So last week I had a Proxmox fuckup and lost everything. I learnt the hard way what living without backups is like and I don’t recommend it.
Silver lining is that I don’t have to tidy up all those old automations and entities anymore.
Anyway it made me realise what I’d miss if I didn’t have them, because I didn’t have them.
I’ve been really really tired this week. I get up at 5am and start work at 6, and while I don’t like it, I usually cope with it better than most and have comments about how “It’s too early for you.” But not this week.
I’ve put it down to losing my connection between my alarm clock and HA. I use SleepAsAndroid and have done for a long time. Back when I started it was because it connected to Tasker, but over the years I’ve moved to HA and still use it.
SleepAsAndroid with Tasker was done with web hooks but I use the MQTT integration with HA. This means it’s connected when I’m home but not in network when I’m away, so it can’t fire the messages, which is what you want.
Previously I used Node Red to set up this automation but I haven’t reinstalled it yet, I’m seeing if I can do it all on HA, then it’s one less thing and I can automate in the app.
I spent a while this morning trying to figure out how to reintegrate it with HA and struggled, but eventually I found an integration in HACS which meant I just had to change my device identifier in the alarm app by adding /MyName to the end of the SleepAsAndroid topic so it reads SleepAsAndroid/MyName, add the HACS integration and then add it again in the Integrations pane, with MyName plumbed in.
Then I added a blueprint from the add ons page and left the house to go on a day trip.
In and amongst the day trip I’ve been making my automation on the HA app via the blueprint, and have come home, loaded a bowl and set my alarm for 1 minute time, then smoke the bowl and wait…
Success!
Hopefully I’ll have more energy this week when I wake up to my lights turning on, instead of complete darkness and a strange noise.
Now what would you miss that isn’t obvious (like motion activated lights)?
I work night shift and use blackout curtains and earplugs to improve my sleep during the day. Rather than cranking the volume on my alarm so it’s loud enough to consistently wake me up, I use Home Assistant to turn on some smart bulbs as my alarm. When I started, and even now if I have to be up extra early, I also have an audible alarm set to go off a few minutes after the lights come on - just in case the light doesn’t wake me up, but at this point my brain has gotten used to waking up to the lights, and I usually wake up and turn off the other alarm before it goes off.
Another useful automation for me is I have a buggy Samsung PC monitor that has all sorts of annoying issues; like not consistently waking from deep sleep which requires a hard power cycle to correct, and when it is asleep there’s some weird high pitched whine that beeps when the standby light flashes. I use a couple of smart plugs with power monitoring and monitor my PCs power draw to turn the power to my monitor on and off at the wall depending on if the PC is on.
I’ve had a similar automation to turn my screen on and off and miss it, it needs setting up again. I’m halfway there though, I set up my Wake On Lan again yesterday.
I have a QI charger on my computer desk, it’s the only one in the house. When I place my phone on the charger, HA sees the wireless charging and turns on my PC. It’s a tiny quality of life improvement that I really missed, sit down and throw phone at the charger and the PC turns on.