Ping Theo: Home Assistant and clocks:

[T i m]

Firstly I'd like to thank Theo for giving me the confirmation re Home Assistant as being a good Home Automation solution.

I have numerous devices here (22) all doing stuff now and it's going well so far (HA is a very powerful solution so there is a lot to learn). It also monitors our two smart phones (battery charge and charging type, location) and my Synology NAS (CPU and shared space) etc.

One important thing I can't seem to crack is the timings applied to some of the logs / history of devices.

Like, I have a dehumidifier set to turn on at 10:30 (smart socket) if the humidity is above 50% (Sonoff T/H sensor) and to turn off at midnight. It does all that fine and I can see the humidity going down over the day from the graph.

The 'problem' is the history of the switch or annotation on the graph suggest it comes on at 11:30 and goes off at 01:00.

Now whilst I can make the adjustment in my head, it's a PITA and I have looked into it all but am yet to pin down a solution (or even sure there is one)?

(Theo), are you running hass.io / HA, have you seen this issue and resolved it please, or if you haven't seen it, any idea what the solution could be please?

The question has been asked several times on the forum but I haven't seen a reply / solution that I understand how to implement?

Cheers, T i m

[Tricky Dicky]

Hi Tim

Just a query about the Sonoff T/H, can it be used to measure the dew point? I am hoping to make a start on my man cave at the back of the garage and because there will be electronic equipment and paper items stored there I need to monitor the dew point when it is not in use and raise the temperature as the dew point is reached to prevent condensation. I only need to be able to raise the temperature and hold above the dew point.

Regards Richard

[Theo]

That sounds like a timezone issue - either wrong timezone or something thinks it's in BST when it isn't. Is the time zone of the Pi set correctly, and the timezone in Home Assistant?

I haven't noticed it - you'll have to look around the forum to see if there's any insights.

Theo

[T i m]

That was my first check and it comes up (in HA) as Europe/London. I think this in turn is taken from the map and (I think) that was determined automatically from 'Location' (ip address etc) (and is correct).

I have tried setting it to a timezone that is one hour behind (in the GUI), it doesn't stick.

The best answer I can give to that is it's set correctly if I access the terminal and type 'date'. I used the terminal addon.

Yes. All the automations are correctly timed.

I have but none have been any use as yet as I'm not sure where to look ... as it doesn't seem to be out where I have looked so far (and I'm not the only one suffering the issue).

Is your HA running on a RPi and via hass.io or is it installed directly on a Linux?

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Yo.

I'm not aware of one that obvious and not sure if what you want could be calculated from temperature and RH?

I know dew point can be 'measured' but not sure if these basic (and cheap) sensors would be able to do so.

https://sonoff.tech/product/smart-home-security/snzb-02

Would a dehumidifier (with built in humidistat) be the better option in any case, possibly alongside a background level heater, to stop the dehumidifier from freezing up too often?

Cheers. T i m

[Theo]

It's a Pi 3, but installed via Docker not via hass.io. That means I get a 'proper' terminal, instead of the walled garden hass.io gives you. (which is fine as an 'appliance' but not if you want to do other things)

My History view is very slow, so it might be time to move to a proper USB SSD, instead of a random SD card. When it eventually shows up it looks like it is doing the right timestamps. System timezone is set to UTC.

Theo

[T i m]

Ah, ok, thanks (but isn't hass.io 'a docker', but you are saying it's not the product 'docker')?

Erm. Do we know that to be the case Theo? eg, is there not an interface in the hass.io 'docker' that gives you access to the subsystem (hypervisor of some sort)? If there isn't, could it be that it's set to UTC in any case (as the feedback I've read seems to suggest most servers / system might be in any case)? JUst asking etc.

Understood. FWIW, I've just installed, enabled , accessed HA on my Synology NAS and will see if the USB TI coordinator is picked up by that.

Understood, same here (especially over an extended timeperiod).

Hmm.

I had no technical reason for installing HA the way I did, other than the general instructions seemed to suggest it was the most straightforward and durable / efficient way?

So did you install Linux on your RPi, then Docker and then imported the docker image downloaded from the links in the HA site?

If the whole installation was a straight image I think I would be keen to give that a go, especially if you are happy with it (and as long as it didn't require much in the way of Linux expertise)?

Alternatively, I could look to installing HA under Virtual box on a straight Linux image on a 'silent' slimline Shuttle mini PC (assuming the Synology NAS solution doesn't work out as viable).

Cheers, T i m

[Theo]

Using the formula from wikipedia:

and a reading from a sensor:

I get:

5.45488691615

ie dew point of 5.5C. Does that sound plausible?

Theo

[Theo]

hass.io is a Pi distro that has a minimal Linux install and everything else runs in Docker containers. That means outside of Docker there isn't much installed.

I like to have a 'full' Linux distro with all the usual tools. Then I've installed Home Assistant's Docker setup on top. This is unsupported, and means I need to do upgrades via Docker not via the GUI. But I have a more flexible environment (for general tinkering, eg for backups via SSH).

Usually system time is set to UTC, but there's a user-facing timezone.

You would likely need to pass through the /dev/tty-whatever device node to the Docker container. That's probably feasible, although depends what config Synology offers.

I think you used hass.io by flashing the SD card for a Pi? I would stick with that - it's the best supported option. No reason you can't do something else, but until you have a good reason and a willingness to debug things I'd stick with the mainstream.

Theo

[T i m]

<snip>

Ok...

Ah.

Understood. As you say, for me and now an 'appliance is probably best. ;-)

I've been playing with timezone as seen in Configuration > General but whilst I can change the apparent time of my Desktop, I can't seem to change the time of things as seen by the history / logs.

eg. If it's 19:50 and I set an automation to toggle a light on a smart socket at 20:00, the light toggles at 20:00 but the log says it happened one hour in the future, at 21:00 ;-(

I installed HA on the Synology NAS ok but it won't seem to install the Zigbee appliance (just seems to hang with a spinning wheel) so I assume my little Synology NAS isn't up to it. ;-(

Correct. Boot, it installs / updates itself and then is ready to rock. ;-)

Understood.

Agreed, it's just that this issue is very frustrating. Part of the point of Home Automation for me is that you can 'manage what you can measure'. So what would be nice is to go to the log / history of a smart switch or sensor and associate the display with an even, like the humidity not falling as expected because the tank wasn't replaced properly and it didn't start properly.

At the moment I can simply subtract 1 hour from the times indicated in the log but it would be nice (and I don't think it's unreasonable, technically, given how flexible HA is) that I can't achieve what I expect?

I'm hoping a programmer friend I know (here) who has a RPi will install HA via hass.io for me soon and help me resolve it. ;-)

Cheers, T i m