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+Heatmap
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It’s understandable, Polymer is quite the underdog in the world of web frameworks. A corporate backer does not guarantee popularity or an active community and this shows in the number of projects using Polymer.
- -Still, we use Polymer and it’s awesome. To explain why, I’ll be referencing the React workflow quite a bit, as they do a lot of things right, and show how it is done in Polymer.
- -Polymer gives us components for the web, just like React, but based on web standards: web components, CSS variables. These standards don’t have wide browser support yet but it’s being implemented by every major browser: It’s the future. For now they are being polyfilled and that works just fine but in the future the Home Assistant web app will be able to run native in the browsers == fast.
- - - -Polymer does not have the nice developer experience that one can have with React and the React Dev Tools but that’s a matter of time. The developer tools in every browser have seen a lot of improvements recently and each improvement helps support for web components.
- -Another major benefit of Polymer for Home Assistant is that we get material design for free. The material design components that come with Polymer have a very high quality. Google is using these components themselves and make sure that performance and accessibility using screen readers/keyboards are great. As an open source project, the more we can outsource, the better - so our contributors can focus on the core product: home automation.
- -What about Flux, data management and interaction between components? It’s actually pretty similar to React or any other component based framework. Flux-like architectures work with Polymer just like with React: whenever data changes it will update the attributes of a component which will propagate to the children. For Home Assistant we use NuclearJS with our own Polymer bindings. For data moving from child to parent the Polymer pattern is using DOM events instead of callbacks but the end result is the same. It is so similar in fact, that it took me only two hours to make a React Native frontend for on top of our core.
- -So what about Babel and ES2015? Also this is covered. Each web component exists of a HTML template and a JavaScript class to back it. Think of the HTML template as the render method in React. In Home Assistant we have the HTML templates import one another and have a separate chain for the JavaScript classes backing each component. This allows us to use Babel and NPM modules for the JavaScript part (more info here). This does however come with the downside of other JS based frameworks: the browser blocks any painting while the JavaScript is being parsed instead of upgrading the website incrementally. This, however, is something we take for granted right now and hope that module bundlers will be able to solve this for us eventually. Tree shaking is a very promising improvement in this space.
- -Most of this blog post has been comparing Polymer to React. In many ways Polymer is similar to React but it is not as far evolved yet. I like React but I do not see it as a technology that will be around forever. Given the trend of previous popular JS frameworks, React will probably get replaced by another framework that works even better. Web components however will be here forever as they are part of the HTML standard. And this gives us peace of mind at the virtual Home Assistant headquarters: we do not have to be afraid of having to rewrite our frontend just to stay relevant or because people don’t want to include another dependency just to run this legacy piece.
- -So there it is, the reason why we use Polymer.
- ]]>--open-ui and --demo-mode
--open-ui and --demo-mode
-
- Thanks to Anton Kireyeu we are able to present another awesome Jupyter notebook. I guess that you all know the graph which Github is using to visualize your commits per day over a time-line. It’s a so-called heatmap. If there are more commits, it’s getting hotter. The latest notebook is capable to do the same thing for your devices. To be more precise, for the hours your devices are home.
+ +
+
+Heatmap
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+Heatmap
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Thanks to Next Thing Co. and their CHIP which is actually 9 USD the space requirement for a single board computer has decreased. No Ethernet and HDMI output helped with that. But I guess that the next development cycle will allow us to put those boards in a matchbox including wired networking and a SATA interface.
- -
- 
- Size comparison of a Cubieboard, OrangePi One, and CHIP.
-
If you start using a PocketCHIP you will definitely look like a Blackberry or a GameBoy user. Typing is done with your thumbs :-)
- -First a couple of tweaks like setting up sudo, upgrading the existing installation, change passwords, enabling ssh, and removal of the annoying stuff then installation of Home Assistant. There is not much to tell…it’s straight-forward. For the sake of completeness below the notes about what I did.
A Debian installation is available by default. This means that some dependencies for Home Assistant are missing. I haven’t checked if a new build for the PocketCHIP would include them. So, after a $ sudo apt-get update installing those dependencies take a minute or two.
$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-pip python3-venv -
As usual I run Python applications in a venv.
- -$ pvenv ha -
Let’s activate the created environment.
- -$ cd ha -$ source bin/activate -
If you haven’t seen the next two commands already then you should visit our frontsite.
