Completely overhaul the complex configuration, it’s incredibly difficult to do simple things like creating a button on my dashboard to stop my fish tank pump for 15 minutes. Or to take photos when unifi protect camera AI detects a human, and display that on the dashboard. They are already sensors but building controls for any of these actions and automations relies on bizarre hacks and insanely complex yaml. Or creating morning routines for my lights based on a number of factors, you need countless plugins for basic configurability or basing lighting on sunrise/set times. It should be easy to create controls to do things like disable a routine for a few days.
The programmability is poor, it’s like it was built by a bunch of hobbyists instead of software engineers.
And stop deprecating built in features with extremely short notice.
Not sure how that would conflict with anything… Maybe a schedule? Then just add an override toggle helper that you check in your schedule.
I feel like you’re trying to use it in your specific way. Instead of using home assistant as intended. Sure that’s a valid criticism for your use cases. But it doesn’t make home assistant objectively terrible imho.
You can either directly disable an automation e.g. automation.turn_off: ... or set/read the state of a helper entity that you use to disable certain functionality in another automation. There are probably more tricks too. Though I try to make my automations as atomic as possible so they don’t need to be connected this way.
Genuine question: what makes you label it as “horrible” - which is quite a strong word - and what should it be doing differently, in your opinion?
Completely overhaul the complex configuration, it’s incredibly difficult to do simple things like creating a button on my dashboard to stop my fish tank pump for 15 minutes. Or to take photos when unifi protect camera AI detects a human, and display that on the dashboard. They are already sensors but building controls for any of these actions and automations relies on bizarre hacks and insanely complex yaml. Or creating morning routines for my lights based on a number of factors, you need countless plugins for basic configurability or basing lighting on sunrise/set times. It should be easy to create controls to do things like disable a routine for a few days.
The programmability is poor, it’s like it was built by a bunch of hobbyists instead of software engineers.
And stop deprecating built in features with extremely short notice.
Sure it can improve in some places but saying it is horrible is really over stating it… It was never meant to be ‘programmable’ but configurable.
Now for your fish tank issue… That seems like the easiest automation to make…
And then just add it to dashboard. Not really sure how that’s horrible or difficult?
Ran into issues with it conflicting with other routines that control the fish tank pump too
Not sure how that would conflict with anything… Maybe a schedule? Then just add an override toggle helper that you check in your schedule.
I feel like you’re trying to use it in your specific way. Instead of using home assistant as intended. Sure that’s a valid criticism for your use cases. But it doesn’t make home assistant objectively terrible imho.
How do you build controls to toggle automations as you described?
You can either directly disable an automation e.g.
automation.turn_off: ...or set/read the state of a helper entity that you use to disable certain functionality in another automation. There are probably more tricks too. Though I try to make my automations as atomic as possible so they don’t need to be connected this way.