Category: How-to

invalid input ‘unknown’

After updating the Home Assistant container, I noticed a lot of errors in the log. For example:

ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.event] Error while processing template: Template<template=({{ (iif((states('sensor.s8_power') | float) > 42) ...
~
ValueError: Template error: float got invalid input 'unknown' when rendering template '{{ iif( (states['sensor.t2_temperature'].state | float() ) >= ((states['climate.airco_slaapkamer'].attributes['temperature'] | float()) + (states['input_number.airco_off_delta'].state | float())) ) }}' but no default was specified

A quick google found this, so basically, don’t use float() but specify a default value, and use float(0) instead in your templates! Change that in \NAS\docker\homeassistant\config\configuration.yaml and any template used in your automations, restart Home Assistant and the errors are gone!

Have a nice day!

Index WP MySQL For Speed

Consider using his plugin by default:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/index-wp-mysql-for-speed/

You only have to run it once, to create better indexing keys on the database tables, which in my eyes should be default in WordPress.
Unbelievable what I see in speed performance so far!

(Found this plugin actually by following the steps in this blog article for a client.)

But wait, there is more!
https://www.plumislandmedia.net/wordpress/performance/optimizing-wordpress-database-servers/

Home Assistant Asusrouter

Note to self: https://github.com/Vaskivskyi/ha-asusrouter/issues/993
If you can connect to the container, run pip show asusrouter and confirm that somehow it is not of version 1.21.0

pip show asusrouter

If you can connect to the container, try installing the dependency manually with pip install asusrouter==1.21.0. If you get any errors, post them here, please. Package installation issues might be related to the other custom integrations and their dependencies.

pip install asusrouter==1.21.0

Wifi to Zigbee

My wifi is not slow at all, but I started getting more and more connection problems from random devices. The solution for me was to replace some wifi devices with zigbee versions.

I started with adding a SMLIGHT SLZB-06 to my network. This is a Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet USB WiFi Gateway Coordinator with PoE and it works with Home Assistant using ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT.
So I gave it a fixed IP address, and on my NAS, where Home Assistant is running in a Docker container, I installed eclipse-mosquitto and koenkk/zigbee2mqtt. Next I added the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 and MQTT integration in Home Assistant and everything started coming together and working like a charm.

First added devices were temperature and humidity sensors, Sonoff SNZB-02P and SNZB-02D. Next I started adding smart plugs Sonoff S60ZBTPF and IHOMECAM Smart power plugs, replacing my HomeWizard wifi energy sockets.

And guess what? With more devices on zigbee, my wifi is stable again and I get a lot more data out of my smart home!

That’s all folks!
Have a nice day…

Thunderbird 140 Manual Folder Sorting

Yes! The option is back!
Natively now, without the old plugin that was no longer supported for way too long. However, when I tried to drag and drop a folder, I could move one folder into another, but not change the order.

What’s wrong? I am using unified folders, and sorting does not work there.
You would have to use the ‘All Folders’ view, and drag/drop/re-order your folders there. This luckily also changes the order in the ‘Unified Folders’ view, so problem solved! Now let’s hope the developers will fix that in the next version.

That’s all Folks!
Have a nice day…

Update HA docker container

So I installed Home Assistant on a Synology NAS, using the official instructions. Now, one of my HACS Integrations started complaining about an update, but it required a newer version of Home Assistant, which I was not receiving. After a long search I figured out that using the ‘stable’ tag would not give me any updates for Home Assistant. I would have to use ‘latest’…
Unfortunately, you cannot change this in the downloaded docker Image.

So, what to do? My system was running for a month and I did not want to lose my config and history/data. Simple solution; I downloaded a new Image with the correct settings and pointed a new Container to the same /config folder on my NAS.

Since the instructions on the Home Assistant website were not quite correct for my version of Synology DSM 7.2.2-72806 Update 3, below the updated steps:

Install Home Assistant Container

Continue reading Update HA docker container