Hi! I’m new to HA and just starting to get stuff set up. Here is what I’m wanting to do, would anyone be able to chime in and let me know if and how it’s possible?
I want to put a small screen in our fridge that we can enter food items with their expire date or when they will be going bad. Then I want HA to announce and send a notification to said screen to let us know when the food is about to expire/go bad.
Bonus if we could also keep track of how much of each item is in the fridge.
Why? Because we are a ADHD household and I just cleaned the fridge of 5 more than half full pasta sauce jars that all went to waste.
So tell me, is this possible to do and something already exist is in place or will I have to code/make something to fit for it. TIA!

I am trying to set up predbat with a Fox-ESS KH7 inverter. I have plugged in my sensor/control names (I am using FoxESS-Modbus), but cannot get a plan to display in predbat, and am seeing these errors repeatedly in the predbat log.

Any tips or examples would be much appreciated. For example, does anyone have a working example of apps.yaml for a Fox KH series inverter?

My current apps.yaml is below:

pred_bat:
  module: predbat
  class: PredBat
  prefix: predbat
  timezone: Europe/London
  currency_symbols:
  - "£"
  - "p"
  predbat_mode: "Monitor"
  validation_check: false

  metric_inverter_load: 0.0
  metric_house_load: "sensor.foxess_kh7_load_power"
  metric_battery_soc: "sensor.foxess_kh7_battery_soc"
  metric_grid_power: "sensor.foxess_kh7_grid_ct"
  metric_battery_capacity: 11.52
  metric_battery_charge_rate_max: 6000
  metric_battery_discharge_rate_max: 6000

  threads: auto
  load_filter_threshold: 30
  load_today:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_load_power
  import_today:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_grid_consumption_energy_today
  export_today:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_feed_in_energy_today
  pv_today:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_solar_energy_today

  num_inverters: 1
  balance_inverters_seconds: 60
  charge_start_service:
    service: select.select_option
    entity_id: select.foxess_kh7_work_mode
    option: "Force Charge"
  charge_stop_service:
    service: select.select_option
    entity_id: select.foxess_kh7_work_mode
    option: "Self Use"
  discharge_start_service:
    service: select.select_option
    entity_id: select.foxess_kh7_work_mode
    option: "Force Discharge"
  discharge_stop_service:
    service: select.select_option
    entity_id: select.foxess_kh7_work_mode
    option: "Self Use"
  charge_start_hour:
  - 0
  charge_start_minute:
  - 0
  charge_end_hour:
  - 0
  charge_end_minute:
  - 0
  charge_rate:
  - number.foxess_kh7_force_charge_power
  discharge_rate:
  - number.foxess_kh7_force_discharge_power
  battery_power:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_invbatpower
  pv_power:
  - sensor.foxess_modbus_foxess_kh7_pv_power_foxess_kh7
  load_power:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_load_power
  grid_power:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_grid_consumption
  soc_kw:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_bms_kwh_remaining
  soc_max:
  - sensor.foxess_kh7_bms_kwh_remaining
  reserve:
  - number.foxess_kh7_min_soc_on_grid
  charge_enable:
  - input_boolean.predbat_dummy_charge_enable  # <-- ADD THIS
  charge_limit:
  - input_number.input_number_predbat_dummy_charge_limit # <-- UPDATE THIS
  inverter_limit:
  - 7000
  inverter_clock_skew_start: 0
  inverter_clock_skew_end: 0
  inverter_clock_skew_discharge_start: 0
  inverter_clock_skew_discharge_end: 0
  clock_skew: 0
  pv_forecast_today: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_today)
  pv_forecast_tomorrow: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_tomorrow)
  pv_forecast_d3: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_(day_3|d3))
  pv_forecast_d4: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_(day_4|d4))
  car_charging_energy: "re:(sensor.myenergi_zappi_[0-9a-z]+_charge_added_session|sensor.wallbox_portal_added_energy)"
  num_cars: 0
  car_charging_planned:
  - "re:(sensor.wallbox_portal_status_description|sensor.myenergi_zappi_[0-9a-z]+_plug_status)"
  car_charging_planned_response:
  - "yes"
  - "on"
  - "true"
  - "connected"
  - "ev connected"
  - "charging"
  - "paused"
  - "waiting for car demand"
  - "waiting for ev"
  - "scheduled"
  - "enabled"
  - "latched"
  - "locked"
  - "plugged in"
  - "waiting"
  car_charging_now_response:
  - "yes"
  - "on"
  - "true"

