Why is this so difficult?

It got rejected! I give up. Too hard basket

It got rejected because of all the things you managed to drag in instead of the change (see the responses from Frenck). As he said, if you need help swing by the Discord server and folks can help you through your first PR.

Just ran across this, I am sick and tied of watching these guys in streaming videos for hours. I do have HA installed and running I guess. I have a number of devices that I used Tasmota on, wrote some code and spent a ton of hours debugging the yaml files. It seams to be a lot of nothing, All this because everyone is afraid on having this exposed to the network or using a number of apps. Well I am tired of all of this and not will use the network to control all of my devices. i am just tired of wasting time getting nothing done here. I have a PHD in engineering and feel dummer than a rock with Home Assistant. Wish Me luck, going fishing.

I know a lot of engineers, and used to be an instrumentation engineer in a previous life. I wouldn’t let an engineer touch my network. :wink:

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So whats your point?

Having a PHD in engineering doesn’t mean anything for IT related fields.

:joy:

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i guess that makes you think you are smart and have learned something usefull.

and at that point everyone starts.

i see it over and over that people who have learned something have more difficulties learning something new, then those who didnt learn before.
so probably everything you have learned before is a disabiltity for a completely new and different environment.

try not to think in what you already knew, but see yourselve as a dumb person who wants to learn something new.

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This is an open source DIY type project. It’s going to require some research, planning, and learning new skills/tools. It’s also still under pretty heavy development. The current focus seems to be on moving toward GUI configurations instead of YAML, which has historically been a pain point for many people when they first start. However, it’s just not there yet. It will likely get there eventually, but this isn’t some commercial product that was released basically feature complete. If that’s what you want, then by all means go with something like SmartThings or the various web-based products. Or come back in a year or so and see if the state of things meets your expectations then. There are even other open source projects to consider, e.g. openHAB. Pick the technology that suits your needs.

Do you need a hug or maybe a snickers bar? :wink:

Seriously though we’ve all been there screaming at the IT gods “why isn’t this working”. Trouble is what we all need to do at the beginning is start small with the basics and build slowly from there but invariably that happens once then we skip straight to the tough stuff and then wonder we can’t get it right.

My advice go back to the basics it’s usually where the problem lies

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I assume you are referring to endless online videos about how to install/configure/cook your dinner with home assistant. Treat them with caution, they get outdated very quickly as home assistant changes. The documentation however is kept up to date, and are well within the understanding of PhD’s and other people who can read and analyse.

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I only have a high school education and was able to sort out the basics of HA within a month. I still turn to the community for some more complex tasks that through trial and error I can not get to work, but largely, I can figure things out for myself.

It’s not as hard as many make it out to be.

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I do want to mention, well over a year since this post was originally started. And I still have struggles at times as I’m sure we all do. But during this past year everything in home assistant has rapidly improved. I’m still chugging along and am much more confident in my abilities. The devs and community in general has done a fantastic job improving documentation and improvements leading up to Home Assistant 1.0

I am so grateful for everyone here who has taken their personal time to help me along the way and I appreciate each and every one of you.

When I show my friends and family the things I am able to do with my home they are amazed (And think I’m a bit crazy too)

This is the best automation platform out there and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s possible in the future.

If anybody is new to home assistant and finds themselves wondering if it is all worth it, my answer is yes! Nothing good in life comes easy but with patience and the help from friends you make along the way, nothing is more satisfying then learning this stuff then implementing it into your everyday life.

Once again, to everybody and everyone who has helped me get to where I am today. Thank you friends I will always be grateful and anywhere possible I will always try to help others along the way.

You are all the best!

Corey

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I’m not a “tech guy” per se but I have come across quite some coding during my studies at the technical University. I just started out with Hassio: Bought a Pi4 and a RaspBee shield to control a bunch of Tradfri light. It is a nightmare! On one hand you have a shiny GUI, but to actually do anything at all you have to dive into the absurd world of .yaml, json and the like. Just trying to get the RaspBee to talk to Hassio and being able to manually control my lights took me well over two days - in the stupid Ikea-App that came with the lights, i had that functionality within 2 minutes of plugging in the gateway!

All posts and tutorials assume that you know how to write code or just leave out about half of the steps because they think it is obvious where to find a specific file or how to set up SSH etc. I find it funny how People talk about Hassio as the new standard for advanced home automation - as long as you have to touch a single line of code this is just going to stay a nerd-toy! I know this is all still under development and i dont want to disrespect the people that are putting time into it, but it just feels like some of them might not realize that the average person is not a fluent coder. I see the potential in HA but i think it needs A LOT more energy directed towards the GUI: It’s amazing HA can do almost everything, but if people can’t easily figure out HOW that renders all this functionality useless!

I’m now considering ditching HA and just setting up a simple Raspian with node red and the phoscon app: seeing what node red can do I feel it is a much more powerful tool and I dont really get what you need HA for at all. Any Inputs on why i should stick with Hassio+NodeRed+Phoscon over Raspian+NodeRed+Phoscon?

I ditched HassIO as it was unreliable. The backups did not always work. The upgrades were rolling the dice and praying. I also realized it was trying to solve a problem that did not exist…

I moved to he Home Assistant (Core) docker container running on Ubuntu with Portainer to manage Docker. It is all good now. Updates are reliable and zero issues.

Thanks for the reply. But in terms of managing the actual automations and the like, running Hassio vs. Linux+Docker+HA is exactly the same, or am i mistaken? You still get the whole .yaml grind?

Correct but the base Home Assistant is starting to do some work to get that all in the GUI in a reasonable state. The 105 preview looks to add quite some functionality.

So I am hopeful that soon yaml will only be for special setups and once done automations can all be clicks in the gui.

i am sorry to tell you but automating on itself is a nerd thing.
the only way to automate without code is if all type of automations are preprogrammed, and you only need to fill in some data.
and that will always mean that a lot of stuff is impossible because it isnt programmed.

automating equals programming.

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I couldn’t agree with @ReneTode more.

If you switch on this light then you want that light to go off, but in 3 minutes and then you want the heating to be set to 19 degrees but only if this occupant is at home on their own.

What is this but a set of programming instructions ?
Do you want HA to just guess at the possible permutations and events with timing options temperatures, light levels etc just thrown in and then you pick through them and say - no, no, no, no.yes - (well like this but completely different), no, no,
“well why can’t I just program it using simple English phrases”
At the simplest level that’s what HA is trying to do, it’s contextual.
So you’re programming a VCR, so what channel?, what time start, what time end ?
This is a very simple act on a single purpose device and some people can’t achieve that.
Okay you want an automation, what triggers it? Does the trigger happen when it goes on, off or some value? Is there a situation where you don’t want this to occur? What do you want to happen as a result ?

The devs are not trying to make things difficult, but how are you supposed to convey your instructions to a small box sitting on your desk so that the results were repeatable and timely.
Imagine we replace the box with a very small man, how would you convey the same information, now imagine he only speaks Chinese. You have to learn Chinese.

yaml is not really such a grind. There are multiple, literally thousands, of examples in the forum and in other documentation.

And you can always ask, help here is wunnerful.

If node-red looks appealing to you then I would suggest sticking with HA (HassIO in the old language) and installing the node-red add-on. I have had ZERO issues with backups etc on my system so I don’t agree with Johns comment about HA (HassIO) being unreliable.