Recently, I’ve been diving into the world of Vera app development and it’s been quite an exciting journey! I started a thread back in January about creating a new Vera app and received some fantastic suggestions. I’m thrilled to share that I’ve completed version 1 of the app. The focus was on simplicity, usability, and basic home control. Version 2 will include more complex features like floor plan view and user management, if there’s still demand for them. The app is built like a universal remote, supporting any home automation platform. The first release supports Vera UI7, Insteon Hub, and Philips Hue Bridge v1 (iPhone-only for now). If anyone wants to help beta test, I’d love to hear from you!
On another note, I’ve been experimenting with music automation in Home Assistant. I wanted a compact card to show playlists but couldn’t find one. So, I created a slider that lists playlists from Music Assistant. It uses a template trigger sensor to dynamically display six playlists. Tapping any playlist starts playback on a media player. This setup is very simplified, so you can easily adapt it to your own use case. Here’s how I set it up:
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What you need:
paper-buttons-row(from HACS)- A template trigger sensor holding playlist info
- A script to play a playlist
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The sensor:
- Uses a time pattern trigger every 30 minutes
- Fetches playlist info from Music Assistant
- Stores playlist names, URIs, and images in attributes
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The paper button row card:
- Displays six playlists with images
- Tapping a playlist triggers playback
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The script:
- Takes the selected playlist URI and plays it on your media player
This setup has been a great way to organize my music and control it through Home Assistant. If you have any suggestions or improvements, I’d love to hear them!
Lastly, I’ve been monitoring temperature and heating state with sensors for my water heater. I’d love to display this data in a climate entity for better visualization, similar to how Hive does it. If anyone has tips on how to achieve this, please share!
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences!