Home Assistant Cookbook - Discussion Thread

[paddy0174 (Patrick)]

Hey there and welcome to the Brady Bunch!

It’s great to see HA moving forward, and didn’t we earn a Community & Social Media Manager just for us? I can see the advantage in finally having a person to speak to, much appreciated! Not sure though, what you did in a former life to deserve this (us), but I for one promise to behave, at least most of the time.

Just kidding, really, welcome to the forum! I hope to see and read a lot from you, and I really hope, you can be the bridge between community and team, I personally am looking for since…ever!

I’m eagerly awaiting with what you come up!

@Stiltjack

All good points. Let’s shelve that one for the time being.

@Sir_Goodenough

Anyone able to fit this in our list, be my guest. (If you think it’s helpful)

Honestly, I think the video is much to complicated and is a little to general for us. But I’m taking a look, if I can write something up on how to use the documentation and other ressources, to have more fun with HA. I’ll let you know, how far I’ve come next week.

@Stiltjack

Is this guide still valid? (I see it was written at the beginning of the “Year of the Voice”)

I haven’t looked at it for a few months, so after the YoV it might very likely be outdated. I’ll take a look at it, and let you know, when I have updated it, to link it in the index.

I just wanted to ask, where were we with the TOC in the Cookbook? I wasn’t sure, if I properly described what I had in mind. I’ll setup an example topic and post a link to it here.

My favourite right now would be the TOC in post#1 and then the categories each as own post. But we’ll see how that looks with the example.

[Stiltjack]

@paddy0174

My favourite right now would be the TOC in post#1 and then the categories each as own post. But we’ll see how that looks with the example.

Wouldn’t that mean people had to do three clicks to get anywhere? TOC > Category > Post. It’s hard enough to get them to click once. Also, the serendipity factor is quite important (looking for x, happen to notice y) and for that everything has to be visible.

My only concern was that the list of topics was getting a bit long - the hidden TOC gives an optional summary without taking up much space.

[NathanCu (Nathan Curtis)]

@Stiltjack, When a firm I used to work for did Intranets they advised clients nothing should ever be more than three clicks away (and then produced a mountain of stats to justify that)

So your thinking is sound. Beyond three you loose people’s attention and click through drops through the floor.

[Stiltjack]

Nothing changes. Back in the newspaper days, a story “below the fold” was guaranteed fewer readers.

[LiQuid_cOOled]

My company’s Intranet used as 3 click system as well. It wasn’t always adhered to, but it worked well.

[paddy0174 (Patrick)]

As I said, I didn’t explain it properly.

See here:

TEST topic, will be deleted

This is just a test topic and will be deleted! Please don’t post, I just wanted to show something and needed a new topic. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a play area to do this, sorry! @mods Sorry, didn’t know where else to post this. TOC Category A Category B Category C Subcategory A Subcategory B Subcategory C Category D Category E Optional: Here comes some text to explain the TOC or the topic or…

I find that good to read, people are used to scroll down in Discord forums. If you just scroll down, you have one click to the linked topic, if you use the TOC to get into a category there are only two. One on the TOC, and one in the corresponding post to the linked topic.

It’s easier for us, as we can better add content to each category (see “optional” in the example topic), it’s easier to manage in case of edits, as the post to edit is much smaller, and I find it good to read for the user - you have kind of a divider between categories, because you have a seperate post for each category.

I like it, as I already said, would be my favourite, but as you, @Stiltjack , started the Cookbook, it’s your choice! Let me know, what you think!

[paddy0174 (Patrick)]

Btw. this post should be added to the Cookbook as well, this sounds great for people that use th UI (not me, but hey… ).

Documenting your Smart Home

A bit late for an answer, but for those who come to this thread with the same question: In automations and scripts you can use the top right menu to select Rename. There you’ll find the description field. It can hold as much text as you like, and even supports markdown for formatting. So for instance the following description: **This is a documentation test** * Test 1 * Test 2 * *Test 3* Looks fine to me Shows this in the automation editor on top of the automation: [IMG_0687] Also note th…

[Edwin_D]

If we’re going for the smaller usefull ones too, this one got more likes than I would have guessed:

Restore the system dashboard?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about default dashboards and autogenerated dashboards. When you install HA for the first time, you get a global default dashboard called Overview that is autogenerated. Once you take control by editing it, it is no longer autogenerated, but it is still the default dashboard. You can create additional dashboards, you can delete additional dashboards, but you cannot delete the global default dashboard called Overview. Otherwise new users won’t have a home pag…

[Stiltjack]

I see what you mean now, sorry. I agree it is good to read.

However, as @tom_l says, only the first post in a Community Guide can be edited by anyone. Your index works very well for something that’s being maintained by one person, but it’s not going to work here, unfortunately.

Anyone else got any thoughts? I may be trying to fix something that’s not broken…

[Stiltjack]

@paddy0174

his sounds great for people that use th UI

Organising and annotating automations

Automations multiply very quickly, and although it may seem obvious what you are trying to achieve while you’re writing one, three months later, when you come to make a change, it won’t be obvious at all. The sooner you adopt a systematic approach to organising them, the easier your life will be. How you organise them is up to you - everyone has their own system - but consistency is important. Categories and Labels Release 2024.4 added several new tools for organising elements in HA. [labels…

[Stiltjack]

@Edwin_D

If we’re going for the smaller usefull ones too, this one got more likes than I would have guessed:

Wow, yes it did. Can you write it up as a community guide?

[Edwin_D]

Will do. But I may wait untill I have a proper keyboard, I’m on vacation now.

[tom_l]

@Stiltjack

Anyone else got any thoughts?

Only the example I gave in the topic.

[Edwin_D]

I was trying to see how the recent changes affected the post about the autogenerated dashboard. But I have so many entities, the autogenerated dashboard is totally locking up my iPad air. I guess my partner would say my hobby is getting out of hand. I just think: I need an iPad pro…

[MaxK (Mark)]

Tracking down instability issues caused by integrations Added to cookbook index (Troubleshooting)

[Stiltjack]

Thank you! Do we need to make sure all cookbook posts are in the Community Guides category?

If they are not, they can’t be edited by anyone except the original author - and I think this is true even if you move them to Community Guides. There may be issues keeping them up to date in the future.

Edit: An alternative is to ask the author to use the “make wiki” option.

[MaxK (Mark)]

I messaged bdraco and he was ok with moving it. It looks like it’s done.

[Stiltjack]

I moved it myself, but he needs to make it a wiki since it was created outside Community Guides.

[petro]

Guys, don’t move pinned topics. I’m going to move it back so that it has optics on it during this release. Configuration has the most traffic, that’s where people will head when encountering an issue with 2024.5.

We can make a separate cookbook post if needed at a later date.

[MaxK (Mark)]

looping @bdraco in so he knows what is happening