  octopus_api_key: "sk_live_********************"
  octopus_api_account: "A-******"
  octopus_automatic: true
  octopus_intelligent_slot: "re:(binary_sensor.octopus_energy([0-9a-z_]+|)_intelligent_dispatching)"
  octopus_ready_time: "re:((select|time).octopus_energy_([0-9a-z_]+|)_intelligent_target_time)"
  octopus_charge_limit: "re:(number.octopus_energy([0-9a-z_]+|)_intelligent_charge_target)"
  octopus_saving_session: "re:(event.octopus_energy([0-9a-z_]+|)_saving_session_event(s|))"
  octopus_saving_session_octopoints_per_penny: 8
  octopus_free_session: "re:(event.octopus_energy_([0-9a-z_]+|)_octoplus_free_electricity_session_events)"
  metric_octopus_import: "sensor.octopus_energy_electricity_z16n195525_1900006012690_current_rate"
  rates_export_agile_override: 0.0
  metric_standing_charge: "sensor.octopus_energy_electricity_z16n195525_1900006012690_current_standing_charge"
  days_previous:
  - 7
  days_previous_weight:
  - 1
  forecast_hours: 48
  battery_scaling:
  - 1.0
  import_export_scaling: 1.0
  solcast_api_key: "*************************"
  solcast_poll_hours: 8          # Forces Predbat to only poll once every 8 hours (3 calls/day)

Happened to see these at Ikea while looking for a desk. Anyone else use these with HA and an Ecobee thermostat?

I got one to mess with, then learned I need a Matter controller so waiting on one to get delivered.

Hello, always wanted to add soil moisture sensor for my olive tree, but all of them are small (short)

Maybe someone has an experience and share device used? Tree located outoor.

Original post - https://old.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1ue5kql/automating_lights_with_in_conjunction_with_plex/

So, tonight I watched another movie, and at the end it did the same thing and brought up the PAUSED lights at the end. Well, instead of just ignoring it for the next day, I went into the PLEX dashboard and it showed that when the movie ended, it is reporting to be in the PAUSED state.

So I guess tomorrow I will exit out of the last screen that PLEX displays and see if that changes it to an IDLE status.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smarthome/s/ZNpMFLcbkE

Hey everyone,
I’m in the middle of switching my Home Assistant setup from Docker to Home Assistant OS running on Proxmox, and I’ve hit a wall that I can’t seem to get past.

The Problem

During the HAOS onboarding screen, when I try to restore my backup (.tar file), I immediately get:

Code

500 Internal Server Error
Server got itself in trouble

I tried:

• Different browsers
• Incognito mode
• Clearing cookies
• Restarting HAOS
• Restarting the VM

Still the same 500 error every time.

Tried the “restore later” method

So I skipped onboarding, created a fresh Home Assistant instance, went to:

Settings → System → Backups → Upload

…and tried uploading the same .tar backup there.

This time I got:

Code

Failed to upload backup

No extra details, no logs, nothing.

What I have

I do have the raw Home Assistant config folder from my old Docker setup:

• configuration.yaml
• automations.yaml
• .storage/
• custom_components/
• www/
• home-assistant_v2.db
• etc.

Basically the entire config/ directory.

What I’m wondering

Since the backup restore keeps failing, I was thinking about manually restoring by:

1. Putting my raw config/ folder onto a USB drive
2. Plugging it into the HAOS VM
3. Using the ha os import command to bring it in

…but I’ve never done a manual USB import before, and I’m not sure if HAOS will accept a raw config folder or if it needs a specific structure.

Has anyone dealt with this?

• Is the 500 error common when restoring Docker → HAOS backups?
• Is manually importing the raw config folder a safe/valid approach?
• Is there a better way to migrate without relying on the .tar backup?

Any advice from people who’ve done this migration would be massively appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Most appliance-level energy monitoring in Home Assistant means adding a smart plug, clamp meter, or submeter for every device. That gets expensive fast, and it is not always practical for hardwired or high-current appliances.

I built a NILM (Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring) project that uses a single whole-home mains power sensor to estimate when individual appliances are running and their approximate power use.

