Home Assistant Basics Part 3 // HACS // Introduction to the UI

[@TechWazza]

As per the comments by some others - these are some of the best videos explaining aspects of HA. I really appreciate how you simplify the complex in a way that can be followed and reproduced.

[@mostlychris]

Thank you for the compliments! Glad they are helpful!

[@MarkVP]

Thank you, so glad you mentioned the rate limit. That was driving me nuts. Subscribed just for that.

[@mostlychris]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for subscribing!

[@ferreiramarlon89]

Hi... What did you do to solve the rate limit?

[@MarkVP]

@@ferreiramarlon89 just like he mentioned in the video. It should clear on it's own.

[@CommTech19]

Thanks for taking the time to explain things correctly. Commenting to drive engagement of your videos

[@mostlychris]

I appreciate that!

[@Neo2111]

Can't believe I never knew u could reorder the sidebar. 2 years of using HA as well

[@mostlychris]

Lol. I stumbled across that. It's a relatively new change.

[@Thundercarves42]

Great video Chris, really helped me get on track with starting my Home Assistant. You explained everything very clearly and look forward to checking out your other videos!

[@mostlychris]

Thanks. Welcome to the world of Home Assistant!

[@davidanderton2437]

Thanks Chris as someone just starting out with home assistant this was helpful. Can I suggest that whenever you bring up a new acronym you assume your viewers don't know what they are.

[@mostlychris]

Absolutely. Which acronym did I talk about in this video that might be suspect?

[@DarrenChin60Days]

thanks for the video, i foudn that some apps did not include in the integration parts, such as ewlink, smartlife

[@mostlychris]

Hey Darren. Not sure, but was there a question you needed an answer to?

[@eclecticlight.design]

You have some of the best tutorials, thank you!

[@mostlychris]

Thank you! I really appreciate the compliment!

[@eclecticlight.design]

@@mostlychris you’re welcome! I appreciate your help.

[@dannyjensen4954]

Thanks for this series. Very helpful.

[@mostlychris]

You're very welcome!

[@richardlyon67]

Great tutorial - thanks. Some feedback - despite restarting HA, the custom Mini Graph Card didn't show up in the Lovelace editor. I had to force a refresh of the page (Brave: CTRL SHIFT R) first.

[@mostlychris]

Thanks and good tip. "Clearing the cache" solves so many problems in all areas of computing.

[@TaitumLaroque]

you make the best tutorials on this, you sir get a like and sub for these. keep up the great work!

[@mostlychris]

Thanks! Appreciate the sub and nice comments!

[@RusticByNature]

Great video. With the HACS, I am able to see the Cards in the HACS frontend but they do not show up in the Config/Lovelace/Resource. The reboot dialog box never popped up. The things I did try, ctrl+f5, went into chrome and cleared the cache, restarted home assistant from the prompt in HA, I shut HA all the way down and I opened HA in edge first time ever, and still, nothing shows up in Resources. Do you have any other ideas?

[@mostlychris]

Which cards are not showing up? In HACS, do they show as pending a restart in the list of installed addons at the bottom of your HACS window?

[@RusticByNature]

@@mostlychris Thank you for replying. I was not getting any of the cards even after a restart. After I saw your reply I went back in HACS and it had an update. When I went into HACS Frontend all the cards had red boxes saying not installed. I re-downloaded all cards and now they are in the Lovelace resource. Thanks again.

[@screemberry]

This is probably beyond the basics, but at some point I'd like to see how to setup Lutron Caseta Switches and Dimmers, and get Google Nest setup so I can interact with my thermostat.

[@mostlychris]

Correct account this time, lol. Thanks for the suggestions. You can take a look at my videos regarding Nest integration. The google portion of that is a bit advanced but once done, it works flawlessly. kzbin.info/aero/PLFFSkDDgcMEwUpOzjNvtqYF0ALNLLo086

[@danielhansen7519]

I was wondering if you had a video about integrating a custom database to the home automation? I am trying to build a db of random arduino devices controlling incubators using nRF24L01 modules using the RF24Mesh library. I would love to create blueprints and templates. Please could you help?

[@mostlychris]

When you say "integrating a custom database" are you talking about a DB sitting on another server somewhere or changing Home Assistant's database?

[@danielhansen7519]

@@mostlychris so...I was planning on building a separate db on the raspberry pi that the home assistant OS is on. Is that not possible? I am using sqlalchemy to build the db. Can I not run my own scripts in the background on this OS?

[@danielhansen7519]

@@mostlychris Do you recommend using the influxDB and modify my MasterNode.py to use influxalchemy instead? Can I use socketIO in order to have triggers to have the MasterNode.py do things based on changes to the db from UI commands?

