Starting again ... from SCRATCH!

[andrew.vint]

I have been an avid Home Assistant user and advocate for what must be a decade now, i built my first HA instance on a RPi about 2016.

In that period i have seen many things change, predominantly the demise of RS232 connections, IR blasters, Telnet controlled HDMI matrixes and RF controlled switches and sockets that did not report the state etc.

My current instance is heavily designed using raw YAML coding from the sensors, integrations and the dashboard itself.

However more and more often things that i used on the daily are being deprecated and replaced by the GUI driven interface and even more so the products i have been installing at home are light years from the products of old … even a simple WIFI light switch is far superior to the RF ones … i don’t have to worry about the distance from the hub and i don’t have to worry about the state of the device.

I also have a lot of sensors that could be consolidated or replaced with a sleeker method that enumerates the entities rather than specifying them individually … this should save me on the many hours i have spent adding and removing lines of code every time i replace or remove a product or entity.

Anyway its time to pull the break/fix plaster off, embrace the modern way of doing things and building from scratch on a new fresh instance from the latest build.

Wish me luck lol

If anyone else has recently done the same i am more than open to suggestions.

I am also interested in any dashboards that are out there that can adapt between the mobile app, web page and a tablet … i also have some echo 15s on the wall so if there is a way to get a dashboard on that very interested.

As far as dashboards a rudimentary search has come across the Fast Search Card by @fastender which has peaked my interest though i think there is a bit of work to add person cards, maps and things to show blood sugars for diabetics etc.

Again any comments welcome

[andrew.vint]

Claude is my weapon of choice at the moment … i am surprised (in a good way) with what its producing

[andrew.vint]

I get what you mean by 'Get a life! comments lol

I like to tinker, i like to play about with stuff and see a result, however i need to keep reminding myself that the premise is to build a smart home that the family benefit from not just me.

From the perspective of the family i find that the automations bring the best value, specifically my wife who has Type 1 Diabetes … if a Hypo is coming during the night the house lights up like a Christmas tree, the Echo devices do a vocal notification and we are all made aware of the current reading and trend … genuine life saver.

Then there is the stuff that happens in the background that nobody knows is happening, when someone comes homes powers up all the devices they use, if dark turns the lights on, likewise if they leave or house empty it turns everything off including the heating etc.

Its a powerful tool is Home Assistant and i suspect it will take many more days and months as i tinker away … the job that will never be done lol

[fastender]

Hey @andrew.vint

Ten years of RS232 and telnet-controlled HDMI matrices earns you the
clean rebuild. Good luck with it.

The line that stood out to me was this one:

sensors that could be consolidated or replaced with a sleeker method
that enumerates the entities rather than specifying them individually

That’s the entire reason I built the card, so I’m biased — but it is
the thesis. You name your devices once in HA, assign areas, set
visibility, and the card reads that and builds itself. Add a light to
a room and it appears. Rename a floor and the sidebar follows. There’s
no entity list in YAML to maintain, because there’s no YAML: the whole
config is type: custom:fast-search-card and everything else lives in
HA’s own registries. It also means the payoff scales with how tidy
your rebuild is, which sounds like it’ll suit you.

Responsive across phone, browser and tablet is core — same card, three
layouts.

On your three gaps, honestly:

Blood glucose is already possible, and I’d argue it’s a good fit.
There’s a device builder in the card: pick a type, assign sensors, name
it, done — no code. For a CGM you’d make the glucose sensor the “hero”
(the big readout at the top), add it as a chart with day/week/month/year
periods, and put trend or delta values as small pills underneath.
Anything Dexcom or Nightscout exposes as a sensor works. If HA can see
it, the card can display it.

Person cards: not there. Persons show up as ordinary entities today
with no dedicated treatment. Fair gap.

Maps: not there either. There’s a floorplan concept on the roadmap,
but that’s an indoor plan with device hotspots — not a GPS map with
people on it. Different thing, and it doesn’t cover what you’re asking
for.