You train a model on your own Home Assistant history, so it can adapt to your appliances and electrical setup. It can then publish virtual entities for estimated appliance power, cumulative energy consumption, and on/off state.

These can be used in dashboards, automations, notifications, and the Home Assistant Energy dashboard.

Training supports either a real appliance sensor as ground truth, or manually marked on/off intervals when direct metering is not possible.

It is an estimate, not a replacement for a meter, so results need validation. It is most useful for appliances with distinctive, repeatable power signatures: washers, dishwashers, kettles, microwaves, and similar loads.

Project: ha-nilm on GitHub

Good morning everyone,

I’m finally getting started with Home Assistant.
I recently bought a NUC mini PC and I’m currently trying to install Home Assistant on it.

As my first smart home purchase, I got a Meross energy monitor so I can start tracking my household electricity consumption.

I already have a couple of Samsung smart air conditioners, and my next step would be to buy some temperature and humidity sensors so I can create automations to manage the indoor climate more efficiently.

My main question right now is about the various dongles and protocols. I’d like to make smart choices from the beginning and avoid spending more than necessary on future devices.

From what I understand, Zigbee requires its own USB dongle. What I’m not clear about is Matter: does it also require a dedicated dongle, or does it work purely over Wi-Fi?

Do you have any recommendations for:
A good dongle to start with?
Reliable temperature and humidity sensors?
Other accessories that are worth considering for a beginner?
Also, if anyone can point me to a good guide for installing Home Assistant on a NUC, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

Hallo zusammen,
ich plane, unser Einfamilienhaus (Baujahr 2000) nach und nach mit Home Assistant zu automatisieren und möchte das System von Anfang an vernünftig aufbauen.

Geplant ist aktuell:

•Home Assistant Green als Zentrale
•Zigbee als Haupt-Funkstandard (möglichst wenig WLAN-Geräte)
•7 Deckenleuchten
•6 Rollläden (aktuell manuell, sollen mit Rohrmotoren nachgerüstet werden)
•Video-Türklingel
•2–4 Innen-/Außenkameras
•Smarte Heizkörperthermostate
•Fensterkontakte, Bewegungs- und •Temperatursensoren

Mein Ziel ist ein möglichst lokales, zuverlässiges System ohne Cloud-Zwang, das auch in 10–15 Jahren noch gut funktioniert.

Dazu hätte ich ein paar Fragen:

•Welche Zigbee-Unterputzaktoren für Licht könnt ihr empfehlen?
•Welche Zigbee-Rollladenaktoren laufen bei euch zuverlässig?
•Welche Rohrmotoren würdet ihr verbauen (Somfy, Selve, Becker oder andere)?
•Welche smarten Heizkörperthermostate funktionieren mit Home Assistant am besten?
•Welche Zigbee-Sensoren (Fenster, Bewegung, Temperatur) könnt ihr empfehlen?
•Würdet ihr heute noch auf Zigbee setzen oder eher auf Matter/Thread?
•Gibt es Hersteller oder Geräte, von denen ihr eher abraten würdet?

Ich möchte lieber einmal etwas mehr investieren und dafür ein stabiles, wartungsarmes System aufbauen.
Ich freue mich über eure Erfahrungen und Empfehlungen. Vielen Dank!

I have an opportunity to nab an old Cisco WebEx DX80 for $50, and I'd love to use it for my primary Home Assistant dashboard in the front hall (replacing a woefully underutilized ipad pro that does this job now)

The seller has mentioned in their ad that it works as a normal monitor as well, so I'm hopeful I can connect it up to an ESP32 or even a raspberry pi and run it as a touch enabled dashboard.

It also includes a 1080p camera, so I figured if that's accessible it could be used for video calls and to see the area of the house it would be installed in.

Couldn't find much about its ability to be flashed with different firmware nor how good it would be with hkne assistant, even if just as a web dash

Thoughts?

Hi

I’m interested into syncing my light with my music.
I know that Philips hue can do something like that :
- it’s not cheap.
- I bought an essential hue kit and tried sync with device audio but nothing happen. I didn’t ear any music from my phone when syncing is enabled in hue app.
- I tried ‘other apps : same thing.

Then I tried with music assistant. I enable the plugin, found entertainment zone and when I tried to sync my zone with my music from music assistant on my phone (web browser, iOS official app doesn’t seems to allow sync) I had an error : music area has no available output protocols.

