Awesome thanks for the advice. Id seen conflicting info on zwave vs zigbee for switches. One of the main things was wifi interference, but i live in a remote place and dont have a ton of wifi devices or outside interference. Also ill most likely be running a ubiquiti ap cause i use ubiquiti at work and am comfortable with it. Should be super solid.
Adding another vote on the inovelli blues. Zigbee network has been rock solid for me. Integration with homeassistant has been flawless too - could not be happier with my purchase. It also helps that the company has a great track record with transparency and working with the community to improve their product.
One detail I don’t see mentioned often is the zigbee switches are a little smaller than the zwaves, making them easier to fit into the junction box. My house is old and has very small boxes - not sure these would have fit in some places if they were any bigger!!
ESPHome has support for a few sensors that might get the job done… would weighing the tank be an option, or are you looking for something more off-the-shelf?
I’ve yet to mess around with any of the liquid level sensing tech, so I don’t have any specific recommendations… but ESPHome has a huge array of different sensor filtering options which should really help. I think sensor noise and settling time are a lot of what complicate the task.
I have oil heat too and I struggle to imagine how you would add a sensor to it. That tank is solid and thick, trying to get anything inside it is a horrible idea and trying to sense through the metal is going to be prone to problems. In the past I’ve just pointed a camera at the main gauge.
My tank came with a mounting point on the top of it where you can fit an ultrasonic sensor. You just configure it with the depth of your tank and that’s it. I have a unit inside that shows how much oil I have left.
Apparently, it uses an RF protocol that can be intercepted and interpreted in HA with the right dongle but I haven’t done that.
Edit: mine looks like this although with different branding.
The only option I could think of would be integrating an industrial oil tank sensor.
A wire sensor that uses Time-domain-reflectometry would likely be the best, but expensive. This uses a corrosion resistant cable and uses wave reflections when a pulse changes mediums (air to oil) in order to give a level reading.
More difficult to DIY though. You have to know what you are doing.
Ultrasonic sensor might work, but it depends on if oil for home heating gives off fumes that would interfere with it.
Otherwise another DIY solution would be optical sensing like a ToF sensor. Maybe the most realistic for easy integration in ESPHome, but like the ultrasonic sensor, you would have to protect it from a full tank contaminating the sensor with oil.
If the tank is plastic, a capacitive sensor could work too.
As a side note, I really wish folders were implemented for devices and automations and such. Especially since I have a scene controller (and another on the way) with several buttons, each of which can have 6 different triggers (pressing 1-5 times or holding the button down). Oh, and more for the LEDs.
Yes! Especially automations! I would rather have tags than folders, so an automation could fit into more than one category (eg. Location, action) but I’d take anything over alphabetical!!
I thought this was implemented on the dashboard. I don’t recall what exactly it’s called (context cards?) but I recall you could click a button to show a separate card or click and have it open a second ‘tab’ on the dashboard to control more things like with your scene controller.
Organize? Hahaha ohmygod best laugh I’ve had in a few days.
Some devices have the generic names from the manufacturer because I had issues and had to re-join them a few times, so I got tired of typing the “correct” names. Also I have a light switch labeled “front porch” which is really inaccurate because I’m not turning the porch on and off, it’s the lights! And those lights are now zigbee bulbs of their own, but they at least got more sensible names (“porch light doorbell side” and “porch light right side”).
But I may switch to zigbee2mqtt, so I’ll have a chance to redo all of it anyway.
In general I don’t have so many devices that knowing what is what isn’t a major issue. I name them better in Lovelace, of course.
I may be wrong, but I think best practice says it doesn’t matter how you name your whatevers, so long as the convention you use is consistant. Within HA I tend to use the format <DeviceType>.<Room>.<WhereOrWhat>.<NumberIfRestMatches>.
For example, the plugs that control my space heaters in my livingroom are switch.livingroom.heater.1 and switch.livingroom.heater.2. The controls for the lights in the livingroom is button.livingroom.wall. Please don’t ask why I call plugs switches and controls buttons, I don’t have an answer, I just do. 🤷
I just tried and I think they are limitations on numerous android OS.
It isn’t exactly a widget but what I have been able to do is create a shortcut when long pressing home assistant app icon on my phone
To do so, go to home assistant app settings/compagnon app/shortcut Give it a name and description, not too short according to documentation (see below), next add under dahsboard
Edit: added another screenshot from settings (sorry in french but that should help). This was just a quick test, this is why I named it assist_widget. You can also change icon type
@barbarosa
For all those sensors (temp, current etc.) I always prefix the entity ID and friendly name with the area name.
I create areas like “kitchen fridge” or “garage fridge” to keep my stuff organized.
Before areas was a thing in HASS I would name things with an area name. ESP32-5-Bedroom. Now I just leave it what ever it defaults to, then use HASS to name them, and then put them in an area.
How do you et HASS to name them ? i,e. what names does it chose ? So basically you leave the location out of the name as that is shown in the area anyway ? Thing is, that sometimes you need to choose a device from a dropdown, and in these dropdowns they don’t show the area, so having the location sometime gives more information that is missing
Try relocating one of the troublesome units to someplace nearby but not mounted to the ceiling. The top of a bedroom dresser, the floor, a bathroom countertop, the top step of the stairs, halfway down the stairs, hanging from a wall (picture hook)… just get creative.
And since you haven’t mentioned it, I presume these are all smoke detectors? Do you have any heat detectors or carbon monoxide detectors installed?
You are not supposed to have smoke alarms in the bathroom or just outside of a shower bathroom for this reason actually. Also not in the kitchen. A heat detector is recommended for the kitchen.
I had alarms that would go off specifically in the winter in our stair tower because it was a 200 year old house that was renovated badly with no insulation.
Even my Fibaro smart CO alarm got bugged and drained its entire battery in 2 days because it was in a 5-10C environment (within their specs, but they simply lie on the specs).
From my experience, any life saving device simply can’t handle moderately cold temperatures at all, which is honestly extremely ridiculous to me and very dangerous.
Your problem, if dust related would likely be because you are using optical alarms which are easily susceptible to dust. If that is the case, you could try replacing those with ionization alarms on the 2nd floor. Ionization detects flaming fires better and optical detects very smokey fires better.
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