Home Assistant

Like any good project, this one started with a problem: how do I let my wife know I’m in a meeting so she doesn’t let the dog barge in? (I work remotely and my office is the only way to get to the backyard.)

The solution: build my own “On Air” light that turns on/off automatically when I’m in a meeting! Sure, there are commercially-available products that do exactly this, but where’s the fun in buying something when I have the skills and equipment to build my own? Just how hard could it be? (famous last words)

False Starts

Several months ago I blogged about compiling open-zwave for Home Assistant 0.45 on Docker. There were two reasons I did this:

1. I had a Linear Z-Wave Garage Door opener - this feature was only available in the development branch of openzwave.
2. I wanted up-to-date device configurations for newer Z-Wave devices.

Unfortunately, the development branch was less stable than I liked and the opener never worked quite right. So #1 was no longer a reason to compile the library myself.

Home Assistant uses the open-zwave library to control Z-Wave home automation devices like light switches and door sensors. Unfortunately, this library’s last release (1.5) was back in August 2016 and doesn’t include configurations for many Z-Wave devices I use (like the Linear NGDZ00-4 Garage Door).