hello, I have had a bit of a bad attitude due to my lack of technical knowledge and it has made feel stupid and made me act ignorantly when asking advice on here before. I haven’t had it easy the last few years as I am caring for my mum who has had 2 lots of cancer and many other illnesses. I had been working 7 days a week at times aswell as supporting my mum.
I am a fully qualified electrician but am stuck in the social housing sector, I want to specialise in something and found the smart tech to be a sector that I may be able to be good at hopefully.
I have good knowledge of both hubitat, and hombridge but I think the best hub to offer my clients would be home assistant as the automatons and ability to access every smart home accessory through the hub.
I am going to see a client later today to offer them a smart home, but I lack the knowledge to be able to complete all automations with home assistant as my own systems Automations our mainly in hubitat, I am crossing over and gradually bringing my automations into home assistant but I still lack some knowledge and experience in this area.
I have asked my client to write a list of everything they require aswell as all automations for me to access later, if I have trouble with providing the service I should provide to my client would it be possible for a kind person to assist me with technical skill until I have the knowledge I need please.
I hope to be paid well for the Installation if the client excepts so I will be able to pay for the knowledge you provide.
If you are charging your client for a service you know you are unable to provide, I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of sympathy here. Isn’t that fraud? Are you looking for an accomplice?
- Make it clear to your client that this is a wish list, not a list of requirements that you can meet.
- Take the items on the list one by one and have a go at implementing them in your own home.
- When you run into a problem (having tried to resolve it yourself, referred to the docs and searched this forum to find out what other people have done) post a specific question.
- Refer to the guidelines to make sure your question is framed properly.
As I understood, he is not promising anything he cannot accomplish, as he is experienced with Hubitat and probably can deliver the solutions with that system.
He is looking for support to start selling his services based on Home Assistant, which I think is honest and respectful with this community. 
why don’t you think I can’t provide this service? I am a fully qualified electrician that will provide a safe standard in installation, I also have home assistant set up with basic Automations at the moment streaming cameras to my tv when motion is detected, as well as notification on speakers for several automations. Why do you think I am a novice. I am asking for a Little help in hard times and I even offer cash reward for a service if there is anyone out there who is not totally ignorant
Thank you for your understanding and support
I don’t have a problem with this unless the customer is being promised things you don’t have the knowledge to supply. Its OK to advise the customer that these things may not be possible but you will try to make them possible.
Where abouts in the world are you as this may help people get on board with your enterprise.
I wish you luck.
I apologise if I have caused offence, but - honestly? - your original post does not inspire confidence. Here’s an article about professional smart home installation:
https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/hiring-guides/smart-home-installer/
Meanwhile, ask a specific question and I’m sure people will try to answer it.
is there every any technical support, for anyone promoting the service or the new comers, I have in my own system with ha yellow and frigate working in docker, with automations as I desire with that, I am no expert but wish to be so. Is it just a case of read try and try again until I get it right? I also have automations that our half hubitat and half home assistant as I haven’t been able to work out to add media to ha yet, my automation s for when the front door camera detects a person on the front door camera to play a song using hubitat the song is someone is knocking on the door.
I also have a rule with my litter robot in the same way using both habit and ha to play a song when my litter robot is full.
I have also trained my deebot to be able to spot clean on command using homebridge. My deebot is located under the stairs I use hubitat to control this with homebridge and hubitat, the robot will open its own door and close the door when its finished using a liner actuator
I would rather not say to my client that they have to have all 3 hubs to reach the complexities of my own smart home. But if there is no help or support to reach my goals I will have to use all 3 and make everything super complicated. Also the more links in any Automation will make faults more likely to occur and wanted to just provide what is needed. I was hoping to gain some wisdom and experience on here
I am base in Essex, UK. Thank you for support
If I win the job I will make sure I have the right insurance before taking on the job, I am actually recently unemployed due to my manager asking to much of me, as I had been doing full time hours there and working helping my mum who I care for and is semi retired, I have to keep her business running to to make sure bills our paid, my old boss knew of this when I was first employed and he didn’t ask me to do out of hours, after 2 years of this he started putting the rope around my neck asking me to do emergency callout at anytime of day and I could no longer keep it up so I am just acting in a caring role at the moment trying to prompt smart homes to give myself part time work and pay bills while trying not to be a burden on my mum while I can’t provide the funds I used to
Reading your long posts that talk about your personal life challenges, I get the impression that you are trying to find a new revenue model to ease your financial burden. I can understand that. If you are an electrician and proficient in other home automation systems then you are trying to bank on your real and/or perceived skillset and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve owned many businesses and respect anyone willing to take a chance.
That being said, this isn’t a helpdesk and I think if you come here asking for the total solution you will be met with distain from a lot of folks who volunteer to answer questions for which you will be paid by your customer for. If you come here with honest attempts to do something that you have researched and are stuck on, people will help. Each time it’s a “read the docs” moment you’ll whittle away at that good will.
