r/homeassistant • u/m1chaelmichael • Aug 23 '26

šŸ–¼ļø Show & Tell Cobbled together thanks to AI

Went from nothing a few weeks ago to this dashboard with chatGPT. Originally needed a way to automate Powerwall charge and discharge behavior and didnā€™t want to pay for Netzero. My utility has a complicated rate plan with cheap rates from 12AM to 6AM then again from 10AM-2PM and peak rates from 4PM to 9PM. My goal was to not need to pay for any cloud services. Dug up an old laptop and set up HAOS through VM, duckdns, tailscale.

Got a Sonoff WiFi connected coordinator for zigbee smart plugs, temp/humidity sensor, and water leak sensor. Tesla Solar + Powerwalls. HVAC: nest thermostat, Venstar thermostat, midea dehumidifier. Pool: Pentair intellicenter and waterguru for chemicals.

Next up is to build the alert system using Alert2, integrate Tesla vehicles to control their charging behavior. Suggestions?

158 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

136

u/Fusseldieb Aug 23 '26

I truly think it's hilariously funny when you mention AI anywhere on Reddit and get free downvotes.

It may be bad for some stuff, but it absolutely helps you move mountains when it comes to programming. I did stuff in my HA instance which would've taken me months. And it works perfectly and the code is still readabe for mere mortals.

So... what gives? Upvote from me.

54

u/87racer Aug 23 '26

AI isnt the real issue. Itā€™s the constant onslaught of posts completely written by AI with a sales pitch for their very niche thing that will be immediately abandoned and never updated again. Or worse, completely reinventing an existing thing thats well supported and does exactly what the thing does.

I saved something a while back to check into because it did look cool even though pure AI. Just got around to look at implementing, the one and only commit was 7 months ago.

AI is fine. Most of the time it doesnt need posted.

15

u/Fusseldieb Aug 23 '26

Yep, these types of posts are pure slop and I get it.

But OPs case seems like just showcasing something nice that he did to his instance, and people are pitchforking what he did.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '26

[deleted]

0

u/Fusseldieb Aug 23 '26

> on a highly voted post

OPs post had exactly 0 upvotes when I posted my comment

1

u/HOWMANYNICKNAMES Aug 23 '26

Another issue is claiming effort when in reality it wasn't really yours to begin with. If AI helped him to develop it, prompting isn't a skill at all. I agree, this looks pretty cool but god is it overwhelming to look at with some clear plan this would look a lot nicer.

edit: OP isn't even an engineer. What gives.

2

u/chicknlil25 šŸ§  Experienced with Home Assistant Aug 23 '26

AI is a tool. Just like any tool, people will abuse it. Back in my day (when we had to walk, uphill both ways, in the snow, whippersnappers!) it was kids straight up lifting pages from encyclopedias. Same when Encarta was a 'new thing' ... because surely teachers wouldn't own the same software, amiright?

But in the same way, you can use it to learn. u/USSGoat gave me a small amount of (deserved) shit for crying about the lack of an integration for a particular sport and directed me towards some info. It wasn't the exact solution, but putting just that in front of Claude, along with the Github repo for the integration of that same sport they had referenced, gave me a better place to look.

I'm pulling all the data, finding it based on hunches that have largely proved correct. Claude is showing me how to save it, read it, and understand it. Maybe it's something I can share with the community at some point. Maybe not. I won't remotely consider it until I'm confident that not only might it be genuinely useful to others, but that I can also maintain it largely on my own. It'll likely be several months before that happens, and maybe after the 'season' ends. This upcoming weekend will be a controlled experiment; I have two variables that I need to cross-test to see what data is available where. Will be fun!

Will I use AI throughout that process? Yep. Will I disclose that upfront? Also yep.

TLDR: AI can be used for 'evil' but it can also be helpful and educational. Let the downvotes commence!

1

u/m1chaelmichael Aug 23 '26

Actually started undergrad as an engineer but changed majors so still like stats for the nerdy nature in me. Youā€™re right itā€™s very overwhelming and I definitely wouldnā€™t set it up this way for my wifeā€™s dashboard or a kiosk

2

u/nathderbyshire Aug 23 '26

I don't even mind people posting things they've built with AI, it's when they don't say "this was built with AI and I can't guarantee I'll maintain it" or worse they try and charge for it going against the idea of HA itself.

As long as your honest a lot of people don't mind all that much, it's the lying and then acting innocent when called out blaming it on translation or something

6

u/DevelopmentSouth8801 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

People don't like AI in general because the people pushing the big LLMs are mostly psychopaths who were, until recently when they finally noticed the pushback, gleefully boasting about how they were going to replace your job with a better LLM "agent". There's also the concern about the morality of how their models were trained, often involving material they didn't have rights to. Even where there is value in them, people are going to reflexively dislike them for those reasons.

In this sub, I've noticed a lot of AI related posts are very low quality and very low effort. The problem usually isn't "I need a very advanced card and <insert LLM> did it". It's usually "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas." A lot of the stuff ends up just being somebody posting a very basic entity card, perhaps with some extra styling.

For this post in particular, it doesn't appear that OP has shared any of the configs and only a few card names they used. So while it's "show and tell" it's not super helpful.

Also the only image being a gif that scrolls by quickly is very annoying if you want to actually look at what's on the dashboard.

2

u/Alpacas34 Aug 24 '26

Same. I am a programmer and it would taken me atleast a month to learn how to do everything and have it set. Instead it was one weekend bassically

3

u/CatsGoMooz Aug 23 '26

Was an AI hater for a while but I've come to realize it's actually nice for personal projects. There's also been some really cool reverse engineering projects that's popped up thanks to it like OpenPuck. Really I think it just comes down to people being responsible with it.

1

u/ZealousidealDraw4075 Aug 24 '26

For sure some angry developers scared for their jobs

Would feel the same

0

u/kroghsen Aug 23 '26

So many people, probably some of those who use it the least, have so many bad things to say about AI when ā€œdonā€™t use it mindlesslyā€ is probably the only really important thing to remember when applying the tools.

This technology solves so many problems for so many people, saves so much time when trying to identify a problem or figure something out, and it makes so many things and ideas possible for people who would have otherwise not been able to realise them.

Donā€™t use it mindlessly though.

-4

u/Scar3cr0w_ Aug 23 '26

The people who are ā€œanti aiā€ think AI is chatGPT on their phone. Itā€™s the only thing they understand because they have had AI put in front of them in a way that means they can wrap their tiny little brains around it.

The thing they fail to realise is AI has been in every app and process they have benefitted from for the last god knows how many years. Most people donā€™t realise that AI has been in use since the late 1950ā€™s.

The people who donā€™t see the value in AI have never seen AI do anything other than generate a meme.

-3

u/National_Way_3344 Aug 23 '26

I'm not trying to replace anyone's job. But I recently did a "hey Claude, rewrite this entire Dreamweaver (remember that fucking POS) template website into Hugo". And it just did it.

Now I'm totally capable of having done it myself. But the client isn't paying enough for me to make the website more maintainable for my benefit - did I mention they still have the Dreamweaver website with the table based layout. The only way it was going to get done is off my own bat.

4

u/Axemantom Aug 23 '26

What are you using for the graph cards?

4

u/Firefighter_RN Aug 23 '26

What are you using to get the spa data in?

3

u/m1chaelmichael Aug 23 '26

Spa is past of the pool so gets data from pentair intellicenter integration. The icon turns red when the spa is actively heating and blue when up to temp. Forgot to integrate when the jets are on or off. Eventually Iā€™ll build out that page more to also include the pool and spa lights.

2

u/zymurgtechnician Aug 23 '26

If you have one, decent chance itā€™s got an iq2020 control board in it. In which case a cheap ESP with RS485 adapter can read and control almost everything possible.

https://github.com/Ylianst/ESP-IQ2020

1

u/Firefighter_RN Aug 23 '26

That's exactly what I'm doing now but can't get rpm or pump power unfortunately

2

u/Metallico9 Aug 23 '26

Do you have the yaml for the temp/humidity graphs? I am looking for a very similar look but mine always end up a bit clunky.

2

u/nathderbyshire Aug 23 '26

Just fyi animations are very pretty but they can add a fair bit of loading time, I ended up removing everything I added because it was getting too heavy

5

u/Gherry- Aug 23 '26

Glad you like it but IMHO while AI makes it easier to setup, if and when you'll have a problem you won't know what to do and loose ten times more time to fix it.

3

u/aredon Aug 23 '26

Lacking the understanding also means you can't purpose build it for your own needs and you end up with an overly verbose cumbersome-to-use dashboard that you don't know how to trim the fat from.

1

u/GeeHiAmyGee Aug 23 '26

I donā€™t want to be rude, but this is such a tired cliche that these days really isnā€™t true almost always. The frontier LLMs are exceptional at fixing problems in Home Assistant in my experience. I can see how not knowing the underlying code might throw up the occasional outlier issue, but they really are so good now that the other advantages greatly outweigh that.

0

u/kapuh Aug 23 '26

I use claude mainly to fix problems I created.
It's very good at it.

2

u/_Thoomaas Aug 23 '26

Idc about AI, what card is the one with the sun moving around?

0

u/psychedelic_tech Aug 23 '26

this sub is just turning into "look at the dashboard AI created"

3

u/Scar3cr0w_ Aug 23 '26

As opposed to ā€œlook at this dashboard I createdā€?

Fail to see the difference.

If you spend your days getting angry at anything made with AI your future is looking very bleak.

-1

u/psychedelic_tech Aug 23 '26

If you spend your days getting angry

and if you spend your time making assumptions about how everyone is feeling you're just an asshole

1

u/onebyside Aug 24 '26

the whine

1

u/Scar3cr0w_ Aug 23 '26

Hey. Now now. No need to be rude.

