I’m new to HA and am struggling with certain things. I’ve read the documentation and tried to read the forum help as well but there some things I can’t seem to get to work.
I’m looking for someone to help completely walk me through the following:
Trying to get an automation that when the doorbell rings (have RING doorbell) I get an actionable notification on my phone with either a live cam (which I don’t think is possible) or a snapshot of the person at the door and the ability to unlock my door from the notification. I’ve already gotten the actionable “unlock” to work, but cant get the picture and when I get the picture its from a while ago.
Add Alexa devices as entities. I have Alexa and home assistant working together but I need the actual devices as entities. I tried to follow the guide but I didn’t understand how to do it
Looking to localize as many devices as I can so that when wifi is down, as many devices as possible don’t need wifi
Optional: Create a customized Lovelace interface for me for mobile/ computer
Since this probably will take someone time to help with these, I would be absolutely willing to compensate you for your time! Please let me know if anyone is interested and would be willing to help with any of the above! Thank you in advance!
You need to try to do this yourself and in case you get stuck post your specific issue and the code you tried/steps you took. The idea is not that people come here and ask that we explain step-by-step when they didn’t try to do it themselves.
Can you please show your automation?
Which guide did you follow? As far as I know you can only use alexa devices as media players with this custom component.
What do you mean with this? Do you mean when internet is down or do you mean when the wifi is down?
This takes a lot of time and you really need to learn this yourself, as in the end you also want to configure and design it the way you want it. There are also some easy to use pre-made frontends like e.g. this one.
For the Alexa devices, that actually was the guide I was trying to follow but I kinda have dumb questions that the guide doesn’t answer, which is why I was hoping someone could walk me through it. Like how do I move the HACS file to HA (which for me is on a raspberry pi)?
For localization, I was just reading some posts that say they can use the devices/automations with internet down which I feel like would be very useful to have done. Even if just getting things to still work if wifi is down would be a plus.
That Lovelace interface post looks great and seems to be a great guide to get started! Thank you!
Take a look at this thread for the camera notification.
Do you have SSH or Samba access to your Pi? Do you run Home Assistant Supervised (with addons) ?
This depends on the device and is mostly something that can’t be changed except with some workaroumd or flashing custom firmware. What devices are you using?
Yeah that’s what I tried to modeL for the camera notification but didn’t send the picture. Also the picture that’s created is from earlier in the day than right when the doorbell is pressed so is it even possible?
Yeah I’m using Samba and got the hacs folder under the custom_components folder under /config folder but when I go to integrations it doesn’t show up.
The devices I have are Hue lights, SmartThings switches and lock, August door lock, Kasa switch, xiaomi Roborock vacuums, ecobee thermostat and ring doorbell
I’m sure this is possible, otherwise this would be totally useless and I know that there are multiple people here on the forum that got this to work. I can’t help with cameras as I don’t own one and it’s hard for me to replicate your issue like this. I suggest opening a separate topic for this.
Do you have a Github account? Did you restart HA after you placed the files there?
Some of these can be localized, some can’t you need to check the docs for each device and maybe search for possible workarounds to access them locally.
Depending on what protocol your devices use, having them work without the internet available could be way easier than getting them to work without wifi.
To be clear, if your device uses wifi communication it will be impossible to get it to work if your wifi is down. If it uses the cloud then you won’t be able to use it unless you have internet. But with cloud based wifi/ethernet devices you might be able to modify the firmware to make them all local. But it depends on the device whether it is flashable with third party firmware.
Most zwave/zigbee devices should work locally as long as you have a local hub. But there are some of those devices that require internet access as well. You really need to research and buy the proper equipment in order to use as much local control as possible.
I have a mix of zwave/zigbee/wifi devices and none of them need the internet to function but the wifi ones need my wifi running to work. The zwave/zigbee stuff will continue to work without wifi.
As far the camera snapshot you might need to either wait longer for the snapshot file to be created before you send it in the notification or create a new snapshot file every time. I do both. My snapshot notification delay is around 5 seconds.