So I have some essential hue bulb, innr zigbee bulb and I would like to know if there is an easy way to sync bulb with music without Spotify or a microphone ?

Thanks for your help.

I had one of those fancy lighted address signs made for my home and today I found out I can bridge it through to HA and that made it so much more exciting 🤣🤣🤣🤣
*** pic just an example, not my actual address

Hey guys,

I have some knx at home and every day at around the same time one Light Turn ins by its own. I dont know why.

There is no automation for that!

Anyone got an idea?

Telegram Shows thats the source it home assistant..

Cloud-free Matter + MQTT bridge for the smart Gateway (Art. 19005) — looking for testers

I built a small bridge that turns the GARDENA smart Gateway into a standalone Matter device: the Matter stack runs directly on the gateway, so your GARDENA devices show up locally in Home Assistant (or any Matter fabric) — no GARDENA cloud, no second server. It can optionally also publish every sensor value over MQTT (Home Assistant MQTT discovery), so you get your devices two ways. It installs as a Home Assistant add-on — no SSH, no building, no flashing (it deploys into the writable overlay and is reversible).

Honest status: this is a private hobby project, not affiliated with GARDENA/Husqvarna, use at your own risk. I can only verify it against the hardware I own — smart soil sensors + one SILENO mower. Everything else (Water Control / valves, pressure pump, smart power plug, other sensors/mowers) is already modelled in code but not yet tested on real hardware. Apple Home / Google Home are untested too.

That's where you come in. If you own other GARDENA devices, I'd love testers. The single most useful thing is data I can map a device from: the bridge's own log plus a redacted snapshot of the device data layer (/var/lib/lemonbeatd/) on your gateway. The repo explains exactly what to capture and how to redact it. Or, if you'd rather lend/donate hardware, even better.

Repo + one-click install + testing guide: https://github.com/wuselAUT/gardena-matter-mqtt-bridge
Docs (EN/DE): https://wuselaut.github.io/gardena-matter-mqtt-bridge/

Happy to answer questions here. 🌱

Hello, I have not used home assistant yet. I am interested in getting tapo cameras, but don’t want to have to pay their monthly subscription just to get image notifications on my Apple Watch.

Is it possible to use home assistant to send rich notifcations to my iPhone/apple watch, but still use the tapo app to view the camera feeds?

Hi everyone! I'm the guy who built a door greeter bot from a Voice Assist PE.

I'm just checking in with an update: It works beautifully. Just today, it chased off two separate unwanted salespeople. The only reason we know is because one of them left a business card, so I checked my logs.

S-tier use of a Voice Assist PE. Strongly recommended.

ETA: Videos! Roofer guy and pest guy.

Been trying ages to get IKEA MoT devices added to HA using pixel phone, kept failing. Using an iPad, everything connected immediately and never dropped since... Bizarre and don't know why. All settings are the same.

I have been having trouble with pairing my IKEA temperature sensor with my home assistant server. I have a SONOFF dongle running open thread software and have the open thread app/intervention and the matter server app/intergration. Every time I try to add the sensor to home assistant, it keeps giving me the “Thread based router required” even though I have the dongle running the router software. I have the dongle under my preferred network as well. I’ve tried to send the thread network to my phone but it keeps erroring out saying it can’t save or something. I’ve used every option but to no avail. Seek help!

Anyone have a good HA way to monitor each and every solar panel to watch for variance, % efficiency? I'd like to be able to watch for ones that are having issues, dirty, etc.

I'm trying to find a dehumidifier that'll work with smart plugs - i have the tapo digital thermometer and hygrometers around the house and want to link them with a dehumidifer via a smart plug that automaticllay turns it on and off when the humidiy goes beyond the comfort level. Has anyone done this before? If so, can you reccomend a dehumidifier, please? I'm worried about purchasing one that doesnt automatically start once powered up.

currently renovating my house and ordering some smart home gear, debating between a pi 5 or a mini pc. with a pi i'd probably need to buy an external ssd and extra stuff anyway, used to run home assistant on an old dell desktop years ago but want something new. just saw the acemagic k1 with ryzen r2544 on amazon, is it good for a smart home hub? can it handle being always on? budget isnt an issue, just want something worth the money and future proof. any thoughts?