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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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homeassistant
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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io
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I love Home assistant, but there's one major thing IMO that's missing and prevents me from really using it: user accounts. You can make accounts but they're mostly pointless as they all have access to everything and you can't restrict things.
A proper permissions system would be a big improvement for Home Assistant. It would be great to be able to set access rules per user and entity.
Unfortunately it’s a commonly request thing but it hasn’t gained much traction with the devs.
I have a feeling it's because most are single, living alone, in a basement programming. This is a joke as it's the only way I can rationalize it because if they had kids they would understand you don't want your kids turning on your bedroom lights in the middle of the night.
Yeah, an oold complaint with HA. But it doesn't feel like they have any intention of making the changes for this kind of a thing. I wouldn't hold your breath on them making this happen, ever.
I generally use HA differently, it coordinates and automates my homes devices. But I try to keep interactions with it limited to physical buttons in the meat space
The problem with buttons is that they're expensive (relatively speaking) and ruin the advantages of having everything in a single place like the HA app.
I am not giving access to "everything" to everyone in the house: I already managed to accidentally turn off the 3D printer mid print instead of a light, shouldn't expect others to be better than me.
I'll be totally honest. I am of the opinion that if I have to open up the HA app for something, then I've failed in setting up some automatic system or a meatspace override.
My home isn't in my phone, it's in the real world, the advantages to me of HA are absolutely not in the app which I see as a fairly clunky way of interacting with anything.
The app’s clunkiness really depends on the dashboard design. Depending on the setup properly customising it can be a big help.
I often hear the argument that everything should be automated, but there always seem to be edge cases in a home that can’t be automated in fully reliable and natural way.
I’m also a big fan of physical controls, especially for lights which I’ve insisted all still have physical (smart enabled) switches. But physical controls can only exist in one place, sometimes it is useful to remotely control something via the app.
I don’t even have any significant automation but opening the dashboard is rare and a failure. Everything has physical switches and voice control, so I’m interacting with the home when I want to interact with the home. The dashboard is mainly when I want to see data or change something not easily done with voice.
I have not been able to get any of my family to install the app or be interested in interacting with it.
While better user account ts seem like an obvious thing to improve, I’ve never had a use for them
Right, I see your point and it makes sense. But at the same time consider this: would you still like all the smart stuff if it was completely automated and you had no access to it? It just works, and you can't make it work a little differently if needed? And I offer an example of something that I can't imagine how it could be automated... I have a smart fan, power and orientation is dependent on where I am and how hot I feel. Easy enough to change that with the app as needed. Remember this is something I can control but would not want to give control to other people in the house.
On top of that what about sensors? Without the app you can't see them so for example no quick glance to check the temperature in multiple rooms and outside.
Also while the app is a bit clunky, it sure beats using that one rather than all of the Philips Hue, LIFX, Yeelight, Xiaomi, Tapo, Kasa, Daikin...
Yeah I would still enjoy everything if it was completely automated. I don't need to see my sensors, if I feel hot I feel hot, don't need something to tell me the number. Do want to turn on my heating if the number is low.
I don't really understand your smart fan situation. My fan has a remote control.
So you would be fine being a guest in someone's else house, no control over anything and just let whatever automations are in place do their thing? But all of this in your own home? Temperature is an important value to know, tells if it's better to turn off the AC/heat and just open the windows at that time, or when it's the better moment to open them and air the place. Same with air quality, if it gets worse with the windows open it's better to close them, or if it's not great inside it might be a good idea to open.
My fan has an app or a pair of buttons on top, no remote.
I have control over my stuff, its control via physical controls in the real world. I don't want to use an app that I have to get out my phone, open up, navigate and eventually control a thing when I can just change a dial or press a button.
Temperature is not for me, an important value to know. I already know if its hot enough to air the place out or not. Don't need to see a number for that.
The value for me in home assistant is not putting all my buttons into an app on my phone, it's on the connections I can make between things, it's the ability to make my home work for me, without having to constantly be doing things to make that happen, and if i do have to do a thing, I don't see a single reason as to why I would want to have to do that thing in an app on my phone.
You do need to know the number, IF you want to maximize the amount of cooling via open window vs AC.
That aside I'm pretty sure this is an "agree to disagree" situation, mostly because it's clear we have different tastes. A smart home for me has the value of letting me control everything in a single place (always on me), without going around looking for remotes that might need a new battery. Automations are good, but I want to keep control over every little detail.
I use the dashboard for a quick overview of my house, devices that are on, status of my home servers (with the ability to remotely put my desktop to sleep), low battery levels, quick toggles for certain modes (vacation mode, Housecleaners mode, guest mode).
It’s all in what you put on the dashboards that makes them amazing extensions of your house.
Favourite hw input device?
For my printer I use a Sonoff S31 flashed with tasmota. I then set it so it can't be turned off remotely but can be turned on. That way I get the benefit of being able to remote start a print but not being able to accidentally turn it off.
I like your solution, quite clever! But in my instance I actually want it to turn off once the print is over. I don't remember the details but I think it's set up so it will turn off after the hot end has cooled down for a few minutes, it's controlled by a plug-in for Octoprint.
I mostly use user accounts on locked devices that can only show the HA app with views specifically designed as such, which in turn limits the devices/entities viable to them.
Do you use Android devices? If so, what app do you use to lock the device to only HA?
It native in android, see this article.
https://support.google.com/android/answer/9455138?hl=en
Can’t you do that with admin users vs regular users? Pretty sure you can restrict dashboards by admin vs non-admin