Newbie question: return lights to previous state

Configuration
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What did you expect? All plug and play and with a GUI? If so, then HA is not for you, as it’s not there yet. It’s the goal of the project, however it is not even at version 1.0 currently, but the developers are working hard on it. Just recently they introduced a GUI for automations and for scenes

What you mean nope? You ssh into your machine and the configuration.yaml file is right there.

You clearly missed it. It’s written here:

Can’t help you with anything related to tuya as I don’t own any of these, but others in here are for sure able to help you.

What’s the matter with lovelace? It has a learning curve as everything related to HA, but it’s certainly amazing and no other system can compete with the flexibility and possibilities of lovelace in my opinion.

30

You realize that home assistant is the only open source home automation package with auto detection?

I feel like you expect smart things or fully GUI experience. If that’s the case, home assistant is not for you.

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31

I dont need a GUI for everything, but I did expect a GUI to at least get me started with something, like an interface to detect/select/configure/enable devices HA actually supports out of the box, and a place to enter my tado/tuya/ring/ifttt/whatever credentials. That doesnt sound like a lot to ask, does it?

Like I said, maybe Im just unlucky with my devices, and its a smoother onboarding experience when you have philips HUE lights, and a Nest camera and thermostat, but what I experienced was off-putting to the extreme, and has to be relatively easy to fix. You should be able to configure those devices, which only need one line and a pair of credentials without googling and learning YAML.

SSH isnt installed by default. You have to enable the plugin. For which there is a nice and easy gui with an install and start button at the top begging to be pressed. But which wont work if you didnt scroll down and actually read that you need to modify the SSH config file right there, in the browser; which is ironic, given that you may be doing that to gain ssh access to edit the main configuration file for which there is no in-browser editor! And when you do that, then you get faced with a CLI thats not quite linux, and you need to understand the directory structure of hass.io.
You really dont see how a newbie would be thinking “this cant be right, this isnt how I configure a device for which HA has built-in support” ?

Meh, its both great and frustrating. Its not my biggest gripe with HA, in fact, its the main reason Im still sticking to it instead of openhab (which I found 10x easier to get going, and configure my devices, without googling anything or reading a single page, but its web interface is no where near as good). Lovelace is great when it does what you want it to do by default, it becomes frustratingly hard if you want to change anything. Like just the color of an icon. Or the history graph which is superb to use with climate entities, but then I want to remove the legend and Im stuck googling again. Or I want my RTSP camera, which doesnt provide a snapshot image URL, to show the livestream directly on a view.

32

You really are “unlucky” with your devices as they don’t support GUI configuration. The different integrations are managed by different developers and if they don’t add GUI config, you need to do it without it. Remember it’s all open source.

For easy configuration of devices you don’t need to learn YAML. Copy the examples from the integration page and change it to use your credentials. For example Harmony

remote:
  - platform: harmony
    name: Bedroom
    host: 10.168.1.13

Do you need to learn Yaml to change the IP and the name in these lines? I don’t think so.

If this is too compliacted for you, why don’t you just follow the getting started guide for home assistant. There is a chapter “advanced configuration”, which explains in detail how you do it.

If you would have followed the official getting started guide from beginning to end, you would have saved yourself a lot of time and frustration.

33

Its not “auto” when I have to create entries in a config file I wouldnt know how to access. The only thing autodetected was my chromecast.

Openhab is another opensource home automation package and it actually detected pretty much all my devices with a few clicks and for those it did not detect, I could select from a list and enter the credentials . I was up and running with a basic setup in minutes and I didnt have to read or google a thing.

HA has its strengths, but the initial setup and “newbie experience” is definitely not one of them.

34

@Vertigo we just discussed this last night on another thread. The answers you seek about restoring light settings are contained within. Long story short you can create a scene of your current settings using templates do what ya gotta do then restore that scene. It’s actually pretty simple once you understand what you’re looking at.

Edit: @Vertigo Here’s an example of what you can do.