- -$ pip3 install homeassistant -$ hass --open-ui -
With surf the browsing experience on the low-resolution display is not that great. Most smartphones, even very cheap ones, have touchscreens with higher resolutions. Nevermind, midori is not better.
- 
- PocketCHIP with Home Assistant frontend
-
Well, with PocketCHIP and Home Assistant you could run your home automation on a 49 USD device with a touchscreen, an integrated USP, and a keyboard. With the GPIO available on top of the display you could even connect your PocketCHIP directly to sensors and actuators.
- ]]>
+
+Heatmap
+
Thanks to Anton Kireyeu we are able to present another awesome Jupyter notebook. I guess that you all know the graph which Github is using to visualize your commits per day over a time-line. It’s a so-called heatmap. If there are more commits, it’s getting hotter. The latest notebook is capable to do the same thing for your devices. To be more precise, for the hours your devices are home.
+ +
+
+Heatmap
+
-Over a year ago I participated in the kickstarter campaign for “CHIP - The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer” by Next Thing Co.. I went for the PocketCHIP because of the idea. Display, built-in storage (thus no need for SD cards), battery-powered, and a keyboard are pretty nice features. Last week a package arrives…
+Over a year ago I participated in the kickstarter campaign for “CHIP - The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer” by Next Thing Co.. I went for the PocketCHIP because of the idea. Display, built-in storage (thus no need for SD cards), battery-powered, and a keyboard are pretty nice features. Last week a package arrives…
I’ve been planning to write this post for a while now as we get questions like this a lot: “Why does Home Assistant use Polymer? Why not React, Redux and what not?”
- -It’s understandable, Polymer is quite the underdog in the world of web frameworks. A corporate backer does not guarantee popularity or an active community and this shows in the number of projects using Polymer.
- -Still, we use Polymer and it’s awesome. To explain why, I’ll be referencing the React workflow quite a bit, as they do a lot of things right, and show how it is done in Polymer.
- -Polymer gives us components for the web, just like React, but based on web standards: web components, CSS variables. These standards don’t have wide browser support yet but it’s being implemented by every major browser: It’s the future. For now they are being polyfilled and that works just fine but in the future the Home Assistant web app will be able to run native in the browsers == fast.
- - - - Read on → -I’ve been planning to write this post for a while now as we get questions like this a lot: “Why does Home Assistant use Polymer? Why not React, Redux and what not?”
+ +It’s understandable, Polymer is quite the underdog in the world of web frameworks. A corporate backer does not guarantee popularity or an active community and this shows in the number of projects using Polymer.
+ +Still, we use Polymer and it’s awesome. To explain why, I’ll be referencing the React workflow quite a bit, as they do a lot of things right, and show how it is done in Polymer.
+ +Polymer gives us components for the web, just like React, but based on web standards: web components, CSS variables. These standards don’t have wide browser support yet but it’s being implemented by every major browser: It’s the future. For now they are being polyfilled and that works just fine but in the future the Home Assistant web app will be able to run native in the browsers == fast.
+ + + + Read on → + +Today the news spread that Google will be shutting down the Revolv hubs. And shutting down here doesn’t mean they stop selling or supporting them - no, they are sending an update to each hub to turn your perfectly fine home automation hub into a useless piece of plastic. The fact that this seemed like a good idea by Google astonishes me. If anything, they should have gone the same route as ninjasphere: open it all up and let people decide on the fate of their own hub.
- -I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it again:
- --- -The cloud should be treated as an extension to your smart home instead of running it.
-
Your hub should not be affected when your internet breaks down or the company that sold you your hub goes out of business. It should work locally so that it can continue to work even long after the vendor goes out of business or decides to kill it. Preferably, your hub should also be open so that the community can take over development after the vendor stops caring.
- -Unless you can afford losing a product here and there, be cautious when buying IoT products that depend on the cloud from companies that are not well established. The chances are high that they go bankrupt or get acquired and closed. This however is easier said than done as Gartner predicts that by 2017, 50 percent of IoT solutions will originate in startups that are less than three years old.
- - -Today the news spread that Google will be shutting down the Revolv hubs. And shutting down here doesn’t mean they stop selling or supporting them - no, they are sending an update to each hub to turn your perfectly fine home automation hub into a useless piece of plastic. The fact that this seemed like a good idea by Google astonishes me. If anything, they should have gone the same route as ninjasphere: open it all up and let people decide on the fate of their own hub.
+ +I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it again:
+ +++ +The cloud should be treated as an extension to your smart home instead of running it.
