homeassistant

Cooking 1 cup of white rice in a Zojirushi rice cooker. I'm surprised at the slow intro/outro. This rice cooker only gives a countdown when it's within 10 minutes or so of being done, so I was wondering if you could tell more about how it's doing with a current trace.

Little did I know when I found a HomeKit lightbulb in the clearance bin at my grocery store for $3 what it would lead to. Here I am, though, adding to and re-jiggering my smart home set up. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it was fun, and I thought I'd share what I found out in case it's news to other folks. It started when I bought a handful of new Sonoff devices...

Mainly, I ordered the MINI-ZB2GS to install in the front hall. I have a 2-gang switch box there, with switches controlling the porch light outside, and the ceiling fixture inside. These are slick, little devices that fit in a standard electrical box, and convert your existing mechanical switches into smart switches. I ran into a head-scratcher, though, when I flipped the switch to test the porch light, and it cycled on and off several times before remaining off. I thought that it had to do with an interaction with the motion-sensor on the light itself, but as it turned out, it's because the MINI-ZB2GS supports momentary push-buttons, as well as switches. While tucking the unit into the box, I must have inadvertently pushed the button to put it in momentary-push mode. I just had to remove the face plate, and carefully push the button to cycle the mode back to 'switch'.

I took the opportunity to upgrade from a ZBDongle-E to a ZBDongle Max. This is what turned into the really enjoyable part! The ZBDongle Max can operate as Zigbee coordinator over USB, ethernet, or WiFi (though not recommended). I mounted it in a convenient location where it has good connectivity to the rest of the Zigbee network, and ran a cable to my PoE switch. Home Assistant picked it up right away, it was just a few clicks to add it to ZHA, and a few more clicks to migrate the network to this new coordinator. I realized that with the HA server physically de-coupled from the Zigbee coordinator, it doesn't need to be located in the living room any more. It could live anywhere that has a network jack. Since HAOS is running in a virtual machine, I could even temporarily migrate the VM to other hosts (like my desktop machine), while moving the usual host out of the living room. (Also, this dongle allegedly supports firmware that can do Zigbee and Thread simultaneously. I haven't tried it, since I don't have any Thread devices yet.)

The ZBDongle Max has WiFi AP functionality for up to 8 devices. It's limited to devices that connect outbound, because it won't route incoming connections, nor forward mDNS announcements. That's perfect, though, for connecting the ratgdo, since it connects to HA with MQTT! That decouples the garage door from my main WiFi AP. I have a few RGB LED light strip controllers that use WiFi, but the Magic Home integration discovers them with mDNS. If only there were some way to have them connect outbound, instead. And, as it turns out, there's OpenBeken firmware. These are BL602 devices, which can be flashed over-the-air, so I did that. Now, they connect to HA via MQTT, too, so they can get off my main AP, too. OpenBeken supports MQTT discovery for HA, so it was a snap to connect them. There used to be a noticeable delay when operating them with the Magic Home integration, but now they are lightning-quick. I can push the button on the remote, and it sends a Zigbee message to the coordinator, which forwards it to HA over the LAN, which triggers an automation, then HA sends a message back over the LAN to the ZBDongle Max, which sends it to the LED strip via WiFi. And it all seems to happen instantaneously.

Just for fun, I also added a CAM Slim Gen2 to my order. I was disappointed to later notice that Sonoff doesn't list Home Assistant compatibility for it; you're meant to use the eWeLink app. BUT, there's thingino to the rescue! It's a BusyBox-based firmware which you can flash the camera with, and then add it to Home Assistant using the ONVIF integration. Supposedly, you can use the two-way audio via a WebRTC integration, but I haven't set that up yet.

Perhaps the most mundane thing (to me) was adding the open/closed sensor to my freezer door. Sometimes, it doesn't seal all the way when closed. By very carefully locating the sensor and the magnet, HA now knows whether the freezer is closed all the way, and quick 'n dirty automation alerts me when it's not, using a voice announcement on the smart speaker.

