Home automation that's private and local?! (Home Assistant Yellow)
Home Assistant sent me the Yellow, a new smart home hub with a Raspberry Pi CM4 built-in. It includes Zigbee and can be the center of all your smart home automation. But is it worth it?
Here are all the devices I featured in this video (some are affiliate links):
– Home Assistant Yellow: https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-assistant-yellow
– Leviton DG15S-1BW Zigbee Light Switch: https://amzn.to/327RNUx
– Aeotec SmartThings Zigbee Motion Sensor: https://amzn.to/33LX3Oh
– Aqara Wireless Zigbee Mini Switch: https://amzn.to/3fA4Zoe
– Fluke VoltAlert Non-Contact Voltage Tester: https://amzn.to/3qyvtgk
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#HomeAssistant #SmartHome #RaspberryPi
Contents:
00:00 – The $1 lightswitch problem
00:49 – Home Assistant Yellow
02:12 – Yellow teardown
03:44 – Zigbee for my office lights
05:48 – Home Assistant 101
07:17 – Zigbee device setup
09:35 – Automating my lights
11:57 – Debugging my failure
13:15 – Actually automating my lights
16:03 – Quick HA review
18:28 – A button, availability, and other options
I like electrical system like I like my vinyl records and my electric guitar amps and my synths and my old servers and laptops:
Analog, Stupid, and not connected to the internet.
Automation is stupid.
Are you Sabbatical’s long lost twin? I’m not even kidding.
Also thanks for the good content
I had similar problem with hand washing after every dump. I just could force myself to turn the faucet on and off, not to mention supper unpleasant cold water that gave me the creeps. I opted for modern, smart solution – automatic hand sanitizer dispenser. Now I smell like roses…
A super advanced technique to avoid the light shutting off when motionless inside the room would be to install simple cameras with face detection on both sides of the door. Alternatively, maybe a simple directional sensor on the door frame to detect how many bodies enter and leave the room.
There is some human presence sensor you can try.
Really cool board but that yellow pcb is absolutely hideous 😢
Thanks for guide!
Could you rig up a counting program that keeps track of how many times you move through the doorway, and only turns the lights off on odd-numbered crosses? I feel like that would be simpler than rigging sensors that can detect you no matter where you are in the room.
Home assistant has come a long way
18:18 (me gets autoclicker)
Chad stuff 👍❤️
Lol 16:35 back to square one.
One year later, I have had hands-on experience with Home Assistant. Quick comments:
1. Zigbee and Z-Wave are NOT "the same." Zigbee devices have been very difficult to install and reliability has been spotty. They frequently become "unavailable." In their favor, those devices are MUCH less expensive then Z-Wave. There’s a reason. Z-Wave requires extensive testing and certification of their devices so they are much more reliable, confirmed by my testing. For me they always worked right out of the box.
2. Home Assistant is not for the faint of heart or with low patience. When it is said that there is a "steep learning curve" we are talking Mount Everest steep. The user interface is very difficult to figure out and navigate. To actually configure many basic aspects actually requires modifying program code. I can eventually figure it out, but I have been programming computers since 1968. HA would be near impossible for a general household user.
i swear to god. raspberry pi is like the javascript of hardware world. it does a lot of things even things its not supposed to do.
This is my personal opinion , not at all binding on anybody.
I am not against it but I feel like home automation is a bit too much .
Some things can be automated like outdoor lights , only lights of living room so that 1 don’t have to search switch while coming at night , ACs or house’s heaters ( if you have gone out & want your room cool or warm when you are just 20 mins away from about to reach home ), water pumps for gardens , home water storage tanks etc .
But rest of the stuffs like rest of the switches should remain manual .
People will become lazier . Already they are lazy enough . Hooked to Netflix or prime or playstation ( even i like that 😅 ) . They lay arround like cats in house even if they have manual work to do .
you guys know what i am saying .
Was there an easy way you figured out the plug to circuit breaker thing or was it a two person job? Thanks for your videos!
I am tearing out what’s left of my hair trying to figure out how to build a system. I’m fine with Leviton’s stuff that uses WiFi and their cloud stuff, but a future project requires 0-10v dimming. They don’t make anything like that in WiFi or Zigbee. I found a place that sells stuff for Zigbee. They aren’t wall switches. they’re something you’d stuff in a grey electrical panel. So I would get those, and this yellow thing. How would I actually go about controlling it all in person and not with a phone? A touch screen? A keypad? I don’t get it. All of this crap always turns back to stuff that’s listed on Chinese vendors like aliexpress. I’m not down with that.