    - service: scene.create
      data_template:
        scene_id: garage_door_lights
        entities:
          light.arrive_home_lights:
            state: "{{ states('light.arrive_home_lights') }}"
            brightness: "{{ state_attr('light.arrive_home_lights','brightness') }}"

    - service: script.turn_light_on
      data_template:
        light_name: 'garage_lights'
        brightness: 30
        ignore_user_state: 'true'

    - wait_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.side_entrance_motion','off') }}"
      timeout: '1:00:00'
      continue_on_timeout: true

    - delay: '0:05:00'

    - service: scene.turn_on
      entity_id: scene.garage_door_lights
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35

Well I suggest trying again in a few years when the GUI elements are fully developed. GUI integrations was only added within the last 8 or so months. Clearly this current iteration isn’t good enough for you but it will get better in time. What I can say is that this is not a video game company, coming in and flaming the software will be met with nothing but distain. Pretty much everyone before you has ran into road blocks, but they all created posts without trash talking the software. I understand it may be frustrating but there’s other ways to ask your questions. It’s partly why so many people here are treating you with disrespect.

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36

They should at the very least be listed somewhere. You will not find them in integrations, nor in addons nor anywhere. That makes no sense. As for the GUI config of the integrations themselves, Im sure if there was a generic GUI to configure them, they would all use them. Like your harmony example, it cant be hard to have a generic GUI asking 2 values and passing them on and putting that in a config file.

If you copy paste that from the wrong website, the indentation will be off. I know, because thats exactly what happened to me. Believe it or not, for my harmony hub. But now go on, lets say you copy pasted that. How does the newbie know if it works? How does he use it? Not without a lot more YAML.
By contrast, openhab autodetected my hub. I had to click add, and it showed up in the GUI with all my harmony scenes selectable, it just worked.

Yep. I saw that. Did not read it then. Can you believe as someone who started HA that very day, who struggled just to get it going, I did not think I would need to read through a document called advanced config just to get started? I was not looking for anything advanced, I wanted to control a light bulb. Or anything else. I was convinced I was doing something wrong and reading the wrong stuff.

37

If your harmony hub was not detected immediately, then something is wrong with your network. Harmony doesn’t need to be integrated, it’s autodetected as long as you use upnp and discovery is on. I’m pretty sure hassio installations basic configuration has discovery enabled by default.

38

The are all listed in the official documentation in the integrations page!

I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know how easy it is. And do you realize there are over 1000 integrations? It’s still a lot of work and if the developer doesn’t feel like it, it will not happen.

How about reading the documentation for the harmony hub?

Then copy it from the official documentation! If it has errors there, we are happy if you tell us so that someone can fix it (even better if you create a PR and correct it yourself, but that’s asking to much from a “newbie”).

Then go back to openhab if it’s so much better, it seems it can do all you want so why switch to home assistant?

You didn’t read through the whole getting started document, but afterwards you search on google, watch unofficial videos, and probbably read outdated info on sites other than the official documentation and then you complain here how bad home assistant is?

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39

Thanks a lot. I think Ill get it sorted with that.

Which is true for quantum physics too :wink:

Im fairly sure it does not, because I distinctly remembering adding discovery and wondering why they heck I had to add that one line.

I know! That makes it even weirder. I was not trying to configure some obscure device through a third party plug-in written by who-knows-who. Then Id understand i would have to jump through hoops and read “advanced configuration” sections to get that working. But they are built-in, all of them, and yet they are far more difficult to enable than any community addon. Those you can just click to install.

Please, be honest, this is NOT intuitive, you can not possibly figure it out without reading manuals, and it does not make sense, regardless of the reasons behind it. If you want to make HA better, then acknowledge its flaws. This is one, and I bet its scaring off a lot of people.

All the more reason to provide a simple consistent configuration interface so 1000 integration developers dont have to create their own. That interface btw, already exists. Its right there for every other addon. community or official. You can enable, disable it, you have room for screenshots and explanations and a simple but good enough browser based config editor. Why wouldnt you use that for every integration, or at the very least the ones that are officially supported, like, every one of my devices ?

You think I didnt? How about admitting it says nothing about how to use it or even test it through a GUI / web interface; instead its full of YAML code (and confuse people even more, mixed with JSON) that a noob wouldnt know where to put or what to do with.

I think you guys either have been using HA for too long to remember what its like when you first installed it, or HA self-selects nerds who dream in JSON because anyone else just gives up after installing and facing what I tried to describe.