In the process, I also discovered the UPnP functionality of both my router and switch, and the HA UPnP integration. It was a good day.

Maybe not the correct place but I know a lot of folks use NFC tags to trigger automation.

Does anyone have experience with a tag in-between their phone and the wireless charger? I have a few wireless charging stands I'd like to set automations to (ie: "I've set my phone on the nightstand charger, X,Y,Z lights should be set to red if they're turned on now"). I'm just not sure how close the freqs both use are (and even less sure of how much interference causes issues).

So yeah, has anyone used an NFC tag in-between their phone and wireless charger without melting either?

I have a few sneaky tiptoeing but loveable miscreants as part of my family and I would like to keep them out of my office. I'm sure some of you can relate.

My problem is that most of the locks I'm finding are big, heavy, super-secure deadbolts. I don't care about the actual security, I just want a simple interior lock that I can open with a pin/NFC/fingerprint and also log entry and exits in HA. Does anyone know of a lock that's more "lightweight" than the common options. After all, if they make it into my office there will be evidence all over in the form of fingerprints on the window of my PC case! :-D. I just need a mild deterrent.

The wife already nixed a motion sensor turning all the lights red and triggering horror movie sounds.

I am surprised to see how overwhelmingly popular Tuya devices are for Home Assistant users. It appears that devices using the official integration are very combersome to setup, they are cloud dependent, and they will often need to be re-setup due to a re-acceptance of the ToS.

Are people actively buying these devices? Are a lot of homes setup with legacy Tuya devices?

I personally have no Tuya devices in my home and after reading the integration page, I would actively avoid them. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/tuya

The integration page shows that Tuya is used by 29.2% of active installations and the number of devices from the graph show a huge gap between Tuya and all other devices. This leads me to think that these devices would be prioritized by the developers. Am I missing something? Are these devices so cheap that they are just worth it for many to deal with the consequences of the cloud and apparent hassle of setup?

IDK how else to describe it.

About a week ago I noticed one of my ZigBee air purifier fans turning on and off. Odd but I ascribed it to maybe some sort of smart mechanism to avoid burning out the motor. Perhaps if there's not enough airflow it pauses and tries again? It could be a thing. So I ordered new filters and unplugged it.

Shortly thereafter I noticed my other ZigBee air purifier turning on and off. Okay... Makes sense... Filters are about the same age... Let's just wait for the shipment to come in. Unplugged.

Almost immediately after unplugging I noticed ANOTHER ZigBee device turning on and off, but this time it was a smart power outlet! No filters on that motherfucker, and that's when it dawned on me that this could somehow be a command and not just random.

Long ago I had a ZigBee outlet set up to turn on/off on a pattern over and over throughout the day.

I realized that these devices seem to all be following that pattern, which is strange because that automation ran for months but has been disabled since March of last year.

Now as far as I can tell this means one of three things:

1. Home Assistant has gone rogue and is sending dormant/backlogged commands to unrelated devices

2. A device on my ZigBee network had held those commands for passing them along, forgot about it for 11 months, then forwarded them in the order received to a semi-random device in the network.

3. Aliens? Ghosts? Somebody trying to communicate through the multiverse?

Starting with the first 2 assumptions, is anyone aware of a means to listening into the ZigBee network to see which device, bridge or middleman, is sending these on/off commands?

Is there a way to tell all devices in the network to flush their command history? Should I reset the ZigBee network? Reset each individual device?

I'm one ADHD hyperfocus away from rebuilding my entire HA system and all automations from scratch.

Hi All,

Bargain outlet near me had a bunch of the “monster smart illuminessence” stuff at a price that made me try one.

A few hours later and I have them running properly on LocalTuya. I went and scooped up a bunch more given the success.

My question is: When is the local key issued and when does it change?

I’d like to get them all taken care of and put in the box with key written down so I can delete the official tuya app, and also not have to worry about if Tuya will change it’s dev policy so I can’t get access to the keys anymore.

