Category: How-to

Home Assistant over https

Synology: How to Allow Home Assistant to Work Over an HTTPS Connection?
Plus, when you get that working, how to fix the Home Assistant Supervisor 400: Bad Request?

Have you already installed Home Assistant using docker on your Synology NAS following my step by step guide? Do you want to log in via HTTPS using your custom domain name even when you are away from home? It’s simple and free. You don’t need to buy domains, you don’t need to look for information elsewhere because here you will find the easy way to do it. Say you’re at a friend’s house and want to use Home Assistant. You can access Home Assistant from outside your home, just like you would any website.

So, cannot find “Control Panel / Application Portal / Reverse Proxy” ?
Well, just go to Control Panel (System) Login Portal / Advanced / Reverse Proxy!!!

Or try as alternative with a wilcard certificate.
Have a nice day!

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…