Home Automation

Automations with Home Assistant

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , 0 Comment
incorrect use of automations in home assistant

Originally posted 2018-03-23 12:28:35. In a previous article, I blogged about Integrating Google Home with Home Assistant. In that article I made a connection between doing this and setting up automations which is incorrect. So in this article, I want to correct the record and make the correct case for automations. So what’s wrong with doing it like this? Well these automations will ‘work’ in that if you click on the text and click on trigger, they will turn the light on or off then and there. But how is that better than just clicking the on/off toggle on the
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Updated using Hass.io with USB Boot on a Raspberry Pi

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , 0 Comment
kodi runs on a raspberry pi

Originally posted 2018-08-27 16:37:41. How to use Hass.io and boot off a USB stick. This is an update of my previous article here. In order to not create more confusion I decided to do a new blog post about this here. The whole installation of home assistant can be somewhat confusing for someone who is new and sometimes the documents on the Home Assistant site are confusing or as often happens, 100% clear when you have already worked out what you want to know. The ‘preferred’ installation method for home assistant promoted on https://www.home-assistant.io/ is to install Hass.io This installation
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Using Xiaomi WiFi Switches with Google Home & Home Assistant

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , 0 Comment
xiaomi wifi switches

Originally posted 2018-02-19 10:50:21. So after my experiences with the Yeelights and Google Home, I wanted to add a couple of WiFi switches to my system. I already had one of the Belkin Wemo switches but Belkin has abandoned the Australian Market now and their switches are no longer available. Not only that, even if they were available, the price was really steep at around $60-$70 Aussie. Looking around on eBay and also looking in the Home Assistant Community, I saw that some people were using the Xiaomi WiFi switches (pictured). What I didn’t realise initially is that there are
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Home Assistant and Google Actions

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , 0 Comment
google home mini

Originally posted 2017-10-31 13:40:06. So I just got another Google Home – but this one is a Google Home Mini. I got this one for my office so I can listen to background music easily without blasting music everywhere at home. I’m also planning on getting a mini for our bedroom to listen to music with the new sleep timer that was recently introduced. However, the purpose of this post is to speak about the Google Actions Integration with Home Assistant. You will remember from my previous blog posts about controlling my Limitless LED lights with Google Home that I
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Setting Home Assistant up for Secure access over the Internet

David Williams - DEW IT Home Automation Central Coast , , , 4 Comments
home assistant configuration

Originally posted 2018-06-05 15:35:04. Lets have a conversation about security when your Home Assistant is opened up so you can access it over the Internet. If you take a look over on the Home Assistant Community forums here there are threads about user’s home assistant instances being hacked with ‘friendly’ hackers who have just changed a few things and left some warnings about their insecure home assistant setups. Traditionally or ‘normally’ external access to your system over the internet means that you would open up some ports on your router so that you can connect over the internet. This would
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