Category Archives: Home Assistant

All related to Home Assistant

Use DMX in Rocrail (in combination with HA)

I have all my lights in my modelrailroad room connected with DMX.I can control it from within Home Assistant, and since shortly, also from within Rocrail at the same time !(A BIG thank you to Rob Versluis, to update the … Continue reading

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HA – setting automations/events/color/conditions, without fiddling around in HA settings

My wife likes to set/change colors/brightness of our lights, based on certain conditions/events, butshe doesn’t want to fiddle around in the HA interface or yaml itself. I created some buttons on dashboards, so she can set the colors/brightness of every … Continue reading

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RPI Zero W – DMX/OLA

The RPI Zero W is the little brother of the RPI(4). This does have a less powerful processor and only 512KB Rams. Due to its very low power-consumption, it’s ideal to do some smaller (sub)automations.You can also attach a screen … Continue reading

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HA – switching from RPI4 to Odroid N2+

In December 2022, I switched my HA-machine from RPI4 to Odroid N2+.All went well (backup from RPI4 and restore to Odroid N2+ did take less then 15 minutes in total), and since then, my HA is running more snappy, smoother, … Continue reading

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*Article in progress: HA – custom notifications via Browser_mod to IOS and various devices

I have some “nice” notifications:– Showing cameras on our google nest devices, based on motion and/or other triggers.– Let google nest speak the number and name of people that are calling on our landline or outgoing calls.– Even show pictures … Continue reading

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Ultra-wide/regular touchscreens

Recently I discovered Ultra-wide and a regular touchscreen from WaveShare.They come in 2 flavours:– 11.9 inch (320 x 1480 resolution – 287.3mm x 69.1mm)– 7.9 inch (400 x 1280 resolution – 207.78mm x 69.8mm)– 10.1 inch (1920×1200 resolution – 217.91 … Continue reading

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HA – record video when doorbell rings + recording gallery + auto-delete old recordings

I have an EUFY video doorbell (but this should work with any HA supported doorbell) and also several Tapo C310 and EzViz cams.Whenever these camera’s trigger a motion (or button push from the doorbell), it starts recording video for about … Continue reading

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HA – switching from Conbee II to SkyConnect USB stick

I previously used a Conbee II USB stick, and switched to SkyConnect recently.“Switching” was very easy 🙂 Conbee II USB stick: https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2SkyConnect USB Stick: https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect 1. Make a full backup of your system.2. Download a separate backup of your ZigBee … Continue reading

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HA – using 1 “custom:my-slider” to control volume on several devices 

I have several devices to play my radio-stream. (A (windows) laptop from work, an HP Pavilion, a GigaByte mini PC with AMD Ryzen 7 …)Depending on the work I do, the mood I’m in, one of these devices is playing … Continue reading

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HA – control “things” on a remote (linux) device

Sometimes it’s necessary to control “things” on a remote linux device. (possible a RPI, and certainly NOT your device that is running HA)In this posting, you will learn how to perform these tasks on the remote device:* Control the volume* … Continue reading

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HA – shell commands to RPI or other Linux machines, without the need to enter passwords !

Sometimes you just one to run a remote command from HA, on another machine. (RPI or other Linux machine)When using shell_command within HA, you get confronted with the fact that you need to enter a password on this remote machine … Continue reading

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HA – control/read entities via Restful API

1. JQ and Curl are needed for this tutorial !Note for windows users: Make sure Curl is installed ! It should be installed on newer windows versions,in case you don’t have it, head over to https://curl.se/windows (On linux / MacOS, it is installed by … Continue reading

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HA – communication between MQTT and Arduino

MQTT stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport.It’s a lightweight protocol where a small code footprint is needed, and the connection uses a small bandwidth. It is mainly used for “machine-to-machine” communication or IOT (Internet-Of-Things).It’s an ideal solution to exchange data … Continue reading

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HA – PAJ7620 gesture sensor

I have a “magic mirror” in our bath-room, to watch news/videos/house overview.When the screen is on, it “shines” trough this mirror, making the screen visible.When turned off, the mirror is just a regular mirror.This is done with a “one-way” mirror … Continue reading

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HA – good to know & snippets

Format date/timeWith the now().strftime(‘XXX’), you can output the current date/time, in a certain format.Replacing the XXX with a combination of “Format”, allows you to get a timestamp in the format your prefer. You can add multiple format tags, and also … Continue reading

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HA – using a 1480×320 display with a baremetal OS (RPI with Chromium)

I’m still working from home … I made a switch from our local (Benelux) department, to the global (worldwide) IT department. (still within the same company, for more then 20 years …)Because this switch requires lots and lots of teams-calls, … Continue reading

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HA – use ChatGPT (3.0) in automations to show data

Most people know by now what ChatGPT is. If not, check it out at https://www.openai.com and https://chat.openai.com/Most people use it to help them out with some HA automation.I use it “IN” automations, to get data and represent it in HA … Continue reading

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HA – Fix for images-issue with FeedParser / custom:list-card

I see lots of people struggling with showing images in RSS feeds.Some posts on different HA forums, suggest changes in sensor.py in /custom_components/feedparser/but this seems no longer to work. The issue is the way those images are placed inside the … Continue reading

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Time for a new year and a lot of new postings !

2022 has been a very busy year at work. 2023 may be even more busy !But this will not prevent me from posting lots of new topics 🙂2023 will be the year of my new hobby-room / music-room / modelrailroad-room … Continue reading

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HA – Sonoff NSPanel+ESPHome+Home Assistant+Nextion

While in my constant search for “better” home automation, I stumbled upon the Sonoff NSPanel.I already use several Sonoff devices, and with a Tasmota firmware ( https://tasmota.github.io/ )flashed on it, they do exactly what I want. (and are of course … Continue reading

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