Hi y’all, I got a lot of value out of reading through other people’s configurations and seeing screenshots of their front-end, especially early on in my days of learning HASS. My setup isn’t anything special really, but figured I’d share anyway as it might help someone on their journey in home automation!
The readme in my config below has a full list of my devices and automations, along with some video examples.
When Apple TV is playing (after 7pm), trigger media-playing light scene; when Apple TV is paused, trigger media-paused light scene
Turn lights on inside to mimic activity when motion is detected outside (and alarm is set with sun down)
Turn on outside lights at sunset; If cloud cover is over 75%, turn them on 2.5 hours before sunset (because it’s darker); If cloud cover is under 75%, turn them on only 30 minutes before sunset (because it’s brighter)
How reliable is your connection to the AppleTV? I often have HASS not detecting when something is playing on my AppleTV, nor does it recognise the play/pause state. It might be because my AppleTV is powered off together with my TV and is not reachable all the time.
I’m surprised at how reliable the connection is between HASS and ATV. Automations are triggered instantaneously; lights turn on and off milliseconds after I hit pause/play. You can see this in action in the video I have in the readme.
In previous versions of HASS I had trouble losing connection to the ATV entirely, but setup an automation to notify me when the connection was dropped so I could reset it. It’s been much, much more stable lately. In the past few weeks it hasn’t failed once, so I figure a bug must have been patched in recent versions.
It’s always plugged in, but goes into hibernation mode after 10 or so minutes of inactivity. It stays in that mode all the time; I never fully power it down.