Homekit Infused 5 (HKI) v2023.1.3

sharkpunch · January 12, 2020, 1:30am

would love to get on the beta test for this

jimz011 · January 12, 2020, 1:34am

I will probably release a version at the end of next week.

iMartien · January 12, 2020, 8:26am

Is there anything we could do to prepare our current (none HomeKit infused) setup?

Have all these plans for creating views etc, but all will be lost when implementing HomeKit infused right?

jimz011 · January 14, 2020, 3:43pm

Correct, unless you have the knowledge to break my setup in pieces and only use what you actually need or if you know how to modify my setup. Though I will write tutorials after the release in which I will try to explain how to do basic changes (apart from the general config which I have already written the documentation for).

However there are things you can do to prepare for the release. Which are quite a few things. I will post the docs for preparing later tonight, they are almost done.

Preparation consists of some essential parts and some optional parts. And many of these preparations are actually things that should be done regardless if you use HKI or not. Things like for example customize.yaml which can all be done already (and should be done imho).

I will post the instructions later today including a link. If you really can’t wait I have partial docs in the development branch of my repo. (Note that all other files on that branch are actually the same as my current branch, so only the docs are different).

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 5:26am

For anyone looking for preparation instructions, the docs are online (you can go up to and until the copying part of the installation section). Warning preparing might take more time that the initial install. You can prepare already if you want to by following the guide. (remember that it isn’t released yet and the purpose of releasing the docs are so you can prepare your installations, note that the docs might change before the actual release!)

Click Here for documentation.

Juggler · January 15, 2020, 12:22pm

I really like the look of this; what an amazing contribution to HA!

My use case is an older iPad that I have mounted to the wall. One of the key features I’m looking for is a “nice” way to display my Google calendars. Does HKI include any “nicely” formatted calendar cards?

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 1:40pm

Well, yeah the calendar is pretty decent I think:

However I will have to add a note and a warning. You will need at least iOS 10 to run this (it must be able to run ES6 scripts, which is needed to render custom-cards).

The warning is that the config is pretty heavy for old devices (my ipad air 2013 has serious troubles running this). This is not so much the case for an always on tablet though. However if it needs to reload it can be pretty heavy.
Also keep in mind that this config was specifically made for smartphones and because of this it only works in portret mode.

I had actually started working on a tablet version a while back, but I scrapped it to rewrite this in its entirety which took me a lot of time. I won’t be rewriting this again very soon so tablet version will be on the todo list!

Juggler · January 15, 2020, 3:32pm

That is a nice calendar… my only request for it would be to have colour-coded entries based on the calendar (e.g. me, my wife, my son…). Than you for the warning on old devices; my iPad-on-the-wall is an older iPad Air like yours.

What differences do you foresee for a tablet version?

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 3:48pm

Well color coding the calendar shouldn’t be that hard with the use of card-mod.

I actually have separate views planned for a tablet (or I might go the extreme lightweight route and use Tileboard or something in that direction). Lovelace is really great but imho it is quite heavy when using multiple custom-cards. I find my ipad air really slow using lovelace, however like I said this problem only occurs when the tablet is used in standby mode, if it is always on it isn’t as apparent.

So I want a lighter tablet version which might lack some features from the phone version, but that shouldn’t be a big deal as tablets mostly used single view anyways (I still haven’t decided the best route, but having a slow ipad air definitely helps in building something that works adequately)

I will keep you informed, but the smartphone release comes first haha.

yoni3210 · January 15, 2020, 5:45pm

Do you think you will have to make a step by step video of the installation from scratch?
i got lost

Anyway, you are doing amazing job!!! this is one awesome project!

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 6:23pm

Please tell me where you got lost so I can clarify that part in the documentation.

Hm, the documentation is pretty thorough, however you can only do the preparation steps now. And yes I am aware that github formats the text in an unpleasant way. I will look into this and maybe create a different page for docs (or maybe even a different site, not exactly sure yet).

However if you install this from scratch it will be pretty easy. Just follow the preparation steps (install HACS and the required addons).

I will make an instruction video if that is what you are asking, however that video will not be online at release simply because making videos cost a lot of time and I have to get the written documentation right first. Preparation and copying the files is actually the difficult part. Configuring the system will be really easy!

Edit: are there already people that did the preparation steps? If yes please comment. I am really curious if the docs are understandable (don’t say formatting, because that is being worked on haha).

iMartien · January 15, 2020, 6:34pm

I’ve done all the preparation steps, took me about 45 minutes. The instructions are clear to me, but I’ve been using HA for almost two years now, so maybe I’m not the best test case.

Anyways thanks so far for your great work!

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 6:46pm

45 minutes isn’t too bad, I actually counted on an hour (when starting from a clean HA, not including the actual HA install).

Thanks for the feedback, if anyone else faced problems please note them so I can fix them before the release. (I expect to release it on monday, however it might be sooner!)

yoni3210 · January 15, 2020, 7:21pm

@jimz011
i installed from scratch, this is what i’ve done:

installed hassio from scratch.
installed HACS
installed the addons from HACS.

after that i got lost…
maybe create a video of clean installation of hassio not migrating from existing setup.

Anyway thank you again!!! this is one awesome project!!!

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 8:30pm

Well after that you can’t do much other than doing customize.yaml. This can be done either through the UI or creating a customize.yaml file at the root of your ha install. After having created that file add all your entities that you are planning to show on the frontend manually:
so in customize.yaml add your entities like this:

light.your_light_1:
  friendly_name: Bed
  icon: mdi:lamp

light.your_light_2:
  friendly_name: Living
  icon: mdi:ceiling-light

switch.your_switch_1:
  friendly_name:  Oven
  icon: mdi:oven

And so on and so on. Don’t do all your entities, only the ones you plan to show on the frontend like lights, switches, sensors, cameras etc. (Stuff that you don’t need on the frontend do not have to be done, simply because doing ton of entities this way is crazy, but hey that is up to you). Replace “your_light_1” etc with your own entities ofc.

The examples should help you setting that up. But yes I will create a video explaining this, however I can’t release the video at the same time as the release as explaining all this on video takes quite a bit of time.

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 9:14pm

Haha, well yes that will work immediately, and will also apply to your current setup. Just try one or two and see what it does in the interface (assuming you have the standard interface right now). Just look at the icons and name that you have changed in customize.yaml (you will probably need to restart afterwards).

yoni3210 · January 15, 2020, 9:38pm

how it will work without copy your files? this is the step that i got lost.

steps done:

installed hassio from scratch.
installed HACS
installed the addons from HACS.
create customize.yaml and add entities like you wrote.

Thank you, i think i’ll wait for the video

jimz011 · January 15, 2020, 9:43pm

Well that is it, you can’t do more yet. As I haven’t released it yet. So if you have done all this you are prepared to install HKI when I release it!

jncanches · January 16, 2020, 10:50am

Hi jimz011,

I started to prepare my HA instance. Can’t tell what amount of time this will take as I am doing a big clean on my customize.yaml
The big work is to move all my “state changing icons” in lovelace to customize.yaml.
About one year ago, I removed the use of custom-ui, as I though this will be competely removed and deprecated. So I have to restore it in my setup.

I’m not rushing this part, so I think it will take some time

Your documentation is very good for me. Hope there will be some doc about your different lovelace_gen templates, as I will probably restore some of my “decluttering_card style” customization.
If there will not, I will retro-engeneering your amzing job

Thanks !

jncanches · January 16, 2020, 10:42pm

I have a question about the Imap integration. Is it different than the built-in imap sensor ? It’s just to count unread emails in a gmail inbox for example ?