Automate your House just by adding Devices to Home Assistant!

Yep, I said it. You can now Automate you house just by adding device to Home Assistant. All you need its to build to automations to leverage the context Home Assistant already knows. And you will end up with a true smart home.

Video Chapters:
00:00 - Automate your Smart home just by adding devices to Home Assistant - Intro
00:59 - How to use Response Variables in Home Assistant
06:13 - Build your own smart home services with scripts and response variables.
07:49 - Build a Kitchen lighting automation that uses devices as soon as you add them to home assistant.

Resources:
Download the Automations and Scripts used in this video:

Who am I?

My Name is Jeff. I am an DIY-er and Automator of boring things. And, of course, a huge Home Assistant fan. Oh, I also live in a house that tweets.

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Cash App: $slackerlabs
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Video Gear:

[SpencerDub]

Like some others have said, I'm going to have to watch this a couple dozen times more to understand how it works and what it offers. Thanks for the video, though—I can tell there's so much potential here, if only I can wrap my brain around it.

[dmiller]

I'm gonna need to watch this several time. Not only does it reduce future workload, but also requires better organized code. Thanks.

[icojones]

Hi Jeff, thanks for the great video, it opens up a whole next level of 'smart' for me. I'm going to be even more unsociable now!! 😀

[MyCobra]

Mind Blown! Jeff, keep this type of video coming. I didn't know I needed this but now I feel I have to implement it.

[jmr]

I totally got where you were going with it. That would have been nice when one of my smart bulbs burned out.

[uSlackr]

This is good lateral thinking. Thanks for diving into it. Time to go ponder the future!

[lifth]

Since the response variables got announced i was wondering how you would use them. I'll have to watch that a couple of times - i'm used to that - but i'm exited to do that!

[GlennFromHB]

You have just saved me a bunch of time. I was right in the middle of setting up something like this to make sure shades were not closing if a window or door is open with a message. Thank you.

[pavolholes]

Wow! Jeff! This is exactly what I was thinking of recently and you just made it work! Great job, very advanced feature and perfect walk-through. This will save me a lot of time. Thank you very much!

[daveforrester]

Brilliant, but my head hurts now 😂. There I was, just starting to get my head around variables in scripts and Home Assistant went and took it to the next level with service call responses. Thanks for this video Jeff. I do believe I'm now a step closer to having a truly automated house 👍

[thinksimon]

What a roundabout way to describe it...

[CrankyCoder]

This is awesome!! I have been waiting for something like this. I used to do something similar back in the openhab days :)

[clairerovic]

That was wonderful, thanks. Will try and use it for devices that have two locations such as Upstairs Guest Bedroom.

Often I open Upstairs shutters, but a guest needs to control these independently.

[chrisdixon]

OMG, this is probably one of the most amazing and overlooked features to arrive in HA!
Certainly I didn't think of it when hearing about response variables, but I bet it's where the devs are headed with its introduction. Very impressive work!

I think you've been watching too much of "that other YouTuber's" channel ;)
Also, I can't help feeling your stop value should have been "And I'm spent" in an Austin Power's accent :)

Thanks for sharing,
Chris

[PatrickBulteel]

Excellent video showing the potential of those return variables. I look forward to seeing what you've done with Jarvis. I'm in the process of re-writing what I've got and this looks like it could potentially expand on that.

[davidjohnson]

The jinja templating for conditions / actions is cool. However, what I'd really like to do is have the triggers determined magically by jinja. In my case, all my external doors have contact sensors and I have zoned heating in each room. I'd like a general automation that when any contact sensor is open, the heating in that room is suspended until the door is closed. I can do this for individual doors, but would be great to have a 'smart' automation which just triggers from any door contact sensor and works out which zone to turn off on the heating.

[DanielSchless]

Well done video ... would love to get your take on short scripts vs template macros in HA

[vetsus]

as a redhead... i'm slightly offended by all this talk about jinja :D

[michelbeauregard]

Hi thanks for this initiation on response variable. I though to use that to solve the following problem :

I have a SONOFF ZigBee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus, EFR32MG21, flash as repeater. Its nice cause it fall automatically into discovery mode when it loose connection. The problem is that it disconnect often . It easy to reconnect with zigbee discovery integration. But I have to reconnect it manualy a few time a week. Now I try replacing or relocating it . At other location it does not reach the device I need it to reach or replacement does the same it last 2 or 3 days then lose connection .I try other things too like adding more in the vicinity but nothing goes .

So my question : Is there a way that I could automate zigbee discovery process say like an automation when this device is unvailable to rediscoverer it automatically which I am doing successfully manualy at the moment.

[Chaphasilor]

I'm not sure what the advantage is for selecting lights based on an area. HA has supported supplying an area instead of a device ID in the light.turn_on service call for over a year! This seems unnecessarily complex. Or am I missing something here?