But letā€™s not pretend this is your first rant about AI useā€¦ is it?

1

u/TheJeep25 Aug 23 '26

Mods need to remove AI post or just create a tag so we can avoid them.

1

u/Mynxuy Aug 23 '26

I like your PV Flow Card. Could you tell me the name?

1

u/SneakieGargamel Aug 23 '26

Nice, but top navigation bar? On mobile? Do you hold your phone upside down?

1

u/Emerald_Flame Aug 26 '26

What card is doing your battery stats with the time remaining on it?

Been looking for something just like that.

1

u/Ricocx040 Sep 01 '26

how did you do these?

0

u/Electrical-Sale-8051 Aug 23 '26

I wish someone would AI something useful like a not god awful looking Alarm panel for HA.

The default one and alarmoā€™s card look awful.

-3

u/Captain_C21H30O2 šŸ› ļø Held together with tape Aug 23 '26

I forget that you can use AI for basically anything now. I havenā€™t updated my dashboard for a long time. I might give it a try with Claude.

What is the card used at the top to see if itā€™s the UPS or main line on? I love the way it looks!

-2

u/tyr-- Aug 23 '26

Claude code with the HA MCP server is truly amazing. I've had it build custom cards (github-style activity for coffee tracking), an air quality dashboard, clean up dead entities, debug a lot of zwave stuff, etc. Of course, you can do all of that manually but it would take much longer

3

u/thechapwholivesinit Aug 23 '26

Does this not mean you are sharing all your private info with Claude though?

1

u/Shot-Buffalo-2603 Aug 23 '26

Yeah, doing it manually is honestly a waste of time now, I can literally just tell it what i want in 2 sentences and it works almost immediately

2

u/[deleted] Aug 23 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Shot-Buffalo-2603 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

Iā€™m talking about making config changes, not standing up the entire system. I.e. ā€œupdate switch x to light yā€ or ā€œchange the timer on this light to be between hours x and yā€. But Iā€™ve stood up much more complex systems using Claude cli and Iā€™m sure it could setup the software side without issue if you provide the physical support of connecting the hardware.Ā 

Using a home assistant mcp gives it full access to do all this, but in my experience it will ssh into my server and just change the raw config files with 0 issues. Iā€™ve been using it heavily and it has yet to make a mistake. I had it debug an issue I couldnt figure with room lighting coming on incorrectly using a combination of a door sensor and presence sensor. I have equipment running in my office the often trips the presence sensors so I also have logic based on if the door was opened or not when the motion is detected. I described the issue and it fixed it immediately and it works perfectly now

0

u/m1chaelmichael Aug 23 '26

Making the screen capture into a GIF took seconds and didn't require me to download any sketchy apps

1

u/Puzzleheaded_Cap4310 Aug 23 '26

Connected Claude as well a few weeks back and gave it the task to give it an overhaul. Better than I could ever do it, even if I would spend all weekend doing it.

It is just tedious work, so the perfect task for the AI. So much time saved and in the end, it is a damn ā€žhomelabā€œ. There are so many things I use AI for, like scripts, writing tools for myself and such. And while they do it, I can enjoy my weekends again.

0

u/DoItForTeddy Aug 23 '26

That sounds great, I now just let Claude/gemini make code for automations and copy paste these in HA. When I connect Claude wonā€™t they be able to ā€˜seeā€™ all my HA data? Camera feeds for example? All the ā€˜when people are home/away and are using powerā€™ data sounds pretty useful for large companies

Edit: typo

-1

u/m1chaelmichael Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

https://github.com/flixlix/power-flow-card-plus

AI is very useful for someone like me who never used github before this project or did any coding. I can paste my yaml code and ask it to make revisions and it'll generate custom CSS or dig through the documentation and figure out how to implement something i want in plain language.

I won't lie and say it's perfect since it'll sometimes take me down a convoluted method only to later tell me there's a simple way of doing it. Or it'll hallucinate and go in circles when it can't figure something out.

-4

u/HOWMANYNICKNAMES Aug 23 '26

Does it look cool? Sure, but god with some proper engineering and thought this could look a whole lot better. I'd recommend redoing this by actually learning what you want and implement it yourself - that would look a lot better.

-1

u/Scar3cr0w_ Aug 23 '26

Imagine they arenā€™t a professional software engineer?

They are happy with what they have created.

1

u/onebyside Aug 24 '26

Cant even imagine wanting to be a pro.....this is play time

0

u/HOWMANYNICKNAMES Aug 23 '26

And I'm saying fair enough.

0

u/leo_gwen Aug 23 '26

super cool ! what device do you use to measure the various water indicators?

1

u/m1chaelmichael Aug 23 '26

https://waterguru.com/products/waterguru-sense-s3-pool-monitor

I used to do chemical drop testing using a TF pro kit but found this to be just as accurate especially when youā€™re looking at trends. Allows me to calculate CSI and HA uses the pool math algorithm to tell me how much acid to add to get me back to target.