I don’t know this for sure, but if you installed the mobile companion app thru the Store for your platform, then the integration is probably using its push API to reach your device remotely.

I’m >90% sure notification workflows find me even when I am remote and untethered from home when I notify the app on my mobile devices.

Seems It was actually 2024.6.1 that introduced the change. Not sure where in this release notes it said it was a breaking change, but

I’m all turned around. I updated the main post with the link to the PR and I had the right version from the get-go.

Oops! Good eyes, and thanks! Typing yaml on mobile is squinty business. Fixed in the main post

My sump pit is pretty shallow, and is dry about half of the time. My challenge is that the sump is on a float switch which doesn’t activate until the water level is just about an inch (15mm) below the bottom of my slab. It doesn’t take much of a delay for it to overflow.

There are three sensor types I’m aware of: a resistive “dipstick,” ultrasonic distance gauge, and a bathymetric depth gauge.

The resistive dipsticks are only about 6in (15cm) in length, and would be good to determine if the water is within that distance of a target water line. I would position it on the side of the pit with the effective upper end set some buffer below the top surface of the slab floor, and possible gram the logic to alert when the water lever rises above the bottom of the slab. I would otherwise be blind to the water level if it is below Tue bottom of to sensor.

The ultrasonic sensor looked interesting, but I have pets and I try to avoid ultrasonics in the environment when I can. It also strikes me as perhaps the least reliable (or most crosstalk-prone) of the sensors because it has a larger field of view, and might be fooled by the equipment in the pit.

That leaves the bathy sensor. Its basically a diaphragm and a pressure sensor you screw to a waterproof housing, and submerge. Placed near the bottom of the pit, it would read the depth of the water by the pressure of the column above it. Most accurate, but also the most expensive. Last I checked, the sensor itself was US$60 on the usual online markets.

Ultimately I’ll probably do a length of copper pipe with a 90 elbow and a cap. I’ll drill and tap a port through the cap and thread and seal the bathy sensor into it, and feed the wire back up the pipe to the controller. I’m not sure if there a driver for it in ESPHome, but if nothing else I expect I can probably just read the analog voltage and alert on a set point.

I haven’t really fleshed it out as a design yet, but that’s what I’m most likely to do.

Either an ESP32 BLE proxy via MQTT with a Tile-like beacon in the backpack, or a cipher lock with a Kid Code are probably the most straightforward solutions.

If you have Frigate NVR set up, there’s a project called Double Take that does facial recognition. Looks like a bit of work and needs training, but it could be a fun project.

Definitely check in with the utility before mucking with the meter. You can find your way into a lot of trouble tampering with active meters. Chances are there’s new meter tech out your utility would install, and of which you could take advantage.

Check this thread. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/smart-water-meter/451935 . You’d install it down flow of your utility meter, and would need ESP32 to read the meter. It’s a bit of work, but if you’re already running ESPHome, it looks pretty straightforward.

On a long shot, you might consider looking into an inexpensively RTL-SDR software radio dongle, and use rtl_433 to scan a few common frequencies the utilities use to scan their meters from the street. I happened to find my neighbor’s electrical meter on a common wireless weather station frequency, and if In were so inclined, could publish it to MQTT for HA to pick up.

Just a couple of ideas. Good luck!

Sure. Think of it like Lego bricks or one of those 1000-in-1 electronics kits. These kits don’t do anything specific, they’re building blocks you use to address a need you have in your home automation vision.

The ESP32 kits are just an ESP32 development board (mine are WROOM boards from Freenove) which has the microprocessor, headers breaking out the IO pins, and a “loader” module that facilities uploading code and is used to power the device with a USB cable. The boards also have onboard WiFi and Bluetooth radios. The -CAM variety has a low profile header to seat a small camera module (included). Look for “Freenove ESP32 WROOM” on your preferred online marketplace.

There are several ways to interact with (program) your ESP32 boards. The easiest and most straightforward is to use the ESPHome add-on in HA from the HACS store, along with the companion integration. The ESPHome add-on provides a software ecosystem of drivers and functions for a laundry list of hardware devices you can use in your project-- sensors, switches, lights, speakers, etc. The ESPHome wiki is sort of a catalog of supported peripherals you can easily use in your build projects. Many times, you can substitute components or extend an existing component driver. Mostly you assemble your components and the controller, and then write some YAML do tell ESPHome what devices are plugged into what pins. ESPHome more or less handles the rest.

The ESP32 integration creates HA devices and entities of the devices and sensors in the ESPHome add-on for use as triggers, conditions or actions in automation.