+
Your hub should not be affected when your internet breaks down or the company that sold you your hub goes out of business. It should work locally so that it can continue to work even long after the vendor goes out of business or decides to kill it. Preferably, your hub should also be open so that the community can take over development after the vendor stops caring.
+ +Unless you can afford losing a product here and there, be cautious when buying IoT products that depend on the cloud from companies that are not well established. The chances are high that they go bankrupt or get acquired and closed. This however is easier said than done as Gartner predicts that by 2017, 50 percent of IoT solutions will originate in startups that are less than three years old.
+ + + +People often ask me about my vision for Home Assistant. Before I can describe where I want to go with Home Assistant, I should first talk about how home automation would look in my ideal world. This will be the aim of this post. I’m not going to focus on protocols, networks or specific hubs. That’s all implementation details. Instead, this post will focus on what is most important: the interaction between the users and their home.
- -When people start using home automation, they always experience home control first: being able to control devices in new ways using a phone or computer. They believe the future is now and their app will be their remote for their lives. They only focus on what they are getting, not on what they are losing. You install some light bulbs and all of a sudden you are no longer able to use the light switches. You’ll arrive at home at night and have to pull out your phone, open the app, let it connect and finally you’ll be able to turn on the light. All while turning the light on could have been a switch away.
- -Yes, you can solve this with presence detection. What if your phone runs out of battery? You’ll have to resort to the switch again.
- -If you find that using your new home devices is cumbersome, the promise of home automation technology has failed you. Your lights should work with both a switch (or button) at the entrance of your room and via presence detection. Honestly, there are hardly any valid use cases for being able to control lights from your phone except for showing off.
- - - - Read on → - -People often ask me about my vision for Home Assistant. Before I can describe where I want to go with Home Assistant, I should first talk about how home automation would look in my ideal world. This will be the aim of this post. I’m not going to focus on protocols, networks or specific hubs. That’s all implementation details. Instead, this post will focus on what is most important: the interaction between the users and their home.
+ +When people start using home automation, they always experience home control first: being able to control devices in new ways using a phone or computer. They believe the future is now and their app will be their remote for their lives. They only focus on what they are getting, not on what they are losing. You install some light bulbs and all of a sudden you are no longer able to use the light switches. You’ll arrive at home at night and have to pull out your phone, open the app, let it connect and finally you’ll be able to turn on the light. All while turning the light on could have been a switch away.
+ +Yes, you can solve this with presence detection. What if your phone runs out of battery? You’ll have to resort to the switch again.
+ +If you find that using your new home devices is cumbersome, the promise of home automation technology has failed you. Your lights should work with both a switch (or button) at the entrance of your room and via presence detection. Honestly, there are hardly any valid use cases for being able to control lights from your phone except for showing off.
+ + + + Read on → + +
We have all been hard at work to get this latest release ready. One of the big highlights in this release is the introduction of an extended iconset to be used in the frontend (credits to @happyleavesaoc for idea and prototype). To get started with customizing, pick any icon from MaterialDesignIcons.com, prefix the name with mdi: and stick it into your customize section in configuration.yaml:
homeassistant: - customize: - switch.ac: - icon: 'mdi:air-conditioner' -
We have all been hard at work to get this latest release ready. One of the big highlights in this release is the introduction of an extended iconset to be used in the frontend (credits to @happyleavesaoc for idea and prototype). To get started with customizing, pick any icon from MaterialDesignIcons.com, prefix the name with mdi: and stick it into your customize section in configuration.yaml:
homeassistant: + customize: + switch.ac: + icon: 'mdi:air-conditioner' +
This is a guest post by Home Assistant user and contributor Nolan Gilley.
- -In our house, laundry has been a struggle for quite some time. Our washer and dryer both lack a buzzer which leads to forgotten laundry, and stinky mess that needs to be rewashed. I decided to create a solution by monitoring the washer and dryer myself with some cheap electronics.
- -As an avid user of Home Assistant, I decided it would be the perfect application to manage the UI and notification system. Now all I needed was a way to monitor the washer and dryer. I tried using sound sensors but found them unreliable. I ended up opting for an accelerometer attached to the back of each appliance. I also added magnetic reed switches on the doors of the washer and dryer to detect if the doors are open or closed. I connected the accelerometers and reed switches to a Moteino, an arduino clone with an RF transceiver. The Moteino can perform the logic to figure out which state the appliances are in and wirelessly communicate that data with another Moteino that is connected via serial to my Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi reads the serial data and repeats it over MQTT for Home Assistant to use. This is great because I don’t have to run Home Assistant on the Raspberry Pi. I can run it on a faster machine and point the MQTT component to my Raspberry Pi.
