Home automation dashboard tutorial using Home Assistant, InfluxdB and Grafana

[@yapishkahilt]

Even if you already have InfluxDB and Grafana installed, the second half of this tutorial is a perfect brief intro to allow people to start tinkering with creating graphs and charts in Grafana. Thanks~

[@geektoolkit]

Glad it’s helpful!!

[@FriJamz]

I think I've made maybe 2 public comments on the interwebs in my life.Having said that this is a fantastic tutorial on how to get these 3 things working together. I'm sure he knows his stuff but his ability to teach others is something seldom seen. Bravo!!

[@geektoolkit]

...Thankyou....I'm flattered, honored, and really appreciate that...you made my week sir, thankyou!

[@stu6533]

This was so well explained. I'd struggled with getting Grafana & InfluxDB to work with Home Assistant, but you made it simple. Thanks very much.

[@geektoolkit]

Glad it helped! I also struggled with it and when I finally saw it working I thought immediately “I better make a video before I forget!”. I need to do that more often because some of this stuff is tricky!

[@jeremy.wilson]

Very helpful, thank you for taking the time to put this together to show us how it's done!

[@geektoolkit]

Glad it helped!!

[@peterfrost547]

Thank you so much! I have been trying to get influx and grafana working in home assistant for a few weeks and failed miserably, this tutorial worked wonderfully.

[@geektoolkit]

Perfect!! I struggled for a while too..one of the reasons I made it. I had to ask the developer in discord to get mine working. Glad it’s up and running!

[@ochjoo77]

This is so useful, first video that finally gave me an idea of the home assistant logic and power. Thanks so much!

[@geektoolkit]

Great!!! I did a video that is a visual walkthrough that may also be helpful. I myself had a hard time finding a video that just kind of walked through WHAT home assistant was in a way I could understand it so I started creating a few, though I’m mainly looking to connect it to my projects to make them smarter :)

[@lycakito1814]

Thanks for this, really helped - now playing with all types of temperature and sensor data :)

[@geektoolkit]

I LOVE temperature data! It’s variable enough to chart, has enough variations to be meaningful but interesting, and is easy to gather. It’s why my demos use it so much :). Glad you’re setup have a blast!!

[@Rostol]

This was REALLY helpful thanks, everything was properly set up and I didn't realize it till I saw this. (I even reloaded a checkpoint and reinstalled influxDB twice)...I don't know why exactly but I expected the influxDB to change and "populate" once it was working ok (like tables appearing and stuff from conventional DBs)... Anyway, thanks mate.

[@geektoolkit]

Glad it helped!!! I did the same thing when I first got it running...that’s one of the things that inspired this...I had a heck of a time getting it going. So the more people my pain can help the better!

[@KegRaider]

Extremely helpful, thank you!! I can now access my data finally.

[@geektoolkit]

Super glad to hear that!

[@Snoddas16]

Thank you for this! I am new to Home Assistant and this is exactley what i was looking for to get a nice graphs and layout for my sensors. Keep up the good work!

[@geektoolkit]

Thankyou I appreciate that!

[@andrescalapt_]

The video that I was looking for! Finally! The next can be how to set Grafana in the Lovelace dashboard :P

[@geektoolkit]

I've got that video queued up, it's bene asked for several times along with how I got waze integrated into lovelace, so there will be some video like 'integrating 3 cool things into lovelace' coming here as soon as i can get around to it. I have 2 videos I have to do due to timing then I can focus on those.

[@Dynamic-Productions]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZWpcmaha9qUY5Y

[@andrescalapt_]

@@Dynamic-Productions thks that's the way I was using them but I was getting lag and some errors when showing up the graphs in the lovelace. I'll try again maybe with the updates is already fixed. thks

[@10138707]

thanks finally got it working again great video looking forward to more

[@donmalik9268]

Thanks, Joe, this is an awesome video. Love these dashboards.

[@geektoolkit]

Glad you like them!

[@Kroder]

Thank you!! None of the creating a database part you talked about is in the Grafana add on documentation for setting this up, all they talk about is creating a user in Influx, then it says to log into Grafana and add a data source. I was pulling out what's left of my hair trying to figure out why I kept getting a 502 bad gateway error.

[@geektoolkit]

Yeah...it's a bit maddening. I followed 4 or 5 different videos and 2 forum posts, plus had to ask a question before I go things working. I was glad to get a direct to the point video out on that one cause sheesh lol...it shouldn't be that hard! Glad you're up and running now :)

[@kurtnaslund]

Thank you very much for this one!

[@geektoolkit]

No problem glad it was helpful!

[@deathruddlesdeathruddles5438]

Great vid dude! Perfect explanation!