As a side note, I’ll give Tuya credit, I can easily see where that is a great tool for folks looking to offer smart goods… it’s also exactly why I’ll always be local only.

Hello all,

I've been fighting with razberry7 pro on top of rpi4B and it just doesn't work reliably (if at all). I've dug around the internet, tried different software on it, verified that firmware is up to date and so on and even fed my logs to LLMs in hopes they could spot something. Currently my z-wave devices are practically useless (gladly I got devices with physical controls too) and based on discussions around I'm not alone.

So, I think it's time for me to just get something better. Ideal device would be wired over ethernet and have z-wave and zigbee hubs and possibly POE, but I haven't found any which would also be fully supported by HA.

ZWA-2 should be pretty solid choise, but I'm running HAOS in a virtual machine on my proxmox host and I'd really like to have an option to migrate VM to different hardware as needed but that would require also physically moving the USB plug from one host to another.

What are your experiences, what I should get? I'm in EU, so frequencies need to match, but otherwise I'm pretty open for suggestions and having a rock solid z-wave network is a top priority. If it means using ZWA-2 or some other USB gadget I can work with it, but, again, ideally I'd like to have something wired to the network. Wifi is of course an option, but good old ethernet would be preferred.

Local integration, no cloud preferred.

As the title says, I'm having one hell of a time getting HAOS to see my Conbee II.

I have HA running in UTM, which works fine, but I simply cannot get HA to see the Conbee. UTM can see it, and says it's passing it through, but HA can't see it. I figured that perhaps UTM is the issue, so installed it in VMWare Fusion then restored my most recent backup.

Same problem.

VMWare says it's sharing the Conbee, but HA can't see it.

On both setups I have the USB set to 2.0, and I've tried connecting both directly and through an extension lead, but the end result is always the same: HA can't see the dongle.

Am I missing something?

I am fairly new to home automation and I am looking to add a few physical wall switches to devices that don't have a specific wall switch of their own. I have a couple rooms where I want to put a light on a smart bulb/plug/relay but want to be able to turn the light on/off via a physical interaction at the door, like a normal light switch.
The only solution I see right now is to expand the hole for the existing light (ceiling fan actually) switch, add another smart switch that doesn't actually have a load, and then set it up so if that switch is turned "on/off" then I have a automation that triggers the smart relay.
But that seems like gross overkill. I honestly don't care about cutting holes or wiring stuff up, but somehow paying full price for a smart switch and then using it as nothing more than an alternative user interface for yet another smart device seems really wrong.
Currently I have several kaso/tapo switches installed and have been looking at some smart relays/plugs/bulbs to turn on a lamp, or trigger the light on the fan separately from the fan itself.

If you're using the Home Assistant voice assistant mechanism (not Alexa/Google/etc.) how's it working for you?

Given there's a number of knobs that you can use, what do you use and what works well?

• Wake word model. There's the default models and custom
• Conservation agent and model
• Speech to text models (e.g. speech-to-phrase or whisper)
• Text to speech models

Next month the kitchen is getting remodeled and I volunteered to provide outlets and light switches for the contractors. I need like 13 of each.

My house is one foot in home assistant and one foot in google and I'm looking for both specific and general advice. I've done mostly Kasa HS200 switches so far in my house but I just installed my first [Enbrighten switch](Enbrighten 43080 Zigbee in-Wall... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08428GDS8) and it seems good, but it's underutilized because either I use the switch or I have to go dig in the HA app, and it isn't convenient yet.

Here's the deal:

I've got some door sensors, I've got HVAC, I've got doorbell and deadbolt (kind of), I've got zigbee smart blinds, and then a butt load of kasa switches and zigbee third reality wall warts and stuff. All the automations I've made are hands off. I don't have any crossover between Google and home assistant (I understand there IS an integration) but I want to do this right.

• Should I be doing probably one zigbee switch per room in the remodel (pantry, kitchen, laundry, mudroom) and then kasa? Then eventually move over to full HA?

