I still hate them 
Honestly, the yaml should stay for when you want to do a special customization.
Why can’t we do things like this?
https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/images/7/71/EasyConfigBME280.png
2 Likes
Because someone needs to write the code for over 1,000 components, and maintain it.
So a drop-down menu within each section containing every supported device in that section?
Ok.
This needs a database (do we do offline or online?), And it also needs a good front end. We need every possible combination of option available for every single device. How long do you propose this would take a team of, say, 10 developers working full time?
I’m all about something easier, but if you want something now, you’re going to have to jump in and get your hands dirty with some code.
That’s fair and makes sense.
I’m not saying that things should be now or that even my ideas are right.
I wish home assistant to be easy that I could tell everyone I know to use it.
I don’t think this topic is going anywhere good. I appreciate and I’m extremely grateful for what the developers have done.
Sorry for wasting your guys time.
1 Like
It’s barely even code really. Once you get used to yaml it’s not that hard and there is an abundance of help available.
What staggers me is the number of people who start a post saying they have been an IT professional for 20 years but they can’t work it out!
2 Likes
We all do. We justify the hoops we jump through because we love the project and the flexibility. Getting it ready for John Doe takes time, and resources, neither of which are free.
Au contraire. You are not wasting time. This is a discussion and I am merely trying to point out a couple of key facts that I felt you were missing when you started this thread.
-
This is not a product. Nobody is being paid to work on this (Baloob’s story is different
) There is no monetary compensation for the work being done, which leads me to point 2. -
The developers working on this are just like you and me. Normal people (relatively, considering the amount of knowledge they collectively share), that like to tinker in their spare time. They have lives outside of Home Assistant (I hope), and the first thing a developer does is to get something working (make it pretty later, that’s the designer’s job anyway
). They are very well aware of the woes of the GUI, and there are people working to better that, but it comes at the cost of time. Lots of time goes into UI/UX and it’s not an easy job. Making something simple enough Grandma can set it up takes a LOT of skill, time, effort, and testing. It won’t happen overnight.
As the big pieces become more and more stable, devs can spend time working on the things to make it easier to use. It will happen, just not soon enough for some.
I welcome you to sit down, write up some plans and ideas, and submit them to the team for review. You might learn some code in the process and begin working on your dreams and desires and become much more than a ‘user’ of the project.
Don’t let some discussion and counterpoints sway you from contributing ideas to the project, just know that the team is well aware of the issue. They need code more than anything but lend a hand where you can and you will see the benefits.
2 Likes
I wasn’t even referring to the config yaml. I laugh at yaml being called ‘code’. I was actually trying to make a point “If you want something better, and now, you better code it up and submit it because it’s lower on the priority list than you like”
2 Likes
What would you like to see in the UI that is missing?
This is exactly how I started as well. I saw Ben’s @bruhautomation videos on YouTube before I had even heard about Home Assistant. His videos not only got me interested but showed the basics on how to get started with HA, and to implement your own MQTT broker, build a simple cluster sensor etc AND get it all working with HA with ease. I’m not a coder or computer programmer, I’ve never studied anything relating to Linux or similar.
It took me about 3-4 weeks to get my head around YAML and how to use it with HA, but after that, it’s 2nd nature and has become easier and easier to write automations and move onto more complex scripts. I have even installed HA into my parents house, and my business. I really didn’t think the learning curve was as steep as it is made out to be sometimes.
If you have a question or are struggling to understand the documentation, post in the forums with detailed information on your problem or issue and anything that could possibly be relevant to what you need assistance with. The community is fantastic and has helped me to solve a bunch of more complex things I have struggled with.
Also, it is worth keeping in mind that most 0.x releases of software are not normally public release versions. Maybe when HA reaches 1.x it will be ready for general public release in a more what you may call, user-friendly way.
1 Like
There are (some) details published on GitHub.
A lot of the actual discussion takes place on the Discord developer channels, which are visible to everybody.
1 Like
I’ve been doing a poor job of communicating my ideas. I’m trying to emphasize and sounding like an ass. I understand that this is free and I’m grateful for their work. However can’t we point some of the issues to discuss even if the subject was already discussed by some members of the community? And also that you can still voice your concern, without having a solution or even knowing how to fix it. If I knew I would be programming right now.
With that said maybe I can show my idea and we can have a more productive conversation.
We can’t scrap yaml, but we can make it more tolerable.
Here are my sensors with no groups https://imgur.com/a/OTgb7Em
It takes 70 lines to get just my sensors organized together. The first example that I clicked on the cookbook has 400 lines…
I know we don’t have rooms but look how openHAB2 is dealing with:
http://demo.openhab.org:8080/homebuilder/index.html
Their “yaml” code is generated for the user to copy.
Is that unreasonable to ask the developers that “hey guys we kind of need this”?
1 Like
Yes a room generator would be great! Nice idea.
1 Like
I since we don’t have rooms per se a group generator.
3 Likes
Yes, I guess a room is just type of group.
I love what HA can do, especially for something which is free however it certainly would be awesome if (I guess this would be the near final product) if the entire process of grouping, creating automations, setting up devices, EVERYTHING, was a graphical drag and drop / click type UI with no playing around with code / yaml at all. My previous home automation hub was a Vera which as shit as it was at least did everything bar the really tricky bits via an intuitive GUI. Home Assistant with that type of programming interface would be killer
2 Likes
Get developing 
3 Likes
I used to use stringify for my home automation before switching to home assistant and the front end for that was brilliant. Drag and drop to create a flow. I think node red looks similar and that’s why people seem to be using that more.
I guess the script and automation configerers were an attempt to do what you are talking about but I think they still need some work. I don’t actually use them
I would love to be able to help but unfortunately I don’t have the skill set to be of any help 
I was just making a point of where I think HA should / would love to see, HA go in time.
If we are spitballing ideas then an add on to your group generator would be when a new entity is created to offer to add it to a group.
I am presuming you are going to add this to a feature request 
Not sure if any of this is possible but what the heck
So why aren’t you still using stringify? Not trying to be rude, but I assume it is because HA has something that stringify doesn’t.