Be honest with your customers and tell them that you haven’t been asked to do that before but you will research it and see if you can assist. This means actual research on your own time, not immediately coming here and passing the responsibility to the community and possibly getting snippy because you are under a deadline to fulfill a promise you can’t keep unless someone gives you the answer.
You should spend a lot of time on this forum, there are some top-notch HA folks helping others here and you can learn a lot from just reading, even if it has nothing to do with any customer request you have. If you are going to charge people to work on HA then you should also know the docs inside and out and have a play system to literally attempt every example provided in the docs (and there are many) and make yourself proficient enough to ask good questions here. Coming here with most of your answer and asking for a finishing touch will be received far better than coming here and asking for a complete solution without any contribution on your part.
Finally, give back to the community you need a lot from by spending time and answering posts that you have an answer for, don’t be a leech. Not only will you learn much faster but folks will be more willing to lend a hand.
at no time have I asked for free advice and if you actually read my comments you would understand I would provide financial gain to a kind person who would share some knowledge, you would also have read I am no novice.
I now know if I wish to be criticised by cynics and have no gain but frustration I will come here for support thank you all for being ignorant and waisting my time, what is this platform for? Is this just a site where cleaver people get off on insulting people who open up and ask for help. I guess you provide a service in that way
OK. I don’t want to be negative and this is absolutely the last time I am going to post in this thread, but could I offer a short crit of the original post? This is not personal - more like a few suggestions on how to get the best out of this forum, where members can sometimes be… um… a bit tetchy 
-
It begins with a complaint about reaction to previous posts. Many forum members will stop reading here, not because you’re wrong necessarily, but because posts that begin this way often ask vague questions that are difficult to repsond to.
-
This is followed by several lines about your mother’s health. I am truly sorry to hear that she is not well, but how is this relevant in this forum?
-
You are a qualified electrician. Good.
-
You have experience with Hubitat and Homebridge. Very good.
-
You are offering clients smart home advice. No problem with that.
-
You think Home Assistant is the best hub to offer. Glad to hear it!
-
You’re not confident with automations. Wait… what? Have you told your client?
-
You have asked your client for a list of requirements. Good. Very professional. (Make sure you write them down formally and give your client a copy for reference.)
-
In spite of your lack of confidence with automations, you hope to be well paid. Alarm bells…
-
You offer to pay for the knowledge forum members provide. What does this actually mean?
Instead, could I suggest something along the following lines:
-
I am a qualified electrician, experienced with Hubitat and Homebridge, less so with Home Assistant.
-
A client has asked for advice on home automation.
-
This is one of the requirements [quote it in full, as agreed with the client].
-
I think it could best be met with this Home Assistant automation/script/integration. [Post any yaml in full, properly formatted].
-
This works as expected on my test rig, except that [Give details of the problem, with relevant error messages etc.]
-
What am I doing wrong?
You’re absolutely right about multiple hubs, by the way - a disaster waiting to happen. Good luck with the enterprise.
Good job at alienating those who might help you. Buh-bye.
I wasn’t asking for any sympathy or charity from anyone, just support in gaining knowledge, this has been the problem it seems. I do lack the confidence and experience in this platform, and was asking guidance on how to supply my client the best experiences. there has been a couple of positive remarks regarding this but more cynical from yourself and others. I will probably have more luck with asking chatgpt lol
@Richfa, PULEEEZE go back and change the title of your post after reading my comments below, as it is honeslty a little inappropriate. WAIT - read my entire post and hear me out below.
I feel you brother! Sometimes it’s suuuuch a drag to get things to work right, and I would think it may be pretty hard to make a go of it selling home automation services while you are learning how to do it yourself because for first time things will take much longer for you to do than your customer might expect… I can only offer this advice -
-
Keep every automation S.I.M.P.L.E (one trigger one for one action) and name each object within home assistant with a logical consistent name, it will be much easier to debug later. Only once you become more adept within the coding and creating automations then you could get fancier.
-
Only install a hardware/software combination that is extremewly rock stable and would require very little maintenance. For example make sure the hardware can EASILY handle the load of what will be asked of it currently and in the future (overkill in this situation is GOOD). (Example: if you are using a raspberry pi, only use an SSD instead of an SD Card - and if you are adding video on top of automations DO NOT do all of that on a raspberry pi…). Honestly I would not use an RPI for customers, but that is up to you (it would make it hard to “upsell” fancier stuff to them in the future if they have weaker hardware).
Good luck and it was refreshing and funny to see someone in the very beginning of their post to own up and say up front they have had a bad attitude because of frustrations and difficulties of a large variety of sorts - and I have to say after that original statement, you were extremely respectful and polite for everything afterward.
I feel badly for your situation and hope everything goes well for your mother and your business succeeds.
It is true as some folks said that posts in this this forum should stick to the technical items at hand, but I am sure the guy won’t repeat it a gazillion times and sheesh people give the guy a break he’s a human being!
And, it is true that some people on the forums can be total jerks, unfortunately it comes with the territory -
All the best of luck to you - but please at least change the title of your post, tone it down slightly
(P.S. I agree it is not easy to find an answer sometimes either!)