Blueprints seem great, I can see this really lowering the bar to entry for Home Assistant over time. It makes it much more approachable for people to be able to come in and see not only that HA can integrate with all these things but also to be able to see and leverage what people are doing with those integrations with a few clicks. Well done!
One thing that concerns me is that the forum is not exactly on the introductory path for people. I think a lot of users get here eventually but usually only once they run into a situation that forces them to go look for help.
What if the documentation for an integration showed blueprints tagged with that integration on the side? Perhaps just the first couple with the most activity/likes/views and then a link to view more which would go to the blueprint exchange filtered on that tag?
I realize its kind of early for this since there’s not that many blueprints yet. But I think connecting it to the documentation that new users are likely already looking at would help them get started quicker and easier.
Not really sure I understand your point. Blueprints are used to create automations which then also appear in that menu. And sure you can share automations on the forum here but getting them into HA involves copying and pasting them as YAML and then replacing entity ids, device ids and other stuff with things that make sense for your system.
Not that any of that stuff is impossible, I know I’ve done it enough times. But for a new user that’s never configured anything in HA before its kind of a lot. Plus as I mentioned, a new user isn’t likely to head to the forum until they have to.
Having the integration doc those users are already looking it list useful blueprints for easy import seems a lot easier. They can import them by URL, fill in the blanks provided by the author right in the UI and start using them. Then when they’re ready to take it to the next level they can dig into the automation config and see how they are put together so they can better understand how to make their own.
