I started to play with home assistant more than a year ago. I do not have a programming background and I still find it difficult to write complex automation scripts for my home.
I have managed to connect most of the devices and appliances to HASSIO, but that is the end of the story.
I do not have the time nor the patience to keep writing in YAML and to count spacesā¦
I am considering hiring a developer to do the work for me. In the same time, I am concerned with regards the security - passwords, tokens etc. Did any of you have any experience in hiring an external programmer to do the work for you? Did you use websites like freelancer.com, upwork.com, virtualemployee.com etc.? What was your experience and how did you go about it? Do you have any recommendations?
i would recomment to just ask around here if there are people willing to help you.
a developer wont be cheap, and to get a good working system it will take quite some time and then you want to add some and pay even more.
i think there are enough people here that would help you out. and for sure if you give them some reward.
I agree that creating automations in yaml can be frustrating. I started doing this in the nano-editor but I have moved to VS Code and Iām using GIT and Travis. That has made life much easier.
There are a ton of links to Github-repoās with HA configs on the forum, I learned a lot from them. Donāt just copy the automations but try to understand them. Watch Bruh on youtube !
Itās funny, I was thinking the same thing. Well sorta. I love playing around with hassio. Admittedly Iām not very good but do enjoy tinkering with it. I considered offering somebody some kind of spiff to help me get everything stable and get some of the coding finished up for me so I can learn by example. I have to say I have been helped and given a lot of different suggestions on here in the kindness of these great members hearts. It is just food for thought.
Welcome to a conversation from 2 years ago. Wow. What a great way to introduce yourself to the community.
Man. If only there were some way to SEARCH for things on the internet. Like some sort of search engine that could find answers to stupid ass questions.
Itās even covered in the getting started guidesā¦
Google can answer that for you.
If only you had the entirety of the internet at your disposal to do your own researchā¦
is really disrespectful to people dedicating their free time to help people on this forum and like this no one in here will ever help you.
That is complete nonsense, only the creator of a post can mark a topic as solved, other people canāt.
You are here for a bit more than one day and just spit out some lies and try to make the community look bad. This is not some kind of paid service, this is an open source projecet and most people (except for core developers) sacrifice their free time to help others. If you are not willing to do at least a bit of reasearch for yourself, than Home Assistant is not the right thing for you, go to Control 4 or any other of the big smart home companies, pay them a huge bucket of money and let them do everything for you.
I understand you are frustrated at making progress in home automation.
I donāt know of any paid developers who may help - but if you ask a polite question stating what you are trying to do, the culture in these forums is generally exceptionally constructive.
Cool. Good idea. I will drop this product. As you said, itās not for me. Apparently you need to be a computer sciences expert to use it.
I like this product (from examples of working systems I have seen in the 14 months I have been reading about it)ā¦ I want to support itā¦ I spent more than a year trying to make it run on a piā¦ I canāt contribute code, I donāt know how to codeā¦ I canāt contribute with solutions as I have noneā¦ I canāt contribute time as mine is already stretched thinā¦ I can however contribute money to a developerā¦ And I can contribute by using the product and thereby exposing the product to even more peopleā¦
14 months is too long to be where I am at. It is too complicated for me. I am too simple. I am done trying to do it myself. I am at the point of wanting to just throw cash at it. Hence my attraction to the OPā¦
Attitude like yours will ensure people like me just continue to be frustrated until we give up and go buy the Google or Amazon productā¦ Iām sure that will help grow this communityā¦ And the productā¦ Way better idea than using that FreeTime you are āsacrificingā to build this product, to instead make some money off me making it PaidTime, and further promote the product you are ādedicatingā yourself toā¦ nah, better off to just tell me to go elsewhereā¦ this is why open source projects ultimately fail in the end.
Do you think you are the only busy person on this planet?
This is not how open source works! If you have so much money, why donāt you throw your money at one of the big home automation companies? Then 1 year later, youāll come back here because they donāt support feature X that you would like to haveā¦
Except that Google or Amazon product are not the same kind of product as home assistant and people are even using Google or Amazon products together with Home Assistant, because they lack a lot of features that Home Assistant provides. And with an attitude of saying that everyone here is a ādorito-eating, basement-dwelling nerdā, you think anyone is willing to help you?
Iām no coder, Iām not building this product, Iām just here to help people on the forum.
Thereās no sign of it failing, itās one of the biggest open source projects in existence and itās growing every day.
Burning, please leave this alone.
