Home Assistant Hints and Tips

We are currently making our home smart using Home Assistant and this page is just a handy place to share templates and other tips for setting up Home Assistant.

Templates

• Combining Room Assistant and Person Entities
• Convert Fire Sources to real names
• Days to date Template
• Detect Motion on any motion sensor
• Displaying Newsfeeds
• Getting nice messages from “Anniversary”
• How Long since something changed
• List all open doors and windows
• List all sensors unavailable etc
• Lovelace – Custom Button
• Set Light to a Random Colour
• Show Phone Battery status with Macro Example
• Today’s sun values
• Welcome Card for Home Page

Automations

• Controlling Switchbot Curtains via Alexa
• Extracting Voicemails from email
• Kitchen Timer Announcement
• Need Lights
• Play Radio on weekdays
• Shopping List – Todoist

Scripts

• Play Radio 2 on Alexa
• Playing Sound Effects via Alexa
• Setting up a Message Box in Home Assistant

Configuration

• Create a “camera” for screenshots in HASS.AGENT
• Creating a template entity with dynamic icon
• Getting Larger Fonts On Small Tablet
• Setting up Github backup for Home Assistant
• Using a Rest Service

General

• Adding Shelly Device (MQTT)
• Change Type of Zigbee ZHA Entity
• Create Syncback Sensors
• Setting Attributes from Windows using curl
• Setting up Sonos with Media Stored on HA using Samba
• Using an Inky Display