40

Now you mark @jazzyisj post as the solution, but @nickrout gave you the exact same thing like 20 posts before??

41

When I first started none of this existed. It’s so easy now in comparison. As I said before, you may want to abandon ship and come back in a year or 2. It might be more your style by then.

Edit: just for a comparison… I started in 0.2x, hassio didn’t exist, the only option was hass in a venv. Everything was yaml. Nothing was discovered. All configurations were done through raspbian instead of add ons. It was a STEEP learning curve for someone who had 0 Linux experience. That was 3 years ago. I can’t imagine how easy this will all be in 3 years. I’m expecting it to wipe my butt tbh.

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42

I feel like home assistant is just not for you if you have such a hard time even with the documentation. Home assistant isn’t meant for people who want a smartthings like experience and expect to condigure things once and then it works. Currently it’s still in development and meant for people who see home automation as a hobby, because you need to invest time and maintain the system. And with every release there are breaking changes, you need to adapt your system etc. So it’s for “nerds” at the moment.

43

I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s just for nerds. If you have zwave or zigbee it’s stupid easy. And with the planned zwave changes it’s onlu going to get easier.

44

Yeah, if someone finds this thread, jazzisj’s post is a little more informative, as it contains a concrete example and removes the doubt if it works.

I dont know. I have to say, in general Im hugely disappointed in my little foray in to home automation. The devices you buy are usually not smart, they are just as dumb as they used to be, only remotely controlled, and in most cases, the remote is not included. Someone else controls it and wants to charge you for every “click” of the remote, or capture and probably sell your data.

Then there is the interoperability issue on every level from communication protocols to the integration software. Then the complexity. Oh the complexity. IFTTT is simple. Simple is good, but thats taking it too far by not allowing even “if this or that than that” let alone constructs like when or except. I couldnt believe that. How did that get so big? So I ended up here. Well, its less simple :slight_smile: For a hobby project this is all fine and dandy, but per my other post, if a light bulb needs replacing, you shouldnt have to hire a software guru to replace it.

Anyway, I cant speak for speed of progress of HA. I just started using it. I will say I see a lot of room for improvement :). The interface is honestly a bit of a mess. Overall it strikes me as lacking a unified vision. Some things are almost over the top simplified, while others seem to assume users are completely fine writing code, even though they may be required just to get started. There is no consistency. Anywhere. Groups have their own yaml, but light groups have to go in configuration.yaml. Groups and scripts can be reloaded, but light groups not, you have to restart HA. there is a million little things like that, that either suggest devs all doing their own thing uncoordinated, or issues that cant be fixed because of legacy / backwards compatibility.

So before it starts wiping my butt, I do hope someone tries looking at it from a holistic perspective and perhaps rethinks a few concepts. Like integrations.

Anyway, enough ranting, lets see if I can make some lights switch, its getting dark LOL.

45

Well you came in during a transition. All components are in the process of transitioning from yaml only to the GUI. 3 months ago there was only 15-20 integrations in the UI, now there is 90ish.

46

Two things; first, I contested the notion that setting up HA was so easy. I got it working using the documentation and persistence, but I think I made my point. Its not intuitive, not with my mix of devices.

Secondly, if I knew of a better alternative, Id use it. Smarthings doesnt support my thermostats, or Id switch in a heartbeat. Openhab does, and I may still switch back, but its “paper UI” is ugly as sin and too limited, and habpanel UI pretty much seems to require you to be an affluent web developer. Give me openhab backend and lovelace UI, and I might be happy. Until then ill just rant and moan while I struggle to make progress :slight_smile:

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47

I feel the need to jump in here (don’t I always…:wink:)…

But I feel for all of the new people coming in. And vertigo’s situation is kind of the example of the issues.

Back in the day when many of us started HA was kind of “in the groove” of configuring everything thru yaml (with Jinja thrown in for templates, of course). Not that yaml was necessarily “easy” and not that there wasn’t a learning curve involved but it was kind of standardized at least where yaml was involved.

Then there came the concept of “making it easy for new people” by moving everything to a GUI point-and-click interface. I believe that is kind of where things started actually getting harder for new people and experienced people alike.

