For a while, I thought it would be great to create a local intranet website to assist in managing all of the services and devices which exist in my house. Originally, I planned on slapping something together in html. After working with Home Assistant for a little while, I realized that the platform was perfect for creating a cool Home Intranet Site.
For starers, I needed to learn what I needed to learn as this is my first step in really taking control my home assistant. After watching some useful youtube videos I opted to install the Home Assistant Community Store (HCAS). HCAS allows you to search for, and install software packages from other developers. It is a great way to add more functionality into Home Assistant, but you need to be cautious about what you install to ensure the source is reputable, works, etc…
Literally, my first step was to install the Frosted Glass Theme to give Home Assistant some visual pop. I had grown tired of the black on black of the Home Assistant of the default installation.
Weather
One of the first things I wanted to add was a weather forecast. At first, I was thinking I was going to go with Accuweather because I have heard of them. However, not wanting to pay fees I opted for “Meteorologisk institutt (Met.no)”. The service is easily to install by searching for it under “Devices and Services” and after providing my latitude and longitude, I was in business.
The data provided appears to be reasonably close to the weather apps installed on my computer and phone. The configuration screen allows you to specify the units for each of the following: precipitation, Barometric pressure, temperature, visibility and wind speed.
All in all, we are off to a good start.
Device Links
One of my primary goals is to create a simple place which contains links to all of the devices and services running in my house. Link may of you who are reading this post, I have routers, printers, websites and other devices installed in my home and I just wanted a place to link them all together. Obviously, I could create bookmark links in my web browser, but I wanted to make everything just a bit nicer. Additionally, this page provided me the excuse to learn how to build custom dashboards.
To get started, I created a new dashboard from the Settings -> Dashboards screens. I opted to create the “New dashboard from option”. When prompted, set the Title to “Home Intranet” and picked an icon. When the “Create” button is pressed, the new dashboard is created and added to the navigation list on the left side of the browser.
I next clicked on the new dashboard and selected the “Edit Dashboard” button in the upper right hard corner which looks like a pencil. On devices with limited resolution, the option is a submenu under the three vertical dots icon.
For each device or service I added, I would add a button card. For whatever reason, I would clear the data in the “Entity” field and provide a custom name and select an icon.
Under “Interactions” for “Tap behavior” I selected “URL” and provided the URL path for the web interface for the device in question. All in all the process was pretty straight forward, and I am happy with the results. I chose to organize my hyperlinks by Devices, Services, and HAM Radio. This is a process and I am sure I will change my mind several times before I consider this complete.
So far, I am extremely happy starting my home network portal. I have several ideas which I think could make tasks easier, and as always, I am happy to learn new skills.