As a noob, I was looking for a learning plan. There is a plethora of information but was hoping a step by step learning plan was out there somewhere. I could not find one. If you know of one, please advise. I thank you in advance.
I always think the best way to learn is to work towards a specific project. Keep it simple to start with and work up. Have you installed HA yet? There are several step by step guides.
Yes - I have the system up and running no problem. My first project is creating a remote for a Roku streaming stick. I have loaded the device via the Roku integration and the functionality is limited. So I wanted to make adjustments to the remote and media player.
Thanks. I have been using that but I have not been able to progress as fast as I would like so was hoping there were additional resources like Wolfgang Beer’s kindle book - just more robust and in-depth.
There’s this forum and the home assistant Discord channels to help you when you get stuck.
The problem with books, blog posts and youtube videos is that they go out of date very quickly as home assistant is changing quickly, but this video from Juan is relatively recent:
I have seen a few JuanMTech videos. He does a great job. Will review this and keep plugging away. Thanks.
It has been a while since I was in your shoes, but from memory when I was starting out this was my process:
- Pick something to configure.
- Read the docs and integration configuration options.
- Search the web for tutorials on what I was trying to do. Searching “home assistant [thing i want to know]” and keeping an eye on publish dates.
- Search the forum, reddit and youtube.
- Ask on the forum what I’m doing wrong (with details of what I had done). Occasionally ask on Discord.
- Move on the then next item to configure.
Home assistant has moved on quite a bit since then. A lot of what I was doing is now available to configure graphically via the user interface. Unfortunately the documentation is not as complete for this as for the older YAML configuration method. Mainly because it is supposed to be more intuitive and documenting GUIs is a lot more demanding than documenting text configuration.
First of all I absolutely agree with everything written above.
My comment would be that using the Roku as a project may be just too steep a learning curve
HA is a steep curve anyway, but starting with something simple lets you get your foot in the door.
I started with a dimmer and it probably took me 3 months to get it to dance to my tune.
Switching on at this time, off at this time, back on at sunset and off again at midnight
switch on brightness at ‘minimum’ (which is probably more than 0 to stop it flickering), then adjust to a time of day profile, ability to call for maximum brightness (for emergencies) at the wall switch.
Doing this again I think I’d start with a switch instead (just simpler) build confidence, read the forum look for stuff on what I’m doing, what I want to do, what interests me, Look at peoples problems, ask yourself “How would I solve that ?” have a stab at it, see what others wrote as replies, did that help you ? if it did, do you understand the code or the methods ? if it didn’t, why not ? which bits were confusing ? can I look those bits up in the documentation ? All else fails, come back to the forum.
Always do a bit of work before posting as then the people can see you’ve made some effort, how far you got and what seems to be stopping you.
Explore the GUI, click on everything, Take backups (snapshots) just in case. store backup off HA (on your PC/NAS/Google Drive etc) Restore backups. Wipe the slate clean, new installation, restore a backup, get confident