Those that have been around for a long time generally for the most part already knew the backend and yaml. They already know how the stuff that happens “behind the scenes” mostly worked at least on the configuration side of things.

Then the GUI configuration elements started to be introduced and offered the promise of it being “so easy a caveman can do it”. And the people who already knew how things generally worked could then relate the things they already knew to the shiny new way of doing things and mostly got it. But that also meant that there was a whole new set of things to learn but everybody kind of “oohed and aahed” over it and tried to start using the new stuff and could hack away at it until it worked. New people don’t have that prior experience.

And to make it even worse the GUI config has been introduced bit by bit over many many months so it increases the confusion on what is now configured thru the GUI/integration/entity registry/device registry/automation editor/script editor/scene editor and what can’t be done thru those avenues and you have to revert to the “old ways” of doing things. Let’s face it, how many people who’ve been around since before all of the new GUI stuff has been introduced now exclusively use that to configure their HA instance? I would bet there’s not one. Everybody uses some form of hybrid between the GUI and hand coding everything. I know for a fact that most of my configuration is done thru coding things by hand. Not all but most - a hybrid approach. And the reason for that is because the GUI stuff kind of sucks right now. But new people don’t know that.

Now, as a new person just getting started, who’s seen all the hype about “making it easier”, how are they supposed to know why when they try to do something using the GUI and it doesn’t work for them that it’s just because the GUI doesn’t support that yet as opposed to it being just their screwing something up?

And to top it all off the documentation hasn’t ever kept up with the rapid pace of development but it’s now even worse since there are so many ways of doing things that you never know which docs are good and which ones haven’t been updated yet.

That also goes for the “google/youtube” route of learning things. If something doesn’t work for you and you have no idea if it’s you or if it’s the documentation being incomplete (or even worse when the documentation leaves stuff out because it just assumes you already know things because they’ve been doing it so long they forget what isn’t common knowledge for the average person) you do what any tech savvy person would do in that situation and go to google. How would they know which resources still work and which are outdated? Because they aren’t all outdated but a lot are. I admit I’ve been there before.

The best and most useful thing that anyone can suggest (as has been done in this thread already) and should be right in the intro to the getting started docs (if it’s not already there) is to point out that going to Google/Youtube isn’t the recommended way of getting help and people should use this forum as the go-to resource. Not that the other stuff can’t be useful as stated above, just that you can’t rely on it being current.

Ha has always been and will continue to be a “tinkerer’s toy” for a long time to come. TBH, I don’t know if it can ever get to the point where the average joe-blow user will feel comfortable using it.

There’s a reason why the commercially available products are so basic and barely make home automation slightly less dumb. It’s because average people won’t want to take the time to dig in and learn this stuff. And the reason HA is still a tinkerers toy is because being open source and having limited resources to throw at it the development of switching everything over to point-and-click (which will be absolutely necessary to get out of that “toy” phase to where average people might want to use it) is a long time off.

Using the automation editor as an example, yes, you can point-and-click a bunch of basic things in there and it will work for the basic stuff. But what happens when you want to move past basic. You will still need to learn templates and their associated languages. That right there makes HA both better than other commercial products for its versatility and worse than commercial products because there is the promise of “doing more but easier” and it can’t deliver. Not because of anything wrong with HA but the average abilities of people who might use it.

I’ve been with HA for years and I still rely on a few “Gurus” here to help with the more complex stuff.

That said,

I Love HA and find it extremely interesting and fun! :slightly_smiling_face:

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48

@vertigo I think your experience is valuable. People like @finity and I have been around a while. We have read the docs, avoided outdated YouTube vids and absorbed a lot of forum posts and blog posts.

Not to criticise you, but I suspect you possibly leapt in a bit quickly. Many of the things you had trouble with are documented, like a page on yaml, an early entry in the docs about configuration.yaml, and so forth. I spent a few hours reading through every page indexed on the docs link, some I glossed over, others i absorbed as much as my little brain allowed. Then I cruised the forum, mainly the Configuration section (for obvious reasons) and Share Your Projects section for examples of complete working things. I slso cruised a lot of the Integrations links just to see what hardware was supported. I did watch some yt vids.

Then I started adding hardware I knew would work, one at a time.

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