Echo Show 15 — I genuinely don’t know. Nobody has reported back
from one. They run Amazon’s Silk browser, which is Chromium-derived but
lags on the CSS the card leans on: the glass effects use
backdrop-filter, one optional widget uses WebGL, and some layout uses
:has(). My honest guess is it renders but drops the glass to a flat
look, and the WebGL widget may not run at all. If you try it I would
really like to hear what happens — that’s a data point I can’t get any
other way.

One timing note since you’re building fresh: I’ve been shipping
pre-releases for the last seven weeks, so HACS has been quiet on
purpose. A stable lands today. If you install, take that one rather
than a beta.

It’s still beta software overall, and I’d rather say that up front than
have you find out three rooms in.

[KruseLuds]

With regards to:

@andrew.vint

i think there is a bit of work to add person cards,

If you are relying upon tracking location for a person utilizing their person card, the HALP! integration instead for the person’s location as it now offers a faster & more accurate update with regards to the person leaving any zone.

[andrew.vint]

Thanks for reaching out, can i check the version i should running ?

[andrew.vint]

@fastender

Blood glucose is already possible, and I’d argue it’s a good fit.
There’s a device builder in the card: pick a type, assign sensors, name
it, done — no code. For a CGM you’d make the glucose sensor the “hero”
(the big readout at the top), add it as a chart with day/week/month/year
periods, and put trend or delta values as small pills underneath.
Anything Dexcom or Nightscout exposes as a sensor works. If HA can see
it, the card can display it.

where do i find this … apologies if stupid question

[justthatjoeguy]

This is really cool to read. I have a vacation in September for a couple weeks and I want to switch to a mini pc for my HA. I am very tempted to start over. I feel I can do things a lot better if I did start over, but I have a lot of devices and automations. Though I feel I could have a lot less automations if I started over. I sorta feel I’ve run out of things to automate so starting over would give me a lot more to do. Plus if I do this while on vacation it won’t matter if it all crashes and burns because I’ll have the time to fix it.

[fastender]

Not a stupid question at all — and while writing the answer I found I
overstated it, so let me correct myself.

Where it is: open the card, search for “Integration”, pick
Universal, and the setup walks you through it — hero value, charts,
quick-stat pills, icon, which entities to show.

The catch I got wrong: step one asks you to pick an HA device,
and the picker is built from hass.devices. So it works if your CGM
integration registers a device — the official Dexcom integration does.
If your glucose value comes in as a bare entity with no device behind
it, which is common for Nightscout via a REST or template sensor, it
won’t show up in that picker at all.

What works either way: any sensor gets a full detail view on its
own — day/week/month/year charts, an activity list, min/max per period.
For a single glucose readout that’s genuinely usable today. What you’d
be missing without a device is the composed layout: big hero number,
several curves, trend pills underneath.

So: partly today, fully if there’s a device. Sorry for the
overpromise — better you hear it from me than find it at step one.

Making the builder work from entities as well as devices is an obvious
gap now that you’ve made me look at it.

Update:

The entity-based builder is next up though, and it turned out smaller
than I assumed once I looked: there’s already an entity-based path in
the code for weather entities, so it’s mostly a matter of letting the
picker offer bare entities alongside devices. I’d rather not put a date
on it — I missed one publicly a couple of weeks ago and don’t intend to
do that twice.

Either way, thanks for the question. It found a real gap.

[andrew.vint]

Im enjoying starting again and building from scratch with the lessons learned over many years and many trials and errors lol

[andrew.vint]

@fastender random question .. the search bar itself can it be hooked into Chat GPT or Claude to perform actions or interpret requests ?

I tried a simple request and i got some response but it was a bit generic and didn’t actually do anything

and oddly cant ask a follow up question

[fastender]

Its on the roadmap (actually only mockup).

docs/FEATURE_ROADMAP.md

[andrew.vint]

Well im here for it bro