- -After taking some sample data from the accelerometers while each appliance was in operation, I decided to plot the data to help determine the proper thresholds of when the devices were running or off. I had to do this in order to get precise ranges so the dryer sensor wouldn’t get tripped by the washer or vice versa. In the plot below you can see the acceleration in the x direction for the accelerometer connected to the washing machine. It’s easy to see when the washing machine is in operation here. I used the same technique for the dryer’s accelerometer.
- -
-
- 
-
- Graph showing the accelerometer data
-
This is a guest post by Home Assistant user and contributor Nolan Gilley.
+ +In our house, laundry has been a struggle for quite some time. Our washer and dryer both lack a buzzer which leads to forgotten laundry, and stinky mess that needs to be rewashed. I decided to create a solution by monitoring the washer and dryer myself with some cheap electronics.
+ +As an avid user of Home Assistant, I decided it would be the perfect application to manage the UI and notification system. Now all I needed was a way to monitor the washer and dryer. I tried using sound sensors but found them unreliable. I ended up opting for an accelerometer attached to the back of each appliance. I also added magnetic reed switches on the doors of the washer and dryer to detect if the doors are open or closed. I connected the accelerometers and reed switches to a Moteino, an arduino clone with an RF transceiver. The Moteino can perform the logic to figure out which state the appliances are in and wirelessly communicate that data with another Moteino that is connected via serial to my Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi reads the serial data and repeats it over MQTT for Home Assistant to use. This is great because I don’t have to run Home Assistant on the Raspberry Pi. I can run it on a faster machine and point the MQTT component to my Raspberry Pi.
+ +After taking some sample data from the accelerometers while each appliance was in operation, I decided to plot the data to help determine the proper thresholds of when the devices were running or off. I had to do this in order to get precise ranges so the dryer sensor wouldn’t get tripped by the washer or vice versa. In the plot below you can see the acceleration in the x direction for the accelerometer connected to the washing machine. It’s easy to see when the washing machine is in operation here. I used the same technique for the dryer’s accelerometer.
+ +
+
+
+
+ Graph showing the accelerometer data
+
It is well known that you are either a good programmer or a good designer. It’s rare you’ll meet someone that is both. That’s why it wasn’t surprising to anyone that the logo that I made was mediocre — at best. Luckily, Jeremy Geltman has come to the rescue and contributed a brand new logo for Home Assistant.
- -The new logo follows Googles material design spec. It uses the blue color that Home Assistant uses in the interface and it comes in two versions: a high detailed version (for homescreen icon etc) and a simple version (for favicon etc).
- -
-
-The old logo, the new detailed logo and the new simple logo.
-
It is well known that you are either a good programmer or a good designer. It’s rare you’ll meet someone that is both. That’s why it wasn’t surprising to anyone that the logo that I made was mediocre — at best. Luckily, Jeremy Geltman has come to the rescue and contributed a brand new logo for Home Assistant.
+ +The new logo follows Googles material design spec. It uses the blue color that Home Assistant uses in the interface and it comes in two versions: a high detailed version (for homescreen icon etc) and a simple version (for favicon etc).
+ +
+
+The old logo, the new detailed logo and the new simple logo.
+
The configuration.yaml file contains the configuration options for components and platforms. To ensure that the given configuration provided by the user is valid we use voluptuous to check it. Certain entries are optional or could be required for the setup of a platform or a component. Others must be of a certain type or out of an already defined list. This will ensure that the users are notified if something is wrong with a platform or component setup before Home Assistant is running.
The configuration.yaml file contains the configuration options for components and platforms. To ensure that the given configuration provided by the user is valid we use voluptuous to check it. Certain entries are optional or could be required for the setup of a platform or a component. Others must be of a definied type or out of an already defined list.
The goal of testing the configuration is to assure that users have a great experience due to notifications if something is wrong with a platform or component setup before Home Assistant is running.
Beside the voluptuous default types are a bunch of custom types available. To get a full overview take a look at the config_validation.py helper.
diff --git a/developers/helpers/index.html b/developers/helpers/index.html index bd7053dbee..f44680b219 100644 --- a/developers/helpers/index.html +++ b/developers/helpers/index.html @@ -95,6 +95,7 @@
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