As for my specific doodads:

PIR is a Passive Infrared Receiver. It monitors its field of view for a change in infrared light (heat) which indicates a “hot.blob” has entered or left its field of view. The model I use, AM312, is designed to signal a change in IR light by raising a signal pin to +3 volts, which has applications in presence detection. It is fast, but not accurate. It also tends to “go blind” when the hot blob stops moving, and can be subject to false positives when the HVAC kicks on or by dappled sunlight

The mmWave radar is a Seeed R60A 60Ghz radar module. This particular module is optimized for human presence detection and fall detection. It uses millimeter wave radar to acquire and track humans in its field of view. 60GHz gives enough resolution to detect heartbeat, respiration and micromkvements like fidgeting. It talks to the ESP32 over the I2C bus (a digital IO bus similar to USB). It has advantages over the PIR sensor because it actively tracks its targets and can even tell if there are multiple people. Its less prone to false positives from environmental changes and smaller animals. Unfortunately, it can take several seconds to acquire a target and begin tracking it. In a presence application, a human could walk across several steps into the field of view within that time, giving the impression of a slow response.

Using both sensors in a presence application is a sort of belt-and-suspenders approach. You can compare the state of both sensors in your automations to determine presence with greater accuracy.

As for learning HA itself: we all started in a similar place not even knowing what we didn’t know yet. You sort of poke and play and build some bad automations. Then you start to research new projects and start to learn what you don’t know yet. That’s OK: its a roadmap to future knowledge.

In my rig, I use HA to solve problems or address nuisance situations around the house. Wife and kids are forever leaving doors open with the HVAC on. I programmed HA to watch the HVAC (ecobee thermostat) and the states of the windows doors. If a door gets left open for more than 10 minutes, HA starts flashing lights as an indicator for someone to check notifications. After 20 minutes of the door/window being open, it turns off the HVAC and sends a push notification to my phone that someone is being a dumbass.

Another one is to shut off the basement lights at 10pm because the kids never remember to after they’re done gaming down there.

Eventually you want to do.more sophisticated things, and that when the rabbit hole gets real deep.

I’ve had an Ender 3 in my cart for months and just can’t quiiite justify pulling that trigger. One of these days, tho… Any day now.

I have two Digi WLED controllers a handful of project kits, myself.

The WLED boards drive some addressable LED strings in my living room and on my patio. They hardly count as “project” kits, but learning about interfacing TTL logic with the LED driver boards was a helpful experience. I learned a lot about the different GPIO uses and modes.

For the project kits I’ve built, I’ve been focused around presence and environment sensors. Using esphome I’ve successfully built PIR (AM312) + mmWave radar module (R60A) presence sensors, natural gas detectors for kitchen and basement utility areas, and a water leak sensor for the laundry area. I had goals of building a 5-in-1 presence sensor, but you can buy products for those now; its a solved problem.

I’ve been considering a design for a sump pit depth gauge because that sounds like useless information that I’d like to have for some reason.

I’ll probably get interested in energy management soon, and will look into current clamps and tracking usage at smart receptacles.

A painful lesson to be sure, but also perhaps an opportunity to spruce up or rethink some of those original automations and integrations. I’ve been messing with my own rig since the lockdowns and while it’s not exactly a mess, per se, I certainly know more now than I did then. Refactoring your code is rarely a spontaneous activity.

Also, I’m checking now and oops, syncing backups off-box broke thanks for prompting me to check!

HAOS on bare metal x86_64 here. No issues to report

Ah! There it is! Thank you.

Still a bit broken on mobile, but they’ll catch it up.

How do you edit or delete categories once you’ve created them?

To be sure, I’m using the companion mobile app and don’t see an obvious Categories editor. I haven’t explored the desktop UI fully for this question yet.

By the math you are correct. I blew out some switches that were 10A, 120VAC peak, but somehow only rated for 600W continuous, resistive. Amazon doesn’t sell them anymore, but it would be printed on the housing if that’s the case. That’s why I was saying to look.

My switches might have been the “no neutral” variety, though those are a special kind of janky.

Edit: derp, I didn’t read all the words. Yes, you’re overdrawing your smart plug with inrush current fron a large inductive load. Look for a smart plug rated for at least 20A. It’ll be safe enough to use on a 15A circuit because the breaker will be the limiting factor instead if the plug.

