Usually you just need to know how to read, copy and paste.
Hi all,
After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, I have finally launched a Home Assistant course website aimed at exactly the type of people who are looking for a premium solution, whereby all of the information is gathered in one place and presented with a lesson structure, which is what I think @llundberg is looking for.
If any of you are interested, the site is https://smarthome.study
You can take the learning environment for a test drive by taking the free course. The site is very new at the time of writing and there are currently two courses available, with a plan to expand:
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A complete beginner course that will walk you through the basic principles of Home Assistant, and how to install it on a Raspberry Pi. This is a free course and will prepare a complete newcomer for the level 1 course.
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Level 1 beginner course that is aimed at those who are looking to get a solid grasp of the Home Assistant fundamentals.
My plan is to create a level 2 and level 3 course in order to form a complete bundle covering all of the Home Assistant essentials.
I also run the blog siytek.com, which has a lot of Home Assistant guides that have proven to be very popular! This is why I decided to invest the time into creating a course for Home Assistant. I believe there are enough people like @llundberg who are looking for this type of content.
I would love to get some feedback on the site and the learning platform in general, so I would welcome anyone to give the free course a test drive and perhaps leave a review at the end of the course 
Thanks guys!
Simon
Thank you for doing this. I believe that there is a need for this (can’t be just me).
I am in the middle of a CAD course at the moment but should be done sometime next week so I will take a look then.
Thanks again.
Thanks Leif, any feedback would be greatly appreciated! If you do find some time, I would recommend taking a quick look at the free course there just to see if you like the learning format.
Hi,
I have just done the first free course. All good although I knew most since I have already gone through the process. That said, it will teach a newbie how to get started from scratch.
Once I have a little more time, I will definitely do the other two courses.
A couple of minor observations;
If I click on a link to one of the other pages (within your site), the content of that page does not quite fit on the screen.
Re. the HA OS versions; on oner place it says that the latest is 9.5, on another it says 10.1
Also, my sincere apologies for taking so long, other things got in the way.
Regards
Hi Leif, many thanks for the feedback! Yes the free beginner course is designed as an introduction to the platform, my idea was mainly so people could test out the format to see if they like it.
If I click on a link to one of the other pages (within your site), the content of that page does not quite fit on the screen.
I am guessing you meant the glossary page? I think you may be right as a few tweaks I did to the site design recently may have caused this. I have added some padding and hopefully it should work properly now!
Re. the HA OS versions; on oner place it says that the latest is 9.5, on another it says 10.1
Yes can be some discrepancy in versions due to the speed in which everything moves forward. HA versions are generally there just as a guide, eg “for example, the latest version is 9.5” meaning “but you may find the version is newer” … perhaps I should explain that better.
Thanks again for taking the time to take a look and give me some feedback. If you do decide to take any of the other courses, don’t forget to use SIYTEK10 for a 10% discount! 
Probably. But I think a major roadblock here is that HA is a permanent moving target. Preparing professional IT course material for any complex software is a huge amount of work. And if you’re doing it for an application that changes so often on many fundamental levels, maintaining your course material up to date becomes a full time job. It could very well be that a single HA update invalidates a significant part of your material, because suddenly the way you teach something has become obsolete.
Common applications like AutoCAD, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc, are much more mature and far less volatile. That’s why you will find a lot more professionally made training material for those (and of course the much larger target market for those applications).
Yes I do know where you are coming from in terms of HA constantly evolving. But I also think that some basic concepts like Templating, software developed sensors (I always thought that a sensor was a hardware device for instance), state, triggers, conditions, actions, run modes.
Once those are understood, any updated functionality would be easier to understand.
Hi Simon,
I have sent you an email, hope it makes sense.
Regards,
Leif
Fix the root causes - don’t patch the symptoms!
Hi folks.
I’ve just spotted this topic and have a lot of sympathy with the OP, et al. But HA is meant for most people to be able to use. It should not need training courses!
Though local HA user groups might be a good idea. I’d be keen on that.
