many things I feel like I could just fill an hour with all the things that I've automated because Um, sometimes the challenge is what does the audience want to hear based on me rambling? But if you think about it, you could do it I mean, I even have a speed test for the for the internet connection and home assistant That checks every now and then it tells me what my upload and download is. I mean the the list goes on There's an infinite amount of things you can do Yep, for sure. Uh, what we don't have is an infinite amount of time to do this podcast But we love hearing from you. We're going to be doing a q&a episode soon. So feedback at the home lab dot show um, I will be doing some Dedicated videos probably at home assistant soon so I can actually walk through what I did because I do a lot of Astrology videos, so I'll walk through what I do with astrology integration. That'll be a dedicated tutorial Also, check out all the new things me and jay are doing we're both Uh, jay's ahead of me on this. I'm gonna catch up revamping our youtube channels to better bring tutorials to you So um, keep an eye on that so coming up to the future. You look for some announcements on there Thanks, you thank you all for joining and uh, check out the home assistant and let us know what you're doing with it You know, send us some feedback And we might get some ideas from it. So hopefully we gave you some ideas. We're willing to hear some ideas from you and thanks