[@geektoolkit]

Glad you liked it!

[@lqv3223]

This was really helpful, keep up the good work. Thanks!

[@geektoolkit]

Thank you!! That’s the plan much more content coming in 2021! Just took a family holiday break :)

[@erwandelvat2460]

Thank you so much for the '_' instead of '-' problem! It's working now :)

[@geektoolkit]

isn't that frustrating!? Took me I think 4 days to figure it out, I had to jump on discord and post my code to finally get help. Just having it help and save one other person from that pain is worth the time it took to film this, so glad it helped you! :)

[@rafaelsessa8449]

Thank you to take your time to teach us through this

[@geektoolkit]

My pleasure! Glad to help :)

[@Dennis-gl9lu]

Nice Video and very helpfull thx for it ... but the back and forth with the mouse cursor makes me nervous and it spreads unrest

[@geektoolkit]

Yes! sorry about that, this was a while ago now and I think I've gotten better about it...I'm a nervous 'moust gesturer" and it's terrible on videos. On newer videos I'm working really hard to not do that

[@jamesdinsmore9022]

I am so happy I got it all running 😊 One question: how would I keep my phone's battery percent charge out of my humidity display (both use %)?

[@geektoolkit]

Try to filter by entity and it should let you choose

[@vercetti799]

Can you move grafana dashboards to the lovelaceUI dashboard? Wanted to see if this can be used in full kiosk mode with the lovelace UI overview dashboard

[@photelegy]

The only way I found was: You can make a Webside panel in Lovelace UI and add the link from the Grafana. To get the Link you go to Grafana, to the diagram you want, Share embed and just copy the part from the "Embed HTML" (without [])

[@photelegy]

But as I found out it has sometimes some problems with the actualisation or even to not find the graph and show nothing/error.

[@Science1144]

Thank you so much, it works great!

[@geektoolkit]

Excellent! Glad to know this still works, this is one of my older tutorials and things change so much I always worry they'll deprecate. So thanks for letting me know this ones still working and glad it helped!

[@markgillman1002]

Great tutorial, but I'm getting stuck on the query. After default value there's no options to select farenheight or any other measurement. I'm sure I messed up a simple step somewhere, but does anyone have any ideas on where I can look?

[@geektoolkit]

I'd try to poke around in influx to see if the data is there, or try again after a period of time. Also check other sensors to see if any data is going through, or if it's just a specific reading.

[@rodrigolivbio]

Same issue here... have you managed to set the query?

[@Eric-qm4vm]

Thanks for the video. Unfortunately. I am getting a 401 error. Any suggestions?

[@sausage5849]

Hey Joe, great video and info. Do you think you could show us how to do notifications in Grafana and HA?

[@geektoolkit]

Thankyou! I can certainly add that to my list. Another user brought up an interesting point about using the UI built into Influx to lower resource usage. Notifications can be one of the things that I can investigate when I get there. I have a video list I'm working through, and I have to go back and update some old projects (Dynaframe mainly) then I'll get back to home automation topics and look into this

[@WayneRigley]

i subbed! OK first off ive tried to do this several times, but following your video BINGO its up and running! have my house temp/humidity on one graph, my weather station temp & humidity on a graph and the outside pressure on a graph... now is you next video how to get this on to lovelace? please ! thanks again

[@geektoolkit]

I’ve had a few requests for that so I’ll look into it. I think the approach may work but not sure. I did a magic mirror dashboard video showing how to get the url, and with that info that may be able to get things into Lovelace. I’ll give it a shot and see. I’m glad this helped you out!!!

[@hakantoren7340]

Werry helpfull, Thank's

[@geektoolkit]

Glad it helped!

[@Wimpieseigen]

Thanks

[@marcingrabarz2755]

Thank you for this! It was really helpful for me. Hi5

[@geektoolkit]

Yay glad it helped!

[@stevelaminack1516]

I have noticed many add-ons are in HACS and the add-on store. Should I get them from HACS or the add-on store? P.S. I am new to HS and am not a programmer, still a the C&P stage.

[@geektoolkit]

Ideally the add in store is the official addon area...hacs is the community store. I’d go slow on addons...they can affect performance and stability...I usually add one or two here and there. The other thing you can do is make sure you create a backup/snapshot before each. I had the Alexa one is Hacs cause me trouble but for the most part they’ve seemed ok so far.

[@WINGNUT307]

This looks great. I will give it a go. One question though - I have already installed MariaDB (Because the traccar Integration told me to) and got that running the Home Assistant database too. So, do I need to use InfluxDB or could I just create a third database in MariaDb for Grafana?

