Absolute beginner, planning to switch to Home Assistant

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Hi all,

This is my first post here so please bear with me. :slight_smile: I’m currently thinking about switching over to HA. I like the simplicity, clean interface, Lovelace but still I think it is powerful. I’m not new to smarthome, currently using Homey, and also trying out ioBroker. So I have some questions, I’m hoping to get an answer to. :slight_smile: I also started to read through the community here and also the docs, and some things are getting clearer.

  1. What is the recommended installation method? I do own a Rasperry Pi 3, I’ve currently installed HA on, just to try it out. However I have ordered a new Raspberry Pi 4 (4 GB) which I would like to use as production system.

  2. Sonos: I use several Sonos speakers and right now I have some “clean-up” jobs running at night. This means setting back the volume to a certain level, re-grouping them etc. Can I do this in HA too?

  3. Coffee maker: I have a big italian coffee maker which requires some time to heat up. So I start it 45 min before I get up with a Shelly plug. I have a 3 hour countdown running, which switches it off, after the coundown has reached 0. But I also have a Aqara switch which triggers the countdown as well. Or when it is already on, it would reset the countdown to the initial 3 hours. Can I do this in HA? Would someone provide an example script? :slight_smile: Or maybe a link.

  4. What is the difference between a script and an automation? When to use what?

  5. I played around with a lamp and a motion sensor. So the motions sensors switches on the lamp and after it turns to “off” it switches off the lamp after 1 minute. Worked so far. However I have created two automations for this. Is this the right way? Or is there a better way? (I want to learn as much as I can right from the beginning… otherwise it is hard to change it. :slight_smile: Do it right for the first time. :-))

So far this is what I have in mind and what I need some clarification on while evaluating if HA is the right thing for me. :slight_smile: Might add one or another point.

Thank you so far!

Johannes

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The answer to question 4 is straightforward: an automation has a trigger, a script does not - it has to be called specifically.

So you can have an automation run at a particular time, or when the state of a device changes. A script can be called by a lovelace button, or by an automation, or by another script. You can have conditions in both, so an automation could turn on your coffee machine at a particular time but do something else if your mobile phone location showed you were not at home, by calling different scripts in each case.

I personally have a Pi4, which has been a great success. Logging files are written to my Synology NAS to reduce the number of writes to the SD card. HA reads and writes constantly, which can shorten the card’s life. Bear in mind that installing the HA OS means that the Pi becomes a dedicated machine - you can’t easily use it for anything else (if that’s what you had in mind). If you want to use the Pi for other things as well there are other installation methods - which I confess I don’t understand…

I have a number of Sonos One speakers, which I turn on and off from from a Lovelace dashboard but I’ve never tried anything more elaborate. The docs mention snapshot and restore options which sound like what you want to do. I do have several clean up jobs in other areas, which vary depending on whether or not I’m home, so I imagine it’s feasible.

Good luck!

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Thank you so far. Yes, I was planning to only run HA on the Pi. Given it is quite inexpensive I prefer this, in case something breaks. :slight_smile:

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An afterthought: HA doesn’t thave to do everything. I have several Philips Hue lights and motion sensors, and the Hue hub handles all the switching on and off, except in a few cases where I want other conditions to apply - for example if I am not home HA sends me a warning text as well. Usually it’s the dog.

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I do not own Hue sensors, just Xiaomi :slight_smile: