[gerdesj]

Thank you so much for this write up mate.

I'm fine with the usual systems n networking stuff but the AI bits and bobs is a bit of a blur to me, so having a template to start off with is a bit of a God's send.

I'm a bit of a Home Assistant fan boi. I have eight of them to look after now. They are so useful as a "box that does stuff" on customer sites. I generally deploy HA Supervised to get a full Linux box underneath on a laptop with some USB dongles but the HAOS all in one thing is ideal for a VM.

Anyway, it looks like I have another project at work 8)

[Lienetic]

Can you share a bit more about why you're deploying HA in customer sites? I'm also a fan of HA and am interested to learn more about what you're doing and how it's going!

[gerdesj]

Here's how shit happens! We move to remote working due to a pandemic. Many of my customers do CAD on powerful gear in the office. They also have a ISO14001 registration (environmental standard) or not but want these gas guzzlers shut down at night.

So they want to be able to wake up their PCs and shut them down remotely. I'm already flooded with VPN requirements and the other day to day stuff. I recall an add on for HA for a Windows remote shutdown and I know HA can do "wake on LAN". ... and HA has an app.

I won't deny it is a bit of a fiddle, thanks to MS's pissing around with power management etc. When a Windows PC is shutdown, it isn't really and will generally only honour the BIOS settings once. You have to disable Windows's network card power management and it doesn't help that the registry key referring to the only NIC is sometimes not the obvious one.

Home Assistant has "HACS" for adding even more stuff and one handy addition is a restriction card - https://community.home-assistant.io/t/lovelace-restriction-c...

Anyway, the customer has the app on their phone. They have a dashboard with a list of PCs. Those cards are "locked" via restriction card. You have to unlock the card for your PC which has a switch to turn it on and off. The unlock thing is to avoid inadvertent start ups/down.

That is just one use - two customers so far use that. We also see "I've got a smart ... thing, can you watch it? ... Yes!

Zwave and Zigbee dongles cost very little and coupled with a laptop with probably bluetooth built in and HA, you get a lot of "can I ..."

[Lienetic]

This is so interesting! Are all these people asking you "can I..." questions just people you work with day-to-day and you've become their "go-to guy for smart stuff?"

Do you find it a pain to have to manage all of this for people?

[driverdan]

Why wouldn't they just have the computers go into sleep mode automatically?