[@danielhansen7519]

haha...sorry Chris, for spamming your chat. I have to admit, this is my first time looking at this OS. I noticed that there is an add-on for SQL under integrations that is supported by sqlalchemy. So, technically I could integrate my MasterNode.py as a service to interact with the SQL db and I could use Grafana to show measurements. I will need to explore your videos some more because I would like to have buttons and value entries in the UI to update the db and the MasterNode.py to 'listen' to those changes and do specific functions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. nesnah.danielatgmaildotcom

[@mostlychris]

Hey Daniel. I haven't played with MasterNode before. One thing you might consider is AppDaemon. It allows you to run python programs within HA and those can interact with HA. You'll have to dig into that a bit for more detail to see if those are compatible.

[@SA-oj3bo]

What is the difference between Home Assistant Community Add-on and Home Assistant Community Store Integration?

[@mostlychris]

The primary difference is that add-ons in Home Assistant are "official". HACS is a collection of community provided integrations and front end components. It is not "officially supported" by Home Assistant. HACS is a central way to manage all of these community components. Prior to HACS, we had to manually copy files into the correct locations and manually update them. HACS makes all of this much easier.

[@amintaleghani2110]

@mostlychris, thanks for your video, how to connect the Pi to the wifi local network?

[@mostlychris]

You can add wifi later on. Do you have it connected to the network via cable to start?

[@amintaleghani2110]

@@mostlychris yes connected via lan

[@mostlychris]

@@amintaleghani2110 Once you are logged in, go to Supervisor > System > Host and click on "change". There should be an option for configuring wifi.

[@mikekendig6781]

Chris, Firstly I want to thank you for doing this series of videos on HA. I'm having an issue with my HA. It discovers all my Tasmota light switches because I'm using the Hue Bridge Emulation (this allows Alexa to turn the switches on & off). When I define the switches using yamal, HA indicates that every switch does NOT have an entity id and I cannot use the UI to turn the switches on or off. The "all" switch at the top of the card toggles back & forth but does not effect any of the switches. I'd love some help / suggestions. Mike

[@mostlychris]

If you go into Developer Tools and look at states, does it show any of the Tasmota switches? It could be that they are not listed as the type that the "all" button is acting on and you would need to define them with their own buttons.

[@rrrrrrrr290]

Im not sure the Hue Emulation works all the time, have you added the tasmota integration, and have your switches added there If you are using Nabocassa cloud all HA devices can be controlled by Alexa, remember to resync alexa after adding device to HA

[@burner37]

Thanks for guiding me through the beginning of my journey with home assistant. Why is it crazy to store media on the sd card? I want to also use my raspberry pi as a plex server. I manage to install the plex server add-on and everything is working fine. But I'm temporarily storing the medias on the sd card. What storage solution would you recommend for video files? Flash drive, HDD or SSD?

[@mostlychris]

You're welcome. The SC cards are prone to failure, especially if there is a power failure while writing to the card. They work OK, but for a system that needs reliability, I would find a different long term solution. Those cards also have a limited life-span so reading/writing a bunch in the case of videos is going to shorten that life. I would also think that media from Plex is going to fill the card quickly. I would go with external storage for your media. A NAS, shared drive via SMB, or something else besides the SD card.

[@burner37]

@@mostlychris Thanks for the answer. It doesn't seems that straight forward to mount a external drive on HassOS. Any tips?

[@mostlychris]

There are some videos on booting off the ssd, etc. I haven't done it but it can be done. Do a search and you shod find some.

[@yawasamoah294]

I followed all the steps in downloading the HACS but when i try to search for it under integrations, it does not sure up. I tried to download HACS again just to be sure, and it says that it already exists. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you

[@mostlychris]

Have you cleared your browser cache? That's a step that is sometimes required as noted on this page: hacs.xyz/docs/configuration/basic

[@jeffz2474]

Do you need to have a zig bee or zwave dongle to get devices working? Mine are all on smartthings. I also have a Blue by ADT alarm system in my home. How do you integrate something like that? The alarm does have IFTTT.

[@jeffz2474]

Chris West everything I have is zwave. Smoke/CO2 combo detectors, Yale door locks, Honeywell thermostat, a couple smart things door sensors, smartthings button, and a few smartthings water sensors. All work great. I also have a Phillips hue hub and Wiz WiFi smart bulbs. I was just curious how I can set this up in Home Assistant. Wasn’t sure if I setup a server I’d I need dongles or still use the smartthings hub.

[@mostlychris]

@Jeff Z I think some people are using sSmartThings as the hub www.home-assistant.io/integrations/smartthings/. However, that adds another layer between Home Assistant and your devices. If you're going all-in on Home Assistant I'd just start moving things over. You will need a z-wave dongle if you go this route. I use amzn.to/3nJYd0W. Experiment.. see what works best for you.