Also, @kameo4242’s Community Guide at [Automations, from Zero to Hero - #2 by kameo4242] is a useful help.
I’ve been using HA seriously for about 6 months - with much struggling and many deep frustrations. That’s a common story in these posts - mostly boiling down to YAML and templates, I think.
Should we need Training courses for that - or should we fix the problem?
The Community help is priceless - much appreciated and greatly valued - but for the basics of using HA it ought to normally not be necessary.
Now, I’ve over 40 years in IT (programming / analysis / design / architecture + business analysis, etc.) and my approach, learned sometimes from painful experience, is
- IT should be intuitive to almost everyone. If it is n’t, then I’ve failed.
- Tackle the root cause, not the symptoms. Fix the REAL problem early, do not patch it.
Un-tackled root causes always grow bigger and cost increasingly heavily. I’ve seen a few products and even companies eventually fail because they would not tackle a root issue but patched around it.
Most of HA is fairly intuitive. (Though the documation has some holes - would that I had enough HA knowledge to help there.) Certainly HA is improving very rapidly - except in the area of most pain!!
HA automation and script development are not intuitive. IMO that’s almost entirely because of YAML and templating, neither of which are common, standard, well established IT technologies. Both are frail (just a missed space or character can lead to great pain), and a PITA to use. (Give me ‘C’ over YAML any day.)
Improving the Automation UI (generating YAML) is not the right answer, though it helps in simple scenarios. But it’s patching a symptom!
What we really need to do is to grasp the nettle (YAML, templating, jinja2 and etc.) and replace it ASAP with intuitive, well designed UI tools based on mainstream, well supported, understood and usable IT technologies. (Inevitably sometimes you have to resort to code rather than UI - so make it friendly.)
I’ll help if/where I can.
Then many of the present learning issues / training needs / and community Help requests would vanish and our time would be more productive and inventive.
And Home Assistant could begin to achieve its very real wider potential !
Fix the Root causes - not the symptoms!
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Or, if you find HA’s native automation and script environment non-intuitive, just install Node Red and use its graphical environment.
It’s kind of a right-brain, left-brain difference, so each environment works great for some folks but not for others.
Nope - that’s just another Patch!!
I’m arguing for the long term excellence of Home Assistant, not an alternative. I want HA to succeed!
The Node Red add-on is supported by Frenck and is as much a part of HA as Z-Wave JS UI (ie, it’s in the Add-on Store). According to the Analytics Page, it’s installed by 28% of the user base. So it’s definitely “part of” and not an “alternative” to HA.
You miss my point. I’ve no issues with Node Red. Use it by all means.
But to use NR instead of HA for Automations demonstrates the issue I raised. Some people prefer NR for Automation because it’s so hard in HA (YAML + templates).
And that’s using NR as a work-around (a patch) for HA Automation. That’s all I meant.
Weeeell… the trouble is that most of us like it complicated. 
HA’s website describes it as “powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts”. It’s a hobby, not a product. Why own a Nissan Leaf when you could drive a 1936 Ford 2 Door Slantback Flathead V8 hotrod?
No, it really isn’t.
These recent comments illustrate my point. In technology, what’s hard for one person is “feature rich” to another. And what’s elegant to one is “dumbed down” to another.
I’m convinced that this really isn’t because one is right and the other wrong, but because our brains work differently from each other. We truly find different things “intuitive”. Some folks love a GUI, others insist on a command line. And that’s fine!
It’s a wonderful feature of HA, not a bug, that you have different tools and methods to choose from to make this thing work the way that fits your style and way of thinking.
Though back to the original topic of this thread… that does make documentation and training a challenge!
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I’m totally with you, I as well love the possibilties HA offers. It is a feature!
Why? You just need to do two courses. One for this, one for that and one for the totally different. 
Just kidding, I think a good course can be for both sides and as said, if really necessary there need to be two different courses!
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Two courses every month, surely? Just time to fit them in before the next upgrade. 