[@geektoolkit]

I honestly don't know. I am just now seeing a ton of chatter on the home assistant groups I'm on about the Maria DB moves people are making, and need to research this myself. I don't know if Grafana can be pointed directly at it, if Influx would replace it, or how they'd all mesh. one important comment below was somone asking if we need Grafana at all, since Influx can now render it's own charts (saving on the need to also run Grafana). I'm working on camera integrations, and need to get back to this at some point, but honestly I'm a few months out. I think the best i can say is do the Grafana addon, and see if you can point it directly at mariadb to render the data.

[@rodrigojds]

very helpful video! However I don't have the bytes or Kbs option in the dropdown. how can I add this? thanks

[@geektoolkit]

Thankyou! I had them because my router (I believe Netgear at that time) and as supporting it via UPNP. What brand router do you have? You may need an integration, or it may not be supported. )

[@rodrigojds]

@@geektoolkit thanks for the quick reply! I have a 4G Teltonika router connected to my Linksys router running Gargoyle OS which feeds wifi to the household. I'll investigate to see if there's an Intergration for either of them!

[@geektoolkit]

@@rodrigojds Cool, that may explain it. Be careful..I did a quick search and integrations show up by they're for location tracking. Those are cool but they won't get you the throughput numbers. Hoping you find something useful!

[@master21blaster]

thanks! Very Helpfull

[@philipcecchini5474]

I am just looking at consolidating the various home automation devices I have compiled over the years. This tutorial makes me wonder if I am too much a novice to handle the programming? Are there alternatives that are a bit more end-user friendly?

[@geektoolkit]

This is a bit of the deep end of this. I’d check out the visual tour video, and then I have a series that I’m working on to go through it. If you’re looking for easier than that, smart things may help. Other than that you’re best bet maybe to try to stick to an Alexa or Google ecosystem. Consolidation is something home automation companies usually don’t agree on unless forced kicking and screaming. Home assistant is open source and community driven, as I believe Hubitat is...so they can cross the lines to consolidate offerings from companies that usually would be at each other’s throats vs work together

[@JabukaARG]

Hi, great video! I was able to create my first dashboard and showing my 3 TEMP data on one panel but when trying to add the same for the Humidity (sensors are the same) it anly shows 1 value and not all of them even if I choose Group By "none" value ... Any idea? Thanks!! PD: nevermind, was able to do it by adding the tag(entity_id) in the group by query (forgot to do it)

[@geektoolkit]

Glad you figured it out because I was really not sure what was wrong. So that means you have a dashboard with temp and humidity...oh boy...careful dashboards get very addictive...there's SO much you can add! :D Have fun and glad it helped you out!

[@JabukaARG]

@@geektoolkit I've found an issue :( when adding the humidity (in %) Grafana also picks the battery level of each one of the sensors, so am getting both humidity and battery in the same graph lol!

[@cvicracer]

Awesome

[@geektoolkit]

Thankyou!

[@mosth8ed]

I have all of this setup, but on another device to try and keep my pi4's resources as low as I can. Is it possible to display Grafana within Home Assistant like this, but with the page actually being hosted elsewhere within the local network?

[@geektoolkit]

I don't know. From what I understand Grafana just takes in a data source, so I'd guess that it could render from a networked source, but I am not as familiar with influx. Mentioned below was that Influx has graphing available as well, and so you could reduce resource usage by working to utilize that. However I've not set that up that graphing part myself, so it'd be something to learn.

[@austinmabry8462]

Is there a way to set up filters for entity IDs so that it includes all sensors that CONTAIN/include a certain word in their name (ie; humidity)? I wildcard, perhaps? There's no "includes" option in the dropdown menu. Just =, !=, , etc. I've got several sensors that are % based, so just selecting that isn't a good option. But I'd rather not have to manually add every single sensor entity separately. I'm sure it's something simple, but I'm clueless as to how to make that work.

[@geektoolkit]

I don’t know offhand. Someone suggested looking into just using the UI with influx to generate the graphs, that might be worth investigating to see if the query language does wildcards like what you’re looking for (I plan on looking into it just haven’t had time

[@oneofthemany]

How come you don't just use Chronograf within inFlux to create the dashboards, as you can run the same queeries in inFlux as you can in Grafana.

[@geektoolkit]

I think that's a good point and a good option. For me personally, I tried to build several graphs using Chronograpf from within influx, and just wasn't having any luck. I found Grafana's query builder to be more intuitive. That being said, it may be that I just need more time with Chronograf or to watch more tutorials.

[@oneofthemany]

@@geektoolkit chronograf is more or less the same in terms of syntax and will give you the same results. It just doesn't make any sense to me, in terms of resourse that is, running 2 applications that do exactly the same thing - Good demo by the way!