[@mostlychris]

I am using z-wave but that is because I started with z-wave as the proliferation of things that weren't z-wave was not widespread when I initially started installing switches, etc. How are your devices communicating with your smartthings hub? For ADT, it looks like blue is all wireless and so there aren't options like Konnected or Envisalink that you would have been able to overlay. That is the problem with proprietary equipment. Someone else might be able to comment on what the Blue is using for protocol and communications. FWIW, I have ordered a dongle so I can demonstrate that on my demo system. I can't take down my prod system of course and that is where my current z-wave network resides.

[@hexadroid6884]

Thanks, starting to learn Home Assistant and your vids are great. I have got my Rasp. Pi and HA installed. But I don't have devices yet. What would you recommend to stick with? Zigbee or Zwave? Or can you just mix and match? Also I understand Zwave needs a dongle, do you need one for Zigbee too? (Pi 4 model B)

[@mostlychris]

I have always used Zwave. You can buy a USB stick that has both Zwave and Zigbee in it. I would start with that option. Then you can choose what devices you want to use. Zigbee are typically cheaper but more prone to issues. ZWave has been solid for me.

[@rbakshi64]

Very Nice. Could you please do similar video for DuckDNS and NodeRed. Thanks

[@mostlychris]

I have some videos on NodeRed that I use with other entities. I'll add DuckDNS to my list.

[@mostlychris]

I have added a DuckDNS video. Check it out on my video list.

[@mblanche2162]

Crazy !!! Great Video Chris, thank you !! There is so much info and want-a-be instruction that I'm getting good at bypassing the garbage. Anything I have done has never came without issue. So much so, that I have reinstalled HA 3 times lol. This was great instruction, but as usual, did not go as planned. Jumped on Github opened my account up. inserted my commanded line, loaded up great. Everything looked as yours did. Remembering what you said to give it time, I did check config and reboot. Went to loaded it in Integrations. Not there. Waited an Hour. Not there Waited 3 hours still not there. Multiple reboots, soft and hard checking configuration as you mentioned. Still not there. Just curious. Would you know what the problem would be or if this is common. Thanks Again. enjoy your channel.

[@mostlychris]

What version of Home Assistant are you on and can you point to the time in the video where everything stopped working as planned so I have a point of reference as to what you are looking at?

[@mblanche2162]

@@mostlychris Thanks for getting back to me Chris. I am running HA 5.12. The procedure was working well with the install. installed through SSH. no issues installing when completed I restarted and went to config/integrations/add-ons and no Hacs was available from the pick list. I waited an hour then tried again still nothing and this morning still nothing yet I can see it in my directory on my pi. very strange. I have reinstalled my Home Assistant experience oh about 3 times now. I learn something every time. I'm an automation guy. but this is a different beast. So Thanks to your log tutorial, I see one warning. 2021-03-1011:09:01 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.loader] You are using a custom integration hacs which has not been tested by Home Assistant. This component might cause stability problems, be sure to disable it if you experience issues with Home Assistant" Seems pretty ominous... Not sure what to make of it.

[@mostlychris]

That's a pretty standard warning for anything that isn't core Home Assistant. It tells me that you have it installed. Just want to clarify that you clicked the blue "Add Integration" button on the Integrations page. It won't show in Supervisor->Add-On because it isn't an actual add-on. You'll only see it if you add the integration from the Configuration->Integrations page.

[@mblanche2162]

@@mostlychris Correct That's the one.... I thought it might be something needing to be started up in docker, or something unique to Raspberry. Anyway just came home after having it off most of the day, started it up and behold I click on add integration and there it is. Most bizarre thing I ever seen. LOL I guess I need to find my patients with this project. Thank you for your time. Now if I can only get my automation working again I'll be great. Again, thanks a for the help and enjoy your video's. Stay warm !.

[@mostlychris]

Glad its working now! Technology in general requires a bit of patience. Good luck with the automations.

[@waelzayed]

I'm trying to add keymaster integration in HACS, but not able to activate it and the process is not clear. Have you ever installed keymaster? I'd really appreciate creating video for this important integration

[@mostlychris]

I have not used this myself but looks interesting. What is your use case for the lock manager? Always curious how people use things in their automations.

[@waelzayed]

@@mostlychris the main use case is managing users’ codes. I managed to install keymaster and was able to display existing user codes, but unable to creat a new or delete an existing one

[@mostlychris]

@@waelzayed Ok. Let me play around with that and see I can do anything different.

[@waelzayed]

@@mostlychris Thank you, I'll keep following until you publish the video

[@mostlychris]

@@waelzayed You could follow after that too ;)

[@RonnyRusten]

Well, HACS is broken, at the moment at least, for HA on Docker (in Linux). It needs version 2020.12.0. My HA version is 0.118.5, so the version format is totally different in the different HA editions, or something... Oh, well, I'm not vasting my time on this...