Check the amperage and wattage rating on that plug. Heavily inductive and some resistive loads can draw a large “inrush” current during startup that can briefly exceed the capacity of some smart receptacles. Chances are it’s rated for 10A resistive load, and a washer (which is an inductive loadl can briefly exceed that.

For example: halogen lights. A halogen light tube like you’d use in floodlights or those old floor-standing torchiere are tyoically rated fo 150 to 300W. That rating is derived from the bulb’s filament when it is up to ita operating temperature, which is something like 1000°C or more. A hot filament has a higher resistance than that same filament when it’s cold, so that 300W element might briefly draw over 600W instantaneous load while it’s coming up to temperature, briefly drawing potentially more than 15A at 120V. It doesn’t pop your breaker because they have a sort of time delay that can accommodate these brief, large inrush currents. Electric motors in pumps and drives have a similar effect, but that’s more from their inductance/capacitance as they spin up, rather than a change in their resistance. Their “apparent resistance” is actually AC inductance, which can draw significantly more amperage when the motor is not spinning at its designed operating speed. Same thing for compressors like in air conditioners, fridges and ice makers.

Most ZigBee smart switches and receptacles are rated for 10A at 120V, or total 600W continuous load. They’re designed to handle smaller inrush currents from loads like incandescent bulbs, LEDs, and small electrics. They’re generally not rated for things like halogen bulbs or large motors.

Washing machines are an interesting case because they employ several motors to drive the agitator (or drum), the spin cycle and the drain pump. They have a highly dynamic cureeebt draw that depends on both startup inrush, but also on the torque demanded for varying cycles. A heavy load if jeans or towels can draw significantly more power to agitate and spin dry than a lught load of bed linens or delicates.

I bet your smart plug is rated for 600W, and probably says not to use on halogen bulbs. (Most do.) If so, its also not going to be suitable for your washer for substantially the same reason: peak draw exceeds its capacity.

For higher draw applications, you’ll need to look for a 20A or 30A rated smart switch. They’re available on AliExpress at least, and possibly Amazon as well. I can’t recommend any for you because I don’t use them, myself. Look for ones that are designed for window or wall Air Conditioning units.

Anyway, you’re not likely to be able to solve your problem with your current kit. It’ll have to be an upgrade or a rethink.

Good luck!

Im not familiar with the Asterisk integration ilself, but I’m generally familiar with HA and community addons to ask if this isn’t that big a deal? If I’m interpreting the pull correctly, HA is dropping the native integration for a mailbox feature that only Asterisk uses, which technology itself is outdated. Looks to me like the Asterisk implementation itself is a HACS resource, and not part of the HA mainline code.

Could be the case the Asterisk community project maintainers will either update their code to live without the native feature, or adopt the deprecated code to maintain it as part of the community add-on.

The corpo-speak seems pretty straightforward to me, though: the asterisk-mbox integration code is unmaintained, outdated, or has fallen out of compliance with the prevailing API usage so it’s planned for being removed from mainline. Happens frequently with legacy code in large projects.

I wouldn’t bring out the pitchforks just yet, OP. Good chance the Asterisk repos will update with a fix or a workaround in the coming weeks to months

Is one of those mmWave sensors the Seeed R60A? There are two models out, one with fall detection and the other with respiration/heartbeat. Seems like you could use the respiration/heartbeat one to baseline a sleeping person, and then use that in a conditional for toggling the light.

I have one of the fall detection models but only just recently started messing with it. (I might have accidentally cooked it)

I have Decora style dumb switches on some fixtures.with smart bulbs, and just use white vinyl electrical tape to tape the edge of the rocker down. Keeps the family from turning stuff off by accident, for the most part.

Low tech, but it works.

The same thing has been happening with my x86_64 install. I’ve had at least two incidents where the HA “locked up” and fell off the wire.

The HAOS console prompt is surprisingly useless for troubleshooting. I’ve enabled some System Monitor sensors in HA itself to track some key metrics that might help find a root cause.

It seems to have started with 2023.09 though, so it could be a bug in the supervisor or core code.

Pinto, Chick pea, Cannelloni, Lima bean
Kidney, Lentil, Red, Pink, White, Brown, Green bean
Fava bean, Soy Bean, Mung Bean, Navy Bean
Fayot, Spanish Tolon-a-sa

Great Northern, Borlotti, Split Yellow (also Green)
Anasazi, Butter Beans, Marrot, Moth Pigeon Pea

LUPINI! BENGALI! IT’S BEANS ALL DAY ON LEMMY!

… We didn’t start the beaning. It’s been always streaming since we’ve been being.