The only thing that stands out for me is May '18 <> May 2018 ???
We seriously have nothing to help this guy with, itās not his fault and itās not ours, we simply donāt overlap.
Butā¦ We have all sorts of people here, Lawers, medics, electrical engineers, disabled hobbyists, accountants etc. We are not troglodytes living in a cave, dimly lit by a computer screen.
He needs a commercial solution and we canāt offer that.
I am nearly 40 years old, I work a full time job managing a team, run a business on the side, and have a wife and teenager to manage, along with a house which I bought with my own hard earned money. So if you think I live in my motherās basement, youāre mental.
Thatās not what I said at all in my response either. Apparently, you need to work on your reading skills. I answered a simple question of āDID ANY OF YOU HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE IN HIRING AN EXTERNAL PROGRAMMER TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU?ā. That answer was no, I write my own automations. Pretty simple to comprehend that sentence really, along with the context.
Except the OP is the only one that can mark it as solvedā¦soooā¦
You asked what Visual Studio Code wasā¦itās literally in the getting started guide as a recommended TEXT EDITOR, which oddly enough, I even added the context of āTHIS IS MY FAVORITE TEXT EDITORā. But hey, you seem to be able to only read what you want.
Then buy a commercial product. Home Assistant is clearly NOT for you.
You came into this thread that is 2 years old (HINT: āMay 18ā stands for May 2018), and decided to pick a comment of mine to somehow try to dissect, as if I had done some unspeakable thing like ANSWER THE OPāS QUESTION. YOU attacked me for no reason, other than to act like an asshole. I dedicate a lot of my free time to these forums. If you donāt like something I say, move the F**K along and leave it be. You had nothing to add to the conversation other than āI DONāT LIKE HOW I READ YOUR COMMENTā.
If only I had the time and energy to sit behind a keyboard for days on end, in my motherās basement with nothing to do but eat Doritos and play around in cyberspace messing with noobs in forums
This is just my thoughts on āHiring a developerā
These devices need to be integrated into a home, they need to be installed safely and so needs a ācompetentā person. āCompetentā is a legal definition. If I hire someone and they mess it up what comeback do I have ? What recourse do I have if their actions burn the house down or even kill someone ? Assuming the guy I get has professional insurance and I trust him to complete the work. He must be close to my home to undertake the work.
He must visit the house and meet with me to discuss what I want doing, what sort of platforms he suggests and i will accept (do I even know enough to argue against anything ?) and what software platforms he wants it undertaken in (I donāt want nodered or appdaemon or I donāt want yaml, whatever !)
Next, can we install theses devices in the necessary locations? Are there neutrals in place ?
Is the client able to spend 2 or 3 days undertaking this level of survey ?
What sort of automations do you need ? Lights, heating, occupancy, audio-visual, seasonal.?
You then need a list of products to be purchased.
How long will that take ?
Who will install it.?
So far the developer has spent a week on this and the client about 4 full days.
Now the ābitsā have arrived.
So then the installation starts, things require a bit of house bashing here and a new cable there. Donāt worry about making good the client will employ a decorator when itās finished. So that takes another week.
Everythingās in and coding can start.
Devices and sensors get named first maybe 3 days.? Is the client happy with the naming ? Well tough he wasnāt there when it got done so live with it.
So basic coding complete and he has lights on a profile, he has heating on occupancy and a profile.
And that took another week.
Based on the insurance, the time and the fact that the guy had to take 3 weeks off work, draw up bills of materials, do some house bashing then you are looking at $10k to $12k minimum probably $15k plus parts / materials.
Then you find you are not happy with the light timings, or you want the heating to come on when you leave the office or when you are 5 miles from home, Or you need the driveway lights to come on when you are a mile from home. Do you leave the guy with remote access? Do you even know how to turn it off?
No, I didnāt want a basic front end I wanted a fancy one, a bit like this example but with photos of my actual house, and Iād like a green tint not a red one and it needs to fade to purple later in the day.
Should the client write a URS (user requirements specification)? If not can the developer just turn the house into an appliance controlled from a tablet as a remote control, then walk away
Thinking further ā¦ I didnāt know anything about hue or tradfri so I let them be specified and now i need to pay the ādeveloperā $500 just to come back and change a light bulb. Oh ā¦ and heās on holiday this week so Iāll need to wait til next Tuesday
This is a nightmare.!
What else can go wrong ? I encourage you to add to the possible tales of woe !!!
