Pure UI possible?

Configuration Frontend
1

Hi, long time Domoticz user here. I’m exploring making a switch to Home Assistant. Lovelace looks good.

My worry/question though is: I try to avoid modifying text files at all cost. I like clicking on things :slight_smile:

Is it possible to use Home Assistant and (perhaps except for the moment of installation) never see a text card?

If this is not possible yet, is this something that is coming?

2

In the current stages of development of HASS you are quite limited without modifying files, escpecially “.yaml” ones.

I believe that in the future they will add an UI for such stuff, since it would not be a too hard implementation. But for that they would need to take the configuration structure of all components currently available and make them into an UI dinamically. Just as I said, probably a future implementation, but not now. There is probably more important stuff to do, and sincerely, with a bit of fiddling around in the yaml files you can do awesome stuff, really.

That’s my current card which controls the pool of my house and turning on/off the filter automatically, according to the solar-water temperature:
image

3

That’s impressive.

But…

  • I’m not the only one that would be using the system.
  • Even I don’t like having to remember all the ‘languages’ of all these systems. The great thing about GUI’s is that they actively show you your possibilities (as well as their limits). GUI’s are like having a visual conversation with your technology.

Anyway, I’m sorry to hear it. Like you said, it would seem that the step to GUI from text files should be relatively easy to make.

I noticed OpenHab has this now. But, weirdly, OpenHab doesn’t have ways to store data long-term, and visualise that.

It seems like all the options are flawed in some way. :smiley: (Domoticz uses a UI for everything… but it’s extremely clunky.).

4

Thank you.

But now to your concerns:

  • If there are less tech-savvy persons using that system, at current stage, only you should configure the system for them. Later on you don’t need to fiddle around anymore, it just works. :slight_smile:
  • You only need to know the basic stucture of a yaml-file, which is quite easy. If you want to go further, you need to know templates, which also are not that hard. There is a ton of documentation on this site. Even if you fail, you can just ask here and within minutes (sometime), you’ll get a helpful aswer. Hats down for this great community.

I was looking up OpenHab when I inicially found these two, but their Interface seems quite limited, they have fewer components and is not that nice styled. So I downloaded HASS.io and it’s been a nice journey.

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5

In short - yes.

For example, for any component that supports unique device identifiers you can rename them, and change the entity_id (device identifier) through the GUI now. There’s a (limited) automation editor, and so on.

The stated goal of the developers is to provide a GUI option for those who want it, while leaving the ability to manually edit the configuration. When that’ll happen I don’t know, but it’s where they’ve said they’re going.

6

Thanks! I read an interview with the guy behind Home Assistant that indeed said he wanted the offer the option to go “purely ui” at the end of 2018. That sounds good.

I also noticed Home Assistant has native integration with Snips. Very cool - privacy friendly voice control!
https://snips.ai/

I think the Homey interface has taken good steps to keeping the end user in mind. I hope it will inspire Home Assistant :slight_smile:

7

I like text config files!

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