Now you have made the list, why not share it?
What the cookbook is good is to highlight how inadequate is to use yaml for everything.
Look how complicated are all those setups to achieve something that should be simple. (400 lines to get your groups organized???)
The installation instructions are good, however, once you reach the second page there are exactly 5 lines talking about how to do the most important thing that is adding a component. Next page is already how to make an automation, for a sensor that you couldn’t even figure it out how to add.
Of course, there are links for longer and convoluted texts.
The documentation is a reflection of how complicated simple things can be on HA.
only 400??
my groups yaml files are almost 900 lines.
but i dont see how you can do that in another way.
With a UI for that…I know is complicated and such but every program that we use does it. Is something that HA will have to face it to go forward.
Does not make sense a project to automate things makes everything manual to set up.
And a good UI would reduce the need for documentation for simple things and limit users mistakes.
There was a group editor but it didn’t get enough attention and was doing more harm than good so it was disabled.
There’s 1000 contributors to HA. Hassio is almost 1 yr old since official release. This is starting to come off like a diner coming in to the kitchen to yell at the cooks WHILE they are cooking.
“It doesn’t have to be complicated” is not helpful or insightful. “Make the UI good” isn’t either. It’s a community kitchen. Grab an apron and join in.
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an ui wont reduce the yaml.
and it wont make those complicated setups easy.
if there was really a need for an UI, it would have been created long ago.
it no rocket science to create an UI to create and modify groups.
its only 1 type of setup. you can create a html page for that in notime.
but i think noone sees the need to create it. (and everyone is allowed)
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How about this video about components? The video is a year old.
After the Getting Started, all it takes is exploring components.
I have never worked in IT before, but to me the documentation is self-explanatory. Templating isn’t an easy task to figure it out when it comes to getting the state of Mr. Coffee for brewing tea, but once I got it to work, it’s working. The forum is there to help get your started if you haven’t explored the components page.
Ok how many pages in the documentation do you believe there are around adding a device? Be honest here.
Longer and convoluted? What do you mean by that? Usually when people say this it means they didnt read it or spend the time to read and understand the documentation.
Have you submitted PR’s and issues in github to correct the things you feel could be corrected? Are you trying to say there should not be any documentation?
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Yeah, I don’t actually think the community is actually bothered about this. Is actually a quite defensive community when it comes to disagreeing with the status quo. I wonder if this discussion is not doing more harm than good.
The yaml structure (actually the lack of strict rules) made it easy to grow the list of components. How giant our files are kind of show that this situation is not practical in the long run for a project as ambitious as HA.
I’ve said it before.
Break it up into includes and make your yaml files smaller if you’re so distraught by the size of a file.
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I’m still to find one that lays down in a simple way how to do it for the new user. The documentation from the start assumes that the user knows even where on the configuration.yaml to paste the new component info.
I did one or two things, but talking with you guys I don’t think my ideas are that popular or even wanted by the community.
Yes but doesn’t fix what I see as a big problem. Everything needs to be written down one by one. There is nothing to make it easier. If I have an environment sensor that I want to add to a group I can’t just “sensor.Bedroom.all” I have to sensor.Bedroom.temperature, sensor.Bedroom.Humidity, sensor.Bedroom.lux, sensor.Bedroom.pressure…Then add the icon manually to each one.
I really think the issue here is how much reading is done on the users part. Yes you are right it does suck to do the reading but you already knew that going into this. Anytime a user who doesn’t want to spend the time to read the documentation that others have spent time on to write, they have a problem. Had a user have continued to read after the getting started they would’ve found this page in the documentation. Its like another 5 pages later so maybe another 20 minutes?
https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/devices/
It depends on your idea, if your idea is to get rid of documentation or to have less than that doesn’t make sense. If your idea is to flesh out the documentation so its easier for others read and follow then great.
How often are you adding devices? How often do those devices change? You sound like you spend all day adding and removing devices nonstop. After I get a new device / component, it takes me a couple of minutes to add it and integrate it…hardly worth the stink you’re raising about it.
If you want a GUI now, start writing code.
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No, I don’t want to get rid of the documentation. I feel that needs that need to be more friendly and give a better introduction. I might give it a try.
Not all documentation here is bad, but we lack some simple introductory information. It’s like we jump the basics chapters.
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Perfect. There is an edit button on every page of the documentation. Go to town.
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i have an appdaemon app for that, but it doesnt really make it more easy.
- i have lots of sensors that dont have the name from a group i want them in inside them
- i always want other sensors there too.
so the option for using wildcards is nice, but most of us the still endup creating group by group and add all entities you like.
by the way there are lots of yaml readers out there that give you the option to search for keys with wildcards.
so you search trough your yaml, get a list with al devices containing bedroom and then you just copy paste.
there are 1000 ways to make it easy on yourself, but most of them just endup costing you even more time and efford.
for instance a group configurater UI.
i rather type some devices in a list then clicking on pulldown after pulldown containing all my entities.
customising your own system just takes time. abd for sure when you have a lot of lights, sensors, switches etc. no matter how you do it, it will always consume lots of time.
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That’s a good point. You actually made me re-think some things. I love to play with sensors. I add and test stuff quite often. There are things that the experience with HA is great. Mostly are the components with auto-discovery, unfortunately, not all can be. But then you have groups that you need to go one by one…
From what I feel here the problem is more my setup than the community at large.
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That’s true!
I feel that I’m really on the other side of the spectrum when it comes to my love of yaml.