Awesome Tips How my Smart Home heals itself in Home Assistant!
I automated my smart home to fix itself! Here’s how it works.
I automated my smart home to fix itself! Here’s how it works.
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0:00 Intro
0:18 Automatically reboot device
2:50 Smart bulbs always work
5:12 Integrations stay connected
6:20 Family IT issues
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I don't think reloading integrations or power cycling devices is a real solution, the most common reason of these malfunctions is that your network is configured over DHCP and every time the lease expires something breaks since the device gets a different IP. Another reason is wireless communication, connections drop even if you have high-end wireless wifi/zigbee/whatever setup. If you want to have no maintenance and no malfunction home automation – then wire-up everything, use proper equipment and don't cheap out on switches/APs, calculate power/network loads, and do proper network configuration with assigning static IPs to your network devices. This is the way.
What happens if automations don’t work fixing the problem then what?
Sounds like a network issue if things are going offline.
This is funny. I recently came up with this solution to a slightly different problem: Recently my Cox internet has been going down more frequently and when it comes back online, for some reason the modem won't reconnect until it's rebooted. So I used a smart plug for the modem and used a HA automation that pings 8.8.8.8 (google DNS servers) and if it's offline for 15 minutes, it'll turn off the smart plug and turn it back on again.
I do something similar with Yale wifi hub to self heal. But I use ping (ICMP) that will checks if it is connected or disconnected every 30 seconds. If disconnected it will then run the wifi power to turn off then back on. I found this was quicker response time to the state change to unavailable
I have a self healing network. My smart hub (Homey Pro) checks for checks for Cloude Flare DNS service very 30 seconds. If no response for 2 minute. A smart switch cuts the power to the modem, wait 30 seconds, then turns on. It then checks for DNS, if still non then does the same for the WiFi. Again waits. Check for DNS, if still no response then reboot the network switch. If still offline then wait 30 minutes and repeat… this rarely needs to happen but it works even if I’m out of town.
Great video again! I have a question on how to set up my Internet modem router, I have the Arris G 54 6.0 GHz and since a lot of the smart equipment runs on 2.4 I have another Netgear 2.4 GHz older one… When I try to connect them with Ethernet cable something getting messed up in the network and one of them always not working for some reason… It’s been a pain. Help please. Thank you!
Great video, Reed!
The reload integration is also very useful if you use google calendars to run automations.
e.g. If you have an automation that switches guest mode and off from a calendar event, you can have an ad-hoc trigger (e.g. NFC next to the front door) that enters the event into your schedule calendar then immediately reload the Google Calendar/integration to force HA to see it as active rather than wait up to 15 minutes for HomeAssistant to do it on its normal schedule.
Top!
A couple years ago I was working out a "morning sunrise" automation from our phone alarms, but we had issues with a zigbee bulb in our bedroom that kept going offline. We thought it was a bad signal even though all other zigbee in the room was ok, but our patience expires, so switched it out for a WiFi bulb. But the same thing happened. It kept going offline.
Turns out there must be a bad wire in the lamp itself that causes the bulb to power off/on and so de-sync with HomeAssistant. I figured out the reload automation you show in your video (if >5 mins offline) and it's available now almost all of the time.
Should probably change the lamp tho….
thanks mate great ideas i just self healed my smart home with a couple my devices i had to do manually but not anymore
I have 4 Inovelli switches and their new fan/light module and it is amazing! ONE switch now lets me control multiple lights!! Spouse Approval has gone way up!! Definitely the most expensive but it essentially makes one switch into 9 if you know how to finesse automations and scenes!
I think, regarding the smart light bulbs, depends on the bulb. As much as some people do not like Hue, I have never had a reliability issue with Hue smart bulbs. I've had some in the bedroom for over 6 years and they have never gone offline and never failed to respond. Saying smart bulbs are unreliable as a general comment is not correct. The cheap WiFi ones may be, but more expensive Zigbee based ones seem to be very reliable.
I have seen a few videos on the reloading integrations. I use that to reload the integration for my 3D printer and have done for about 3 years now. Very handy thing and saves some manual stuff. Unfortunately one particular automation I use for Hyperion will stop responding if the raspberry pi it is running on loses connection, but will never show as unavailable so that has had to remain manual for now until I can work out a better way.
What if you Zigbee plug goes offline? How does one automate to bring it online again?
The issue I have is when I have a power failure, my HA Green reboots I lose remote access. I have to sign out of my cloud account and resign in from my PC. This works fine if I'm home but if I away I have lost access until I return and can use my PC
That's not a solution, just a workaround for an unreliable smart home. Priority should be to focus on solving the root causes. Might be ZigBee/wifi blind spots in this case.
I have TreatLife smart light switches. They mostly work right. Mostly. Every few months one of them will go off line. Your tricks today won't solve that. When you are building a fully automated home with 50-100 smart things, a 1% failure rate is intolerable. You are always fixing the damn home. Are there any kind of long term reliability ratings on smart home stuff? I want a rock solid switch that never breaks.
While a nice idea, I don't think reloading the integration will work for my issues with a few Zigbee thermometers I have.
Sweet! Thanks for all the great/original content!
Thanks for this Reed. I've been having problems with AppleTV integretion, so I'm going to incorporate the 'Reload Config Entry' whenever I power on my TV and see if that helps. Eddie
You should use the repeat function and “until” the state is not “unavailable”
I’ve always thought about using smart plugs on LEDs or lamps, but I don’t really have many problems it…yet! Might implement the last one for reloading the integration though!
I was waiting for this for fking long
Why are you using and promoting a light strip that constantly drops of your wifi network?
Very neat, but honestly I just return any device that needs ‘rebooting’, not interested in unreliable hardware
… and that's why I avoid smart bulbs like the plague.
I finally gave up on Tuya (cloud) integration and have it reload every day. What I'd like (but haven't though about) is a parameterized automation that reloads ANY integration that's been unavailable for some length of time. Maybe Frenk is already on that…
Greetings from Tucson.
Yeah, I swear, half my automations are checking for smart home issues and "auto healing" them like this. I've done the unavailable/smart switch fix for so many devices. Pinging cameras or zwave devices and keeping them online. Annoying in a way, but also makes the smart home much less maddening. Heck, I've even had a spell of my HA instance locking up overnight, so I wrote a bat script to ping and restart the docker container when it's offline.