[@mostlychris]

You are quite a few versions of HA behind now. We are on 2021.4.x. They changed the naming scheme towards the end of last year and there was quite a bit of discussion on that. HACS needs the later versions of HA now. They make quite a few updates as time goes along and the associated dependencies need to be updated as well.

[@RonnyRusten]

@@mostlychris My bad. I thought I had just installed HA, turns out I had it installed from before. I did an update now, and the version is 2021.4.6. Thanks for the reply, and for making me check a bit further... HACS is being installed right now, looking forward to keep following your tutorials. (Now I need to find out how to get USB dongles to talk to the container...)

[@mostlychris]

Excellent progress! I have used Ubuntu and Docker before and it worked ok as long as I selected the correct device for my USB stick. I started to get the "unsupported operating system" message in supervisor doing it this way though and some issues with updates due to Docker permissions.

[@RonnyRusten]

@@mostlychris OK. So you use Raspberry Pi as your Home Assistant? I guess I just can't understand how a Pi can be better than a PC, but I guess a Pi is sufficient. I think I have heard that SD cards "wear out" after some time, is that correct? I am going to try to see how much I can do with HA in a container on Linux, but I don't run the supervised version, so I can't really follow your tutorials. I bought a Zigbee stick and got it up and running, so I guess I bought the righ one :-)

[@mostlychris]

I don't think a pi is necessarily better than a PC. For many people that don't have a home lab, etc., a pi is an easy and relatively cheap way to get started. I did start on a pi, moved to a PC running supervised Docker, and because of power and other reasons, moved to the Odroid N2+. The solution you are planning on definitely exists out there and others have done videos on it so I think you'll be fine. There are some components and such that are version agnostic so some of my vids might apply :)

[@ronm6585]

Thanks.

[@mostlychris]

You're welcome

[@n.r.2258]

I choose 2 modes out of the selection ... (iOS dark mode and kiosk mode out of the hacs .... they show up in the resources but how can I change to lovelace UI ? Do I have to change anything in the config file tu enable lovelace UIs ?

[@mostlychris]

Not sure what those mean. Have you restarted home assistant after making changes?

[@n.r.2258]

@@mostlychris Yes, sir. I just can’t get the other „modes“ May this have something to do that it’s under „custom“ or „yaml“ control ? And if so, where do I have to change it ?

[@mostlychris]

Can you jump on my Discord server and post a screenshot of what is going on? It's hard for me to tell from these comments.

[@n.r.2258]

@@mostlychris Hi Chris, I appreciate your tutorials very much as well as you’re kind answer. How ever most of the tutorials are made by long time users, and some tiny details are often not mentioned or forgotten. Beginners, like I am have to find out these missing parts by following all the tutorials I can find in order that someone mentioned this missing detail. So did I cause the missing part in my case was to insert in the config „frontend: themes: !include_dir_merge_named themes“ cause almost non of the tutorials really explain the connections between config settings and the content of sub folders in which the actual part of the configurations are stored/located and the Github documentations are not really made for beginners ... so, I have to learn it „the hard way“ and little by little ... but I’m working on it and appreciate your tutorial and you’re help very much. So far, you’re Tutorials are the best, I can think of.

[@mostlychris]

Thank you! As Home Assistant has matured, configuration options have changed a bit. The inclusion of files is done by default on new installs for some of the includes and not others. It does take a bit of tinkering to get things just the way you want them since there are different ways to accomplish the same task in a lot of cases.

[@ABKimp]

Thank you

[@mostlychris]

You're welcome

[@marclombardi3094]

How do you move a device to another room.?

[@mostlychris]

If your are talking about areas, you can click on the device, click the gear in the top right of the device page, and then change the area on the pop-up.

[@pettercavell8644]

Hey! Have had great help from your youtube clips, but now I am stuck carrying I would post HACS. My log says the following: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/config/custom_components/hacs/config_flow.py", line 59, in _wait_for_activation self.activation = await self.device.async_device_activation() File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/aiogithubapi/device.py", line 84, in async_device_activation "device_code": self._device_code, AttributeError: 'AIOGitHubAPIDeviceLogin' object has no attribute '_device_code' Is there anything you can say outright what it is? and how to fix it. That's after I connected to Github.

[@mostlychris]

To clarify, are you trying to install HACS itself or are you installing a custom component?

[@pettercavell8644]

@@mostlychris Hacs itself. I succeed with all steps up to and including github. On github's website, they say that the connection has been successful. But when I return to HA, the "wheel" just stands and spins

[@mostlychris]

What type of system and type of install is your HA?

[@pettercavell8644]

@@mostlychris Home Assistant Supervised on Debian 10

[@mostlychris]

As a Linux admin, restarting to fix a problem was always an area of shame. However, I wonder if you should do a restart. So...restart Home Assistant and if that doesn't work, restart the host. I'm a bit concerned though. I don't know what state your system is in. Run the config check in server controls before restarting. How are your verifying that you connected to github?