Hello, I need major help. My husband RhysB was very passionate about home automation and absolutely loved this community and his smart house. Unfortunately, Rhys passed away suddenly in June, and I am left with a smart home that is slowly failing. I am a self-confessed technophobe, so this is really stressful for me. I live in Auckland, New Zealand and really would like to know if there is anyone local that can give me some advice. The main concern at the moment is that I can turn the lights on at the switch, but they turn off after a couple of minutes as the sensors are not detecting movement. Some of the devices like my bed side lamp, the lounge amps, the garage door opener etc are all showing as not available in the home assisstant app.
I think the main decision I need to make is; do I hire someone to remove the home automation or do I hire someone to come and fix it.
“removing home automation” is an odd way to describe it. Do you mean just replacing smart bulbs/switches/etc with non-smart ones? That would work, although you could just do this yourself, not sure if you’ll find someone to hire
If I were to guess “local home assistant experts” would be hard to come by. However if you find someone who could do that, that would work. You might still want to disable some automations that are hard to maintain in the long term.
And there’s the third option: Asking random people on the internet for help! I would first ask you if you have administrator permissions (can you go to the Settings panel?) If so, you can try to disable automations or reconfigure integrations on your own.
There is a small group of New Zealanders on the forum - they have a thread here:
Forgive my ignorance of NZ geography, but one of them may be close enough to help.
I am so sorry for your loss!
The real answer is … you should pay someone to unsmart your home!
I think about this situation with every part of my setup that I do. There is no way my wife would be willing to do what I do with Home Assistant like I do.
I am attempting to keep everything as simple (and as cool as possible). All while thinking how to ‘undo’ it. And, at the same time, keeping her kid ‘in the know’ of how to dumb down the house if I pass first.
Please let us know how you solve the situation.
While a neighbor who knows Home Assistant would be nice, it is possible to perform remote support. I’ve done this for a couple of people using the free program: Teamviewer. If you wish me to look at what you have, let me know.
It could be as simple as turning off the home assistant server power. That should stop all the automations.
I can understand how this could be stressful for you.
I really think that the best course of action would be to hire someone to de-automate the house.
HA is a very attention-oriented system and if you don’t understand the system enough or won’t be able to put in the time to learn it in order to maintain it then it will just continue to get worse for you.
I think cutting your losses in the HA area will ease some of the unneeded stress that you are understandably experiencing with the way more devastating loss of your husband. It’s got to hard enough as it is without adding the additional stress of your home itself fighting against you.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and I hope you can get some help with HA, whichever way turns out to be easiest for you.
Meanwhile, if you could post some screen shots of your HA display (browser or app, whichever you use) maybe we could help you with some of the more intrusive problems. Especially look for the “settings” page. From there we can direct you to some simple things you can disable or reset quickly.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and I’m sure this adds to the stress of that loss and I’m truly sorry for your experience. I’m also the home automation lover in my house and if I were to pass and my wife had to deal with my crazy smart home she would probably be super stressed too.
I think this is the best answer. Home automation isn’t your passion as it was for your dear hubby, just pull the plug on Home Assistant and all of your switches will work like the good old days of using a switch. You might lose some automations you don’t even realize are useful for you, like turning on the porch at dark, but those are easy to overcome.
You don’t need anyone more qualified than an electrician, likely, to de-automate your home if you choose to go that route. That same person can put in “dusk to dawn” timers for your porch lights or anything else that is no longer working as the result of not having Home Assistant running.
Again, so sorry for your struggles and your loss.
So sorry for your loss.
Sadly I’m on the other side of NZ to you, but if I were closer I’d definitely offer to help.
Definitely hit up the NZ thread, and see if there’s someone in Auckland that would be able to help you!
Another sorry for your loss Sarah. I am in chch so I am unable to help physically, but will help on the forum if I can.
I do think though that getting out of the automation game is going to be your best bet.
Kind regards, Nick
@SarahB - Im from Tauranga but get up to Auckland quite often for work and fairly active here on the NZ thread. Someone else suggested above to do a remote teamviewer style quick check to work out whats going on, e.g. You have your computer on, we can setup a remote session so I can see whats on your screen. We can login to Home Assistant and see whats going wrong and disable any automations - this way you can then turn the lights on/off as normal. Thats a good start. Then we can work out what needs removing. Depending on what your late husbands got setup, it might easier than you think to remove things out.
And then if it works out, when im next in Auckland I would be happy to come and assist in person.
PS: Once that remote session is closed, it’s closed. No way to remotely re-activate it.
Hi @SarahB, so sorry for your loss! I’m in Auckland and would be happy to help! I am free this weekend if that works. I’ll send you a private message
Nice one Nathan.
I have idly wondered what would happen to my HA if something happened to me.
Happens when you have a hobby your partner does not share. Also it demonstrates that our systems are all so individual, and probably mainly documented in our own heads.
firstly, sorry for your loss, and i would love to be able to help out if I wasn’t the other side of the world.
My HA is not documented at all , even in my head. trying to change something I did years ago always ends up in a pain. 
I do like to have everything work as if it was normal, e.g all lights can be operated by a switch as normal even if my server is not running.
I think that’s very much the case for many of us. I’ve also wondered the same thing. I always tell my wife if I’m out of town “just remember, that the switches still work” and I even gave her a voice command “Hey Siri, disable automations” which turns off a lot of the stuff she might find annoying like motion sensor timeouts and voice notifications just so she doesn’t get frustrated while I’m away.
Definitely something everyone should program in, a kill switch boolean.