[@geektoolkit]

Thankyou! Totally valid point especially when running on a resource constrained system like the pi. I just wasn’t aware it could do so much and am looking into it. I appreciate the comments because there’s no way I or anyone can know the whole ecosystem, and so I look for comments like this because it helps us all in the community grow and learn from each other (one of the main reasons I created a KZbin channel!). I’ll work on learning it

[@yerks1]

are you worried about your storage space using the database. I am on a VM with Docker with limited space.

[@geektoolkit]

I wasn’t. You can exclude sensors and other techniques to limit logging, and therefore database usage. I’m on a VM on a NUC that can have up to 8tb of space so it’s not a concern. I’ve heard of others that have had issues but they have just as many with the HA log as they do before doing this. In the end I find security camera footage is a much bigger problem for me storage wise

[@rkbest9783]

somehow, after checking the connection in grafana, I don't see any sensor or measurement register with the state change. On the step to create a dashboard. I don't have a dropdown list populated with measurement units like F or %. What could be wrong?

[@geektoolkit]

I would use the dev dashboard to force a state change with “set state” and then see if it populated. I had that happen and that was a fix for one sensor. The other thing I did was reboot and then give it a day. Also check influx to see if you have data there. If you have it in influx and not graft a that helps know what’s broken

[@rkbest9783]

@@geektoolkit I don't see any data in influxdb. The only difference in setting i did was to follow the latest configuration instead of what you showed. So the URL is localhost:8086 instead of the alfanumeric- influxdb:8086, and the test was a success.

[@geektoolkit]

RKBEST the URL I specified is important. It specifies the docker container path. If you’re not using that then you’re sending the data to the wrong place. If you’re using hassio then please use the url I specified and try again

[@vaughanza]

Hi Thanks for the great video and you make easy. Please can you do a video where you can add these Grafana Charts etc to the Lovelace part of HA or do you have to click on the Grafana tab to view the charts etc to view your stats / data ? Thanks again

[@geektoolkit]

Vaughan Lundin Glad it helped! The next video that talks about how to get it on a magic mirror shows how to get a playlist. URL. If you do that but put it in an I frame for Lovelace it should get you what you want. I’ll have to try it when I have a second

[@vaughanza]

@@geektoolkit Awesome thanks , I try that. It will be great to see some more videos from you. Thanks

[@NsRhea]

Thanks for the tutorial! My only question then is how to I export a graph to my lovelace ui? I'm pretty new to HA so forgive my ignorance.

[@geektoolkit]

I've not done that but I imagine the component should be a good start to help you get that going. I think my magic mirror dashboard video may show more of how to get that if needed

[@TrasteIAm]

The add-on page for influx db no longer have any example config.

[@geektoolkit]

Rats, I wonder if they removed it in the addon. This page here has some though in the meantime: www.home-assistant.io/integrations/influxdb/

[@EricPenn1147]

All these videos about Grafana on this channel and others... get into details about install and using... BUT - No info on HOW to get the graphs into Lovelace.... Useless....

[@leoyang5108]

@GeekToolkit Awesome thanks , How put the graphic chart of Grafana onto Lovelace of home assistant?

[@geektoolkit]

I've not done that yet myself but I believe the component would get it there. See if you can find the magic mirror dashboard video tutorial, I believe I walk through how to get the grafana url if you need more info

[@JoseBerruezo]

Nice video. But how to plot TRUE/FALSE?

[@geektoolkit]

Typically true would equate to 1, and False 0, so if you're plotting a 1/0, on/off, motion/notmotion, or true/false it should plot as a square wave

[@JoseBerruezo]

@@geektoolkit Ok.

[@stefanbrobo3613]

You can read Dutch?

[@geektoolkit]

No, but with google translate I can pretend!

[@bogmaerke]

I had some problems connecting the InfluxDB to Grafana, but after uninstalling everything and following your video it works brilliantly. How can you make the iFrame graph of a Grafana panel follow the absolute time range you select in Grafana? When I set mine to something like now-1h, it still shows now-6h in Home Assistant. Also for those seeing this comment, you can setup a sensor that shows the InfluxDB size by using this yaml code: hastebin.com/witefesepa.yaml

[@R1M337]

10:43 Grafana say no

[@Kevinob]

Hi, Great video thank you! How do you insert a grafana chart into lovelace? kzbin.info/www/bejne/qHyseaKnrd2Am80 how do you have your humidity sensors regrouped in home_humidity entity? Thank you!

[@geektoolkit]

I'm going to see if I can figure this out. My suspcision is using a panel tab, but I'll have to verify it