• I am struggling to figure out how to help the family switch away from Google to HA, but maybe I want to mask HA with Google? We are using the hub max displays around the house and I'm not sure how to pass control without posting dashboards (which I haven't made) to the Google displays.

Sorry this is rambling, but what should I be thinking about here and how do I take next steps to ungoogle the house? I feel like instead of gobbling random stuff together like I have been doong I have an opportunity to make a commitment, but if I choose wrong it's like a $1k+ mistake at $50 per switch/outlet.

A little question for the HA and DIY crossroad. Has anyone here made your own sensors/devices with arduino, pi or some other microcontroller/sbc to interact with HA? I have some spare parts around and I'm thinking in something simple, like an air quality, maybe a little weather station or something to tell me if the garage door is opened or close, something simple, yet usable. I had a look on instructables, but I wished for something that would integrate with my first HA experience. Any thoughts?

Edit: thanks everyone for the replies. If you could share how-tos to this projects or anything it would be awesome. You are a great community indeed! :)

I'm no kind of a programmer, but anyboard offers a free, open way to use structured data to put a visualizer on an AppleTV. "JSON Schema describes all options for dashboards configuration."

No idea how to go about getting or structuring my data from HA to do this, but I wonder if anyone else who might just hasn't heard of https://anyboard.io/

Really don't want to/won't use AI to find my answer.

The washing machine tells me how long it's going to take when I start it, but it's often wrong and takes longer. I've been descending into the basement countless times, usually from the first floor, only to notice it's not done yet.

This is just a small thing but I want to share anyways: I just plugged it in a Zigbee plug with power meter and put an entity icon into the default dashboard. It's conditional and only shows up when power!=0.0.

No more pointless stairs!

I have moved it next to the basement temperature but it's not running right now and I don't want to forge the screenshot so it's showing before the change.

Hey gang, I've got a chunk of free time lately, and I've been working on some of the backlog issues I've had with my HA instance. The one that is giving me trouble right now is my thermostat - I use Honeywell total connect (or whatever its called), and it works just fine when using the normal thermostat card or controls. However, I want it to be warmer in the day, and colder at night. So I had been using a scheduler entity from the HACS store. It always used to work, but lately I've been getting out of bed and realizing the temp is still set to the nighttime temp.

It's not every day, and it seems to work 90% of the time, but I had always thought that the scheduler entities did a periodic check to see if the thing they controlled was at the proper state? Seems like if the scheduler 'misses' the switchover time, it's just stuck at the night time temp all day unless I manually change it.

So this got me thinking... Is there a better, or more 'approved' way to do this sort of thing?

I have a few old automations that are designed to unlock my front door, or open my garage door, depending on how I leave. If I ride my bike or car, it opens my garage, if I leave via front door, it opens the front door. Pretty simple. Except!!! I did this in pieces, so it's 2 separate automations. One detects my phone entering the "home zone", the other detects an event firing (iOS triggered the event via 'shortcuts')

There is now "zone based" automations, and there is also my "person entity". So the way I see it, I have 3 different ways to tell when I come home:

1. My phone's gps enters the 'home zone'

2. My HA 'person' state changes from 'away' to 'home'

3. My phone's shortcut app fires an event that is detected.

I feel like #1 and #2 are the same, no? I only have one device linked to my person entity, and it's my phone. Is there any difference in this case? Is there a preferred choice?

I'm choosing devices based on how good they work with zha and HA and usually have to browse a bit before settling for something. If they manage to implement this properly, I'm all here for it.

Maybe they should talk to the zigbee device compatibility repository people (or maybe they already have).

I recently noticed, that the Home Assistant app on F-Droid has been stuck on 2025.11.4 since, well, November 2025.

I tried some searches, but couldn't find any info on why this is, does anyone here know?

The official releases include the minimal APK for all recent versions.

Hello everyone, and good evening. I got to old motorola phones (one fusion and a g8) and I'm gonna install ip webcam to put them to some use. Is there any other way I can make use of them with HA? Can I use their sensors for anything else?