I have all the TV inputs automated via voice commands. Eg. If you say “let’s watch plex”, tv turns on if off, input switches, HDMI switch changes, and Plex launches on the shield.
If you’re using Voice Assistant, the recog and TTS are much faster and more fluent than what I’ve seen on my own system. I am running it as a VM on an old server, so hardware will matter, of course. Also, you can get remote access with Home Assistant Companion proxying your HA interface very seamlessly. There might be others, but this is what stands out to me.
I made my own that used irrigation valves with a Zooz Zwave dry relay, with Home Assistant to control it. It was a giant pain to find and get everything hooked up right but afterwards it works well.
I’ve since found some zigbee-based irrigation valves in AliExpress that I’ll try out this summer. I think they’re about the same price as what I built per valve (considering all the parts and the time needed). I haven’t had a chance to try them yet as I got them at the end of last summer but they worked well in testing.
You might be able to do something with local Zigbee2mqtt or Zwave2mqtt proxies at the cabin, and tie those areas back into the main instance over Wirguard or Zerotier, but you’d need a pretty reliable internet service at the cabin to do so.
I don’t use those proxies myself since ai just use the one local hub, bit it should be possible. Maybe someone with more experience with those proxies could chime in?
No, I see all the config files in VScode, but I really don’t have much need for that since I’ve usually done that stuff via SSH. I was wondering if VSCode gave any sort of actual integration with HA like the NodeRed Companion does by exposing all the entities within the IDE so you can do your own coding.
Another commenter mentioned Pyscript which seems like it does some sort of tying together of HA and code.
I see, not as far as I’m aware. Cool idea though, the hass UI can be a bit limiting sometimes. I’d love to see a workflow view of different automations (automation management in Hass is pretty poor IMO)
VSCode in HA is primarily useful for editing config files and with all the latest pushes towards config in the UI it’s not as useful as it used to be. That said, it does integrate with HA to provide completion for entities and some basic yaml validation.
I also use it to work on ESPhome configs as well as some simple file management. I never got SSH working correctly on the HA VM and VSCode has been a convenient workaround.
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.
This is fairly common with remote sensors. Some are perfect and exist in a perfect system, some do not. I am going to rattle off some of the first things that pop into my head…
Honestly, there are a thousand reasons that you could miss a data point every once in a while. Just looking at the chart, it is still sending a data block but the humidity just reported low for a second. Maybe the thermostat is not getting a data block and filling in the data based on its own clock.
Compare it to other data and see if the system turned on or off. Electronics can be sensitive to power drops and it wasn’t able to feed power to the part of the board that manages the sensor for a second. Maybe there is a condition where a capacitor gets fully discharged for a second and is pulling all current away from the sensor. (It’s usually an analog signal from sensors and maybe a measurement of resistance that translates to temperature or humidity. A voltage drop would significantly impact a reading.)
It could be a timing glitch with the code where it can’t read the sensor but builds the data block anyway. Depending on how the sensor works, it could be trying to compute the data the second it gets polled for data and it has nothing to give.
It could even be the wiring to the rest of the system. HVAC systems vibrate and a screw might be getting loose. It could be a cold solder joint, even. What is to commonality between the two thermostats that you had?
The list goes on. I have always treated sensor data as unreliable. Heck, I have a couple of CO2 sensors that do the same this as what you are seeing here. Every so often, the just report zero for a second.
Mesh protocols like zwave and zigbee aren’t 100% reliable. It could be local interference with the signal.
Without some extensive debugging and the willingness to disassemble your thermostat, just treat it as an annoyance.
I have a ‘roll-your-own’ using an adafruit SCD-30 module www.adafruit.com/product/4867 IR-based CO2, temp & humidity; I2C with python libraries, so integrating it with an RPi is easy. Sensor is self-calibrating over time, so if you leave it in a higher CO2 space with no exposure to fresh air, it will eventually drift such that the lowest observed CO2 reports as 420 ppm. Newer SCD-40 is only $45, but different sensor technology.
A stepper would be the easiest thing because if you know it takes 10 steps to fully open from fully closed, you could keep track of how many steps you have sent each direction in Home Assistant and be able to display the current status. 
If you want a knob on the wall that controls this, I think somewhere behind it you are still going to need a control system that translates wall switch inputs into stepping logic. Home Assistant would be able to do that easily. 
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