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I recently bought a pack of NFC tags to use with @homeassistant and I gotta say—I'm really happy with how they're working out.
I have the apartment problem where I have IoT bulbs everywhere, but turning on/off those bulbs means opening an app. But, now I can just tap my phone to turn on a room's lights or turn off all lights before I leave. It's nice, and was only about $10 for 30 tags.
#IoT #HomeAssistant #Automation
@chris_hayes @homeassistant that sounds very nice. How much time is there between holding your phone to the tag, and actually seeing the lights change?
@sybren @homeassistant It's pretty quick, about a second. It takes about a second for the phone to pick up the NFC, and the lights changing is fairly instant. HA can also transition the lights to your set brightness over a duration.
The longer part is trying to remember what's the optimal location to place my phone on the tag. The one downside is—to my knowledge, I cannot scan NFC tags unless my phone is unlocked. Not sure if it's just a Pixel limitation or something else.
@chris_hayes @homeassistant 1. Create a problem
2. Spend more money to fix it
3. ???
4. Profit (toot about it)
@kanazir @homeassistant yeah, on the room level IoT can be a step back if swapping out switches is not an option, but home assistant routines for turning on the lights in the morning and turning off lights at night is nice.
I hate the small battery operated buttons.
This nfc system sounds amazing.
Not to admit that I have my phone on me all the time...
@husku @homeassistant Oh, like AWS One-click lol? I used to have that and then AWS stop supporting it. At the time, I more used it for logging things, which coincidently is also workable with NFC tags if you have your phone. A buddy of mine was thinking about using that setup for logging some baby stuff he has to routinely do.
But yeah, nfc tags are cheap, no batteries. Not sure about longitivity, but a pretty low-risk thing to toy with.
Do you happen to know if wireless charger or charging can be detected?
Would be nice to have backyard lights turned off automatically when going to bed :p
@husku @homeassistant Yeah, the HA app can use "sensors" from your phone, there are a few dozen you can enable. I presume the "Charger type" sensor would be useful here when it changes to `wireless`.
I personally have not set up any triggers from phone sensors yet, but if I add a "charger type" chart to my dashboard, it does show `ac` when I plug in my phone.
Oh this is great.
I can pair me being home and time being over bedtime to the fact that my phone starts wireless charging.
That starts "Husari household bedtime" scene :)
Thanks for inspiring.
@chris_hayes @homeassistant I agree. They are really great. I have one on the wall above my pillow in my bedroom to shut off all the lights. Love them!
@chris_hayes @homeassistant So now you tap your phone to an NFC tag, instead of flicking a normal wall switch with your finger?
Why is this considered easier? Am I missing something here?
@Primetime @homeassistant This is why I mentioned the "apartment problem". As a renter, if I want IoT bulbs I can only do it at the bulb-level, replacing switches is not really an option.
I'm not saying this is the easiest way to do things, for an IoT house, ideally you change the switches. But, I like experimenting, and this setup means I can have lights turn on in the morning and turn off at night by themselves.
@chris_hayes @Primetime @homeassistant
> This is why I mentioned the "apartment problem"
Been there. I solved this with Zigbee smart buttons and Aqara Cube. I also learnt a lot about Home Assistant, smart devices and how I can use them which helped me to build something bigger on own apartment.
@chris_hayes @homeassistant That makes sense. Even if you were allowed to have a smart wall switch installed, its expensive, and therefore not really worth it in a home you dont own yourself. In that case I definitely understand choosing a tag over a battery powered smart switch too. Really annoying to have to switch batteries every so often.
@chris_hayes Why... why not just add a switch? Even a radio-controlled one?
@apicultor @homeassistant I'm a renter, it means getting sign off from my landlord, I might end up investing hundreds into the apartment only to move out in a few months.
Otherwise yeah, a switch would be the ideal solution here.
@chris_hayes What if I told you there are self-adhesive ZigBee switches? No drill needed.
But one example: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/smart-light-wireless-switch-36814/
@apicultor @homeassistant Oh nice, maybe I'll toy with that next. Though I don't have a zigbee hub. Already having a Google Home Hub, and Philips Hub, I'm starting to get tired of buying hubs, haha. Maybe there's an ESP32 battery-powered switch that would do the same.
@chris_hayes A ZigBee radio dongle in your HomeAssistant box.
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/best-overall-zigbee-stick/487323
@chris_hayes @homeassistant (reply)guys, please don't kill chris's enthusiasm.
Keep on building, HA is helluva drug ;)
@po3mah @homeassistant lol. I believe the software developer quote goes:
> We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
@chris_hayes
btw nfcs are great. I've built door unlocking with them.
@chris_hayes @homeassistant I’ve never fully understood the implementation of smart tags. Do you tap your phone on the tag in the room to turn the lights on?
@andrew @homeassistant Yes, or at least that's how I use it. The HA app makes it pretty easy to create an automation when you set up a new tag.
You can also do other things - ie instead of having guests scan a QR code to get access to wifi, they could tap their phone on an NFC tag to get wifi.
Just to be clear - I think the term "smart tag" is often used for Apple's tag for geolocating luggage, etc. Which to my knowledge uses different tech.
… and here goes my €9 for 60 tags.
@chris_hayes @homeassistant I don't have #HomeAssistant . Does the HA app support nfc or how does it work?
@BartVr @chris_hayes @homeassistant you can kinda do anything that you want. There's a huge library of existing integrations that you can use that cover a lot of 3rd party tools and tech. HA also has a pretty robust automation framework that can be done from either the GUI, or using YAML.
And then, if that doesn't cut it, you can go wild with Python and AppDaemon to do anything you can feasibly code up and get working.
@BartVr @chris_hayes @homeassistant
The HA app can write a url to the nfc tag. The url points back to the app. The app can then connect to your home assistant server and tell it that the tag was scanned.
Then home assistant can do anything home assistant knows how to do. You can toggle lights, start an automation, open your blinds, send a notification, play a song or TTS, whatever.
@chris_hayes @homeassistant I enabled location tracking in the phone app, and created an automation trigger that fires when anyone leaves the "home" zone, and confirms that nobody else is still at home. That triggers my "away" script. It shuts off All The Things once we get about 50 meters from home. (1/2)
I added a Boolean helper named GuestPresent that I manually set whenever we have a visitor staying with us. The scripts all honor the flag and don't do anything automatically that might spook our guests. (2/2)