As a programmer, I loved this video. Working to upgrade my old SmartThings setup
I think its funny you know the number of seconds in a day off the top of your head but 20×60 required a calculator.
😂 the screenshot for this video
I would love to see an update for this, only track outlet usage
That HomeAssistant casing is so cool!
Or don’t be lazy and stop relying on computers for everything? Mind you, I did keep an abacus in my desk drawer, which allowed me to keep working during a power cut.
Find me something that doesn’t require internet and uses a gpt ai For automation, and i’m sold because I do not want to have to always be connected to the internet
Watching this again now, since this Video was made, Home Assistant have added additional naming in the Integration so if you search a particular brand, it will find most integrations associated with that brand. Searching Zigbee will now find the ZHA integration.
Just install a wooden pressure plate at your doorstep. Very budget.
i still think gettin a relay module level shifter and pico W is prob cheeper then those smart switches and a PIR sensor is cheap but like someone else said an occupancy sensor might also work better
so, how does this Home Assistant affect Google Assistant? Im a noob to all things smart home
Stupid question for an idiot like me, what happens when the internet goes out for whatever reason? Thanks
can you control the house out site the house via cellular? E.G before you come home tune on the heating
your voice over has a little delay 🙂
for those watching this in late 2023, I’ve been running a Home Assistant setup for a couple years, and its UI has gotten MUCH more user-friendly. It’s quite simple to setup, change, and add devices, or automations, etc. Also limitless options when compared to "commercial" brand smart home setups.
I’m using similar in my workshop, but I use events from two motion sensors – one in workshop and one on workshop’s door frame.
So when I came in, it never turn off the light even I sit without moving for a long time. I think you know this algorithm for presence detection – "bee in the box".
For my house I use openHAB, and write all my automations rules using pure DSL. It more comfortable to write code without any yaml’s and web interfaces.
Well, now I don’t feel as bad about abandoning Home Assistant
U should use a presence sensor, to keep the lights on 😉 u probably know that by now since this vid is 2 years old lol
A better question. How can you buy a Raspberry Pie without paying a scalpers price?
@19:46 Will you still be Jeff Gerling after the next time? *headscratch*
Is there an alternative to using Zigbee based sensors?
Spongebob lover
All those Google Nest and Ring devices will no longer work, once product makers want to sell you new crap. It’s just like shutting down a game server. For real, do you want strangers tracking when you’re home, or away, and every time you enter each room of your home? Then they open a big hole in your router’s firewall, giving them full network access. If something feels weird, that’s not their finger.🍆😱
I had that Leviton switch and it died after 1 year. I suspect they design it to fail after x number of uses to force you to buy a new one.
I like the idea of labeling what breakers on each outlet but why didn’t you put it on the inside part of the cover. It is cleaner and more durable that way. The outlet or switch isn’t going to hurt you if it doesn’t have its cover.
Great video. After the viceo from Louis Rossmann about Amazon shutting down the home of a person for 1 week the option is private or nothing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfiIXooD77s&t=485s
How about today after 2 years you are with te Home assistant yellow? I am into a moment I want to buy a device but having a problem do I go for Yellow? As I see the yellow has more potention but as a complete greeny I hear the green is more like plug and play, you see what I am gooing for, OR NOT. HELP. One of the things what would be important to me is like I do hydroponics and in these ( lots of different setups to test ) sometimes i need a spribkler system to make open a water solenoid ( valve ) for only seconds. ( Nutrient adding ). But the assistant app on the phone only allowes me 1 minut or longer. So in that I would like to know about the green ( like more the yellow for the extra features ).
Wondering what you would do and think if started from scratch with latest version of Home Assistant today? …2-years development should have improved the user experience for beginners
NOTHING is simple about HA, its one massive pain in the ass.
He looks more like Tobey Maguire than a tech nerd.
So does it work with internet disconnected??
Love that you filmed the process of automating even though you haven’t previously learned it. 👍
And stores passwords in plaintext, and has no encryption support, and doesnt support separate interfaces for the IoT devices and the web access. Really they should be ashamed of selling such an epically insecure device that is unfit to be used anywhere without serious firewalling.