We’re going on vacation for a week and a dog sitter staying at our house. I have lots of devices (mostly lights) on Home Assistant, but I don’t want to give him access to garage door or front door lock.
My plan was to create a dedicated user account and just delete it once we’re back. I’d make a simple dashboard with the basics and of course no ability to edit anything.
I saw some things about kiosk mode but I’m not clear how that would work on his phone.
My questions are:
How do I actually set him up as a user, and easily revoke his access when we return?
How would he log in on his phone? Would he download the Home Assistant app?
What’s the best way to give him a simple dashboard?
Is the app required to turn on the lights?
As the companion app can literally spy on people it would be quite intrusive to demand someone downloads it just to turn on the lights.
The app is not required to turn on the lights. I just thought it would be a nice convenience for them.
From my limited understanding, I know I can setup iCloud3 and track phones, but I thought I needed to get their logins to do that. Is that the type of spying you are talking about?
I had no intention of setting up any spying/tracking for them.
Do you mean the app can spy on a person outside of them knowing about it? The way I think of Instagram or TikTok sucking up data.
If the user agrees to allowing it to track their location when they install the companion app, their location data would be sent to HA and stored. The user can deny permission, and you could disable the tracker entity, once the companion app is installed.
Might be more trouble than its worth, for just a week’s time.
Yes you can track the location and states of the phone.
You as administrator can remotely enable last used app sensor, last notification sensor, when the phone is used, steps counter.
There are hundreds of sensors you can enable.
Some even give you the option to read sms.
But I believe that needs configuring on the phone to work.
As someone who knows what the app can do, I wouldn’t install it for someone else’s home assistant installation.
Can lights still be controlled manually? Is there anything else they’ll need to control that is only possible via the app? If not, leave the app and set up a guest mode. Simplest is an input boolean helper that you can enable and use in automations as a guard where you trigger on your presence (for example). This is the most common pattern you’ll find in the patterns and it’s the one I use myself.
If you do need the app exclusively to control certain things, you may want to reconsider that design in the long term.
The same idea can be applied here, if you have a web server. I suspect many of us do. Go to your favorite AI with a list of entities you want to put on your webpage and let AI handle the programming. Then on your webserver, restrict access to only your home LAN. Then, no password is required, its still private, you don’t need to try to manage the user, and you can restrict device access to whatever you want the user to have. The only level of trust required is the user doesn’t hand out your wifi password and page address. Or just don’t allow access from the web page to any door locks, garage door, security devices, etc.
I made a website that allows user access.
Enter otp>> select command >> sends to HA automation >> if otp valid executes command.
Valid code send me notification
In valid code sends notification with option for me to execute command
The website tells person to enter phone number but my kids know to enter otp code from Google Authenticator app. Using otp prevents sharing of code that never expires and forces a person to at a minimum have recently requested the code
Have “guest mode” button in HA UI.
When active it allows door/gate access
In all cases for door and gate I am sent notification with picture. Each person gets separate otp so I can identify who is entering.
Maybe I will use AI to clean it up and make an HA app but that won’t be for weeks.
I really appreciate all the very helpful information.
Since all the lights are able to be manually controlled, it seems like a waste of my time to work on setting this up for the house sitter, just for a week. Maybe if it was a simple, two-minute process I would, but it seems way to involved to be worth the potential convenience.