Periodic review of automations and errors

At Black Friday I always buy myself some domotic device taking advantage of the discounts. I actually buy them the same time of the year as it is, but it seems that in Black Friday one is more willing to spend and not to spend that day without having bought anything at all, it’s as weird. And shortly after the Black Friday the Christmas comes and we can also ask the Magi kings or Santa Claus for that device that comes out of budget… The point is, on these dates it is common for me to incorporate into my network new domotic devices with their corresponding automations You know I don’t want to go voice-over the house to the voice assistant.

the cell phone to light a light, but I want the house to interact automatically according to conditions..

Despite the comilones, dinners, and jaranas up to the many with a lot of alcohol, drugs, wild sex and other excesses, during these days a Reminder is leaping for me to review all the domestic infrastructure I have at home. How many of you have put the Christmas tree and by going to activate the automation for the intelligent plug that turns on and off the tree lights have you realized that you are now using that smart plug for the bathroom heater or for the console? Or that the automation that turned them on and off at night is no longer working and some adjustments have to be made…

Both errors are often simple to solve: We put the smart plug back on the tree lights or adjust the automation to work with the new device if we decide to buy another, but there are more complex automations that require testing.

How to know the state of the batteries

Also I review the state of the devices’ batteries. It is not easy to know the state of the batteries because when it comes to AA or AAA batteries of all life you can’t know exactly the load they have, so it is estimated according to the power it delivers. With the button batteries it is different and we can see the load in a slightly more accurate way. Still, keep in mind that the Home app will only warn us of the batteries in case they are very low, as it only collects the parameter ‘Status Low Battery’ of the device, so sometimes we realize that a device does not respond and that h

and to change the stack before you have received the notification.

We could create a shortcut to check the status of all the devices that allow it and send us a notification.… and put that into an Automation in the House to run, for example, first thing in the morning:

Although there is a simpler way, which is to use Controller for HomeKit, whether we use the app for free or whether we have paid for advanced features. In the first case, we will have to go device by device by reviewing the battery load:

Maintenance Menu in Controller for HomeKit

If we have bought the application (which I have recommended many times), we will have access to the Maintenance menu where we will get the most important alerts of our ecosystem can define the percentage of battery we want to be informed of if necessary:

From Home Assistant we can also do it in a very simple way, we simply have to go to the plugin we use to manage the devices, either ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT for the zigbee devices and, entering each of them, we can see the remaining battery load.

As in the Controller for HomeKit, We can also create an automation that reviews the status of the devices’ batteries and, if necessary, sends us a notification, there’s a blueprint for this that we’ll just have to import:

From Controller for Homekit we can also see other kinds of problems we have on our network For example, it says to me at this time:

I mean, that I have 3 devices that are disconnected. (it’s 3 shellys of evidence, I’ll tell you another day the evidence I’m doing), 5 devices that do not have HomeKit QR code You know, the number that allows us to link it to the House app, 1 duplicate name on 2 devices, one automation that does not have working days posts and 25 automations that are unique to Apple because they include some devices that Apple does not show outside the Home app such as HomePods, AppleTV and some HomeKit-compatible TVs.

Each requires some actions to fix them., for example, the error of the 5 devices that do not have HomeKit’s QR code is very cool, as Driver for HomeKit can store those codes, you don’t need to keep the sticker with the QR or the original instruction manual where the code is. Goodbye, Diogenes. Hello minimalism of storing only necessary things.

So all I have to do is look for the code of those 5 devices and add them to Controller for storage. Easy and very useful in case in the future I need to rematch them… you know that sometimes it gives me to change environments, bridge, firmwares or any other move that makes my life a lot more complicated even if it’s not going to work better, which is what I’ll tell you in a few days related to the 3 Shelly tests. You’re already messing with me to make spoiler! If you have a lip…

The duplicate name is because right now I have 2 devices called ‘Light’. This has your miga because, in the House app, if we put a bulb in the kitchen room and we just call it ‘Light’, we can tell Siri ‘Hey Lola, turn off the kitchen light’, and Siri will know it’s that bulb and it will turn it off smoothly. But if we put a bulb called ‘Light Kitchen’ in the kitchen room, it will work exactly the same! So we can tell Siri ‘Hey Lola, turn off the kitchen light’ and you’ll know what light it is. So, I recommend you not call the devices with something as generic as’ Light ‘or’ Enchufe ‘or’ Interruptor ‘because not

It is necessary, we can call it perfectly ‘Salon Switch’ or ‘Lamparita Salon’ and then associate them to the Salon room so that we can tell Siri ‘Hey Lola, turn off the switch of the Salon’ or ‘turn off the Lamparita Salon’.

By the way, speaking of voice assistants, the new version that Home Assistant will publish in early 2024 will allow you to speak in natural language! Imagine being able to tell him, «Hey Lili, turn off the light in the living room, then turn on the light in the bathroom and put the heater on to get it warm.». It’s gonna be cool.

The error of automation that does not have working days on is because, from iOS 16, it is recommended that the automations that run every day include every day, that is, that instead of leaving the condition empty we tell you to run on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I don’t know, kid, Apple stuff, but it doesn’t cost anything to put the days on if that makes sure it works better.

And finally, the 25 automations I have created from the House app that can’t be managed from other apps. It should be reviewed that they are all the ones that must be and that there is no empty or that includes some device that no longer exists.

The Backup

In Home Assistant, a priori, we do not have a maintenance section as such but there are several ways to check that everything is in order. The first and most important thing is to check that the backup is working properly., which we can do just by checking that the corresponding plugin is running. In my case I use the Google Drive plugin as I have already counted on some occasion.

But if we want to heal in health, the ideal would be to merge our installation and try to get back a backup to see if everything works as it plays. Risked, right? Jacobo Vidal these podcast days From the clock as you go to recover the docker from Home Assistant after having migrated the device where it was running, found that the copy had not been done correctly and had several hours of the entire system stopped until it was recovered.

In my case, I don’t need to prove it at a certain time because like I’m an idiot and I get involved, every 2×3 I’m doing tests, changing protocols, putting in new devices to make bridge… with which, every little time I see myself restoring after seeing the results or running the back step after some failed test.

In the HomeKit ecosystem this is not necessary, since our automations and devices are stored on iCloud and all the HomePods and AppleTV we have at home make the central of accessories, so if one of the speakers is not available, another will assume control without any problems. We cannot even define which one we want as a master, but it is the ecosystem itself that is balancing each other.

Still, Controller for HomeKit allows you to back up the automations and configurations, but it is especially in case we break one or delete it unintentionally, not to be able to recover everything in case of failure and replacement of Apple TV or HomePod as that will not be necessary.

Finally, from Home Assistant we could test the automations by accessing them and running them by hand in test mode, as all the logs and results are saved to check if it is working properly.. Besides, another interesting thing Home Assistant has is that you can see next to each of the automations the last time it was run which is very interesting because it serves to give us an idea of whether it is working well or whether it has not been executed a thousand years for some reason:

Anyway, even if it may seem tedious, In less than 1 hour we could have the whole system reviewed. You don’t think this is gonna give us a lot of work and they’re gonna go out and fuck. Still, It’s worth it because we can sleep a little bit quieter. I don’t want to even put myself in James’s role thinking my devices don’t work and I have my wife’s Damocles sword on my head… not to say about any other more precious part of my anatomy.

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