Starting Home Assistant (HA) for New Users

[TanKianW]

**Xiaomi (Re-Package) Plant Smart Monitoring Device with Home Assistant over BLE Proxy**

I am continuing my BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) Proxy on Home Assistant post above on integrating my recent Xiaomi Plant smart monitoring IoT device purchase. This could be a pretty cool plant-monitoring device for plant lovers. You can even set custom notifications to remind you to tend or water your plants. Pretty Cool! There are some pre-requisite of this HA integration, they are:​

1. Pre-installation and configuration of HACS (HA community stall)​
2. Add in the custom repository to install Open Plantbook (library) integration to provide the recommended plant species stats (Eg. what could be the preferred water moisture in the soil for your plant species)​
3. Add in the custom repository to install the love-lace plant card​
4. Add in the custom repository to install the Plant Monitoring integration to be added into the devices​

The integration will look something like this on the dashboard:

Create an account on the Plantbook Integration to help you identify the optimal growing conditions (through the API) for your plant species. This integration is definitely for plant lovers!

The Xiaomi plant smart monitoring device: (Packaging)

(Deployment)​

 

[bucklau]

Anyone interested to try ESPhome presence sensor sold in EU/US?

thinking to buy Everything Presence Lite or Sensy-One but would be better to do a group buy to reduce delivery costs

I am leaning towards Sensy-One as it is wired via USB-C and smaller

 

[keeycheng]

**Xiaomi (Re-Package) Plant Smart Monitoring Device with Home Assistant over BLE Proxy**

I am continuing my BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) Proxy on Home Assistant post above on integrating my recent Xiaomi Plant smart monitoring IoT device purchase. This could be a pretty cool plant-monitoring device for plant lovers. You can even set custom notifications to remind you to tend or water your plants. Pretty Cool! There are some pre-requisite of this HA integration, they are:​

1. Pre-installation and configuration of HACS (HA community stall)​
2. Add in the custom repository to install Open Plantbook (library) integration to provide the recommended plant species stats (Eg. what could be the preferred water moisture in the soil for your plant species)​
3. Add in the custom repository to install the love-lace plant card​
4. Add in the custom repository to install the Plant Monitoring integration to be added into the devices​

The integration will look something like this on the dashboard:

Create an account on the Plantbook Integration to help you identify the optimal growing conditions (through the API) for your plant species. This integration is definitely for plant lovers!

The Xiaomi plant smart monitoring device: (Packaging)

(Deployment)​

Hi，

would you be able to share the integration link? And where do you buy the Plant Monitoring from? It seems like there are 2 versions to this and which 1 did you get?

 

[TanKianW]

Hi，

would you be able to share the integration link? And where do you buy the Plant Monitoring from? It seems like there are 2 versions to this and which 1 did you get?

You can check out the step-by-step setup guide from this YT-er:



As for the plant monitoring sensor, I got the English version of the "HHCC Xiaomi Mi Flora Monitor".

 

[TanKianW]

Can you test entering room, turning on the fan, then exit the room.
Does the presence state remains or goes off with the fan still on after a while?

Just a quick update. Probably not what you are looking for.

Somehow it detect my ceiling fan (which is ON) when I install in my living room. I have transferred it to my washroom which works well.​

 

[TanKianW]

**UNBOXING: Home Assistant Voice (Preview Edition)**

Something arrived at my doorstep today! Home Assistant Voice (Preview Edition). Finally, off-the-shelf privacy-focused, localised Smarthome Voice Assistant! Will be linking this up to my local AI clusters running LLMs.

 

[morimorimori]

Warrao that activation phrase...

 

[TanKianW]

Warrao that activation phrase...

"Nabu eh!"....then self activate...

Phrase can change.

 

[TanKianW]

**Initial Setup and Testing: Home Assistant Voice (Preview Edition)**

A potential candidate to replace your Google Home, Alexa and Xiaomi voice assistant which is actively developed by the HA team. Hardware is running ESP32-S3 SoC and XMOS audio processing. Initial setup requires the connection to your mobile BT or your HA server with the BLE proxy set up prior. I have a BLE proxy setup using ESP32, so it auto-discovered on my HA as soons as I power it up.

Take note that some quirks still exist, since it is a "preview product", like not recognizing your voice command if you don't speak clearly. But overall, it is still pretty well polished and a good "first" voice assistant product from the HA team! When it works, it is slightly faster than Google Voice Assistant. One of the reasons could be that my home network (WiFi) is already pretty snappy and well-optimised, so the difference is about 1 to 0.5 seconds at best. From the video demo, you can see, it is really snappy. But the cool thing is that this works locally, even without the internet or connection to the cloud. For the tinkerers, worth a shot to try one and support the HA team at the same time. If you are self-hosting your local AI server/clusters (Eg. Ollama or exo) or subscribed to OpenAI, you can link it up to your HA, will greatly improved it's "intelligence". Have fun.



