Definitive Guide or Consulting Service?

Installation
1

It seems like the only two options available for home automation are either pay a professional bucket loads of cash to do everything for you with Control4, or spend weeks or months of time manually piecing information together, writing complex YAML files and tearing your hair out using HA. I’m wondering if there’s a happy medium between the two.

I’m looking for a definitive hardware guide for each type of device with complete step-by-step instructions, or at least someone who offers a consulting service to design and setup a HA build that I can take to my contractor to lay out the wiring at least.

Does anything like that exist or is it up to me to figure everything out?

2

Yes. That’s the point. It’s fun. :joy:

You’ve probably already found the installation guide:

And there’s the “Cookbook”:

The Home Assistant Cookbook - Index

But HA really is a hobbyists’ playground, not a product. This forum is the consulting service.

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3

Sorry about the facetious reply.

If you could ask specific questions, someone will probably be able to advise. For example, what do have in mind when you say “lay out the wiring”?

4

Hi, and welcome to HA!

The challenge here are the bane of all engineers - user requirements.

  • Geography - where are you? 110V/ 220V/ 240V/ 12VDC?
    (and yes, there are HA users on all standards, in all geographies)

  • Standards - I can reference UK BS7671-A3, but that’s no use if you are in the US.

  • Requirements - lighting? HVAC? Security? Wired? RF?
    Again, too many standards to reference, but IMHO, for new, look for Matter/ Thread, and if in the EU, ModBus might be interesting for new wired installs.
    Look through the list of integrations, and see which have Gold or Platinum status, and have lots of users (“many eyes make all bugs shallow”).

  • One thing is universal, install ducting or more cable than you think.
    Mark Mccall had a UK self-build blog for a while, but I can’t find it now.
    I installed lots of Cat5e, and now would like some 10G fibre.

writing complex YAML files

I’ve not touched HA YAML for about 12 months, and I’m a greybeard Chartered Engineer - there’s been a lot of changes to make graphical tools that are beginner-friendly. Sure, if you want complex custom logic, templating, or are using an older custom integration, a text editor box may be needed, but not for most things.

Does anything like that exist or is it up to me to figure everything out?

Please remember you are interacting with volunteers like you from the HA community. HA is worth a lot more than the price of entry (FREE), and we have lots of experience to share. The documentation is pretty reasonable, but, yes, searching the forum is usually the fastest way to an answer.

If this helps, :heart: this post!

1 Like
5

Years mate. Years.

I started in 2018. Fortunately I enjoy it as a hobby, as only recently have I actually started to have to actively look for things to do.

Each integration usually has a configuration option list explaining what each option does and some examples. If you want deeper than that search for the integration on youtube.

You can advertise for this in the Social forum category. There are people who do this. Keep in mind that this will be an ongoing contract though. HA changes regularly and things have to be kept up to date, new releases come out every month. Far better if you learn it yourself. Start small, e.g. time based light control and work up from there.

Not just you, there is always help available here, Discord, Reddit, and even Facebook :face_vomiting:

1 Like