BREAKING

Raspberry Pi 400. I thought having the built-in keyboard would be useful and as it turns out, it wasn’t! My first thing running on a Pi so I didn’t realize how much it depends on things running remotely. Oh well!

Let me know when Samsung software stops sucking and then we’ll talk.

I laughed when I saw this. Like, it was a guy excited that his computer is working better, including with his printer. Maybe a teensy bit of punctuation I’d do differently, but whatever. It’s the Internet. Then suddenly “oh yeah sorry English isn’t my first language and I’m sure you can all see that”

That, plus a couple other things I saw in different places, ended up doing exactly what I wanted! I posted my final solution above. Thanks for finding a piece to the puzzle!

That just might work! It’s definitely an easy way to control both at the same time. I just need to figure out a way to change the group’s dimness when the dimness on one light’s physical switch (a Kasa, unlike the Zigbee one next to it). Maybe an automation for that, targeting the group instead of a single device

Taking a different approach of starting simple and working up,

100.0 works

{{100.0}} does not work

“{{100.0}}” also does not work

Combining this with similar comments, plus adding in the math to convert to a percent, I tried this:

brightness_pct: "{{state_attr('light.kitchen_sink_ceiling', 'brightness') | float(0) /255*100}}"

Still getting the same message

Message malformed: expected float for dictionary value @ data['brightness_pct']

For what it’s worth, if I try to set brightness instead of brightness_pct, I get a different message

Message malformed: extra keys not allowed @ data['brightness']

(I’m assuming that device just doesn’t accept a brightness attribute - not a big deal to math it out though)

I also got Z-wave shades from Bali when Home Depot had a 50% off custom window treatments sale. They’ve been wonderful, and integrate with Home Assistant very nicely overall. Battery lasts a long time (about 6 months of use, with a daily “round trip” and they’re still at about 60%) and status gets reported back. One piece on one shade got machined weirdly so I couldn’t use the Z-wave, and they were happy to send a replacement.

Bali is manufactured by a company called Springs Window Fashions. Might be worth looking into them and their other brands too!

Oh, and Home Depot has sample material books you can take home for a night to see what would work best for you.

I have a ton of east-facing windows on the back of my house. It’s a blessing or a curse depending on weather and time of day. I always dreamed about them running automatically, and eventually ordered a bunch of Z-wave controlled motorized shades. Then a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant to control it all.

While I was waiting for those shades to arrive, I got a bunch of Kasa light switches so I didn’t have to sweep across the entire house to turn off all the lights every night. Turning the hallway light off after 9:45PM triggers the automation.

The rabbit hole only got bigger from there.

I use Kasa switches all over my house and am waiting for them to release their fan controller (it was announced at CES last year, and a thread on the old place says it’ll be out at the end of the month)

I’m excited for my fan to shut off if it’s too cold in the bedroom. Already have a temperature/humidity sensor in there.

As a side note, I really wish folders were implemented for devices and automations and such. Especially since I have a scene controller (and another on the way) with several buttons, each of which can have 6 different triggers (pressing 1-5 times or holding the button down). Oh, and more for the LEDs.

Now that you mention it, I did update fairly recently…

I’ve heard the SD cards can be pretty flakey, so I immediately replaced the one that came with the rpi with something a little more “hardy” (Samsung Pro Endurance 256GB). It’s supposed to be able to handle a few years of streaming video turnover, so I wouldn’t think that a ~month of text logs would already hose it but I’ve been wrong before.

Running hassos