My simple testing:

​

 

[bucklau]

For those who plan to have a smart switch for the heater, I highly recommend using a smart switch to control a contractor which in turn powers the heater. Most of the smart switch relays are not meant to take high continuous current load and may fail prematurely due to the contact fusing together.

Just to check what is a contractor (tried googling but cannot find anything). I wanted to make my heater switch smart but I also quite concerned about the load and fire safety. Buying ‘branded’ heater switch is one possibility but I want to explore this to see if I can have multiple safe measures. Thanks!

 

[sglandscape]

Just to check what is a contractor (tried googling but cannot find anything). I wanted to make my heater switch smart but I also quite concerned about the load and fire safety. Buying ‘branded’ heater switch is one possibility but I want to explore this to see if I can have multiple safe measures. Thanks!

Had a typo, it's called a "contactor", works like a relay but meant for higher load

 

[TanKianW]

**SHARING: Leak Sensors SW02 from Meian Using ZB2MQTT on Home Assistant**

For those looking for leak sensors under your sinks or sump pits. Below shows the exposes of the leak sensor over ZB2MQTT on Home Assistant. Cheap and practical smart home devices.

 

[bucklau]

Screek L13 presence sensor (ESP32)
Found this recommended quite regularly in home assistant community and it can be found in taobao

initial testing seems good with ceiling fan can be ignored using the app configuration. Will continue to test further to see if it can handle various scenarios in a living room

 

[tecnica]

Hey guys, very excited to read about HA, as a new user, would HA green be sufficient?

 

[TanKianW]

Hey guys, very excited to read about HA, as a new user, would HA green be sufficient?

I think it is a good place to start. "Sufficient" is subjective. It could be sufficient for you, but not for me.

When you've gotten comfortable with HA and need more performance, then can consider moving to a mini/micro PC running X86-64 hardware.

Feel free to check out Page 1 of the thread and the recommended setup. For all new setup, I suggest not running HA on containers anymore, go straight with the more seamless HAOS on bare metal or hypervisor.​

 

[tecnica]

right, thanks for the pointers. i totally get what you mean after watching some videos on hardware requirement.

probably get one of the micro pc and flash it with HAOS. have not been tinkering with hardware for some time, abit lost touch.

just wanna get a quick reply, i am planning on going with aqara switches for my entire house, do i still need to get the aqara hub or not ah?

edit: oh wait, i think need buy zigbee dongle.

 

[TanKianW]

just wanna get a quick reply, i am planning on going with aqara switches for my entire house, do i still need to get the aqara hub or not ah?

edit: oh wait, i think need buy zigbee dongle.

You dun have to get the "proprietary hub" to get them to work.

As for ZigBee dongle. See my past posts, I recommend the SLZB-06. There seemed to be some newer and more powerful version/variant of this dongle, check out the official HA forum to know which best suit your needs.​

 

[bucklau]

Screek L13 presence sensor (ESP32)
Found this recommended quite regularly in home assistant community and it can be found in taobao

initial testing seems good with ceiling fan can be ignored using the app configuration. Will continue to test further to see if it can handle various scenarios in a living room

Quite happy with the result as the presence & luminance data is immediate in realtime as it is wired. It even allows me to take care of one of my partner pain points which is light of dumb ceiling fan which can switch on by itself during daytime. As the illuminance sensor is sensitive and immediate, calculating the difference of illuminance level using pyscript & sensor data automates the irritating light-on away by sending RF command to off the light with pyscript. Big upgrade to the Tuya PIR/presence sensor mentioned which is useful in other use cases (toilet).

 

[bucklau]

Hey guys, very excited to read about HA, as a new user, would HA green be sufficient?

Got HA green currently, after 9 months, I am considering switching to minipc as I want to play with frigate & reolink doorbell (still thinking want to do PoE or not). HA green is probably good enough for most simple use cases but you want to play advanced stuff like those I mentioned or want to create homelab to include the likes of adguard/jellyfin. Then mini pc (with at least 16 ram) will be better. Also can consider doing proxmox which a lot of HA community folks recommend

 

[tecnica]

Got HA green currently, after 9 months, I am considering switching to minipc as I want to play with frigate & reolink doorbell (still thinking want to do PoE or not). HA green is probably good enough for most simple use cases but you want to play advanced stuff like those I mentioned or want to create homelab to include the likes of adguard/jellyfin. Then mini pc (with at least 16 ram) will be better. Also can consider doing proxmox which a lot of HA community folks recommend

Yes I have been reading up on it, likely get the beelink mini pc, still trying to understand proxmox as well, think have to future proof abit since I am starting from a blank sheet.