Kaleidescape & Home Assistant

[thrillcat]

How are you using HA scenes connecting to watch activities and what are HA sensors? Curious about how Apple pause/play being used to turn on lights/off. It is annoying as I see lights on/off continuously while figuring out selecting a movie on Apple. Trying to figure out to disable/enable automation for apple/lights or the right approach. Thanks.

I'm monitoring the media player status of both K and ATV, but the triggers have a time qualifier to prevent the down/up/down that happens when the media player reports paused status during the HDMI handshake process.

So basically, I believe they are 6 second duration requirements. "When Kaleidescape Media Player is PLAYING for 6 seconds, set Scene XYZ". Basically it doesn't trigger the scene until it knows for sure that playback has started, and not the handshake.

 

[ahard]

I'm monitoring the media player status of both K and ATV, but the triggers have a time qualifier to prevent the down/up/down that happens when the media player reports paused status during the HDMI handshake process.

So basically, I believe they are 6 second duration requirements. "When Kaleidescape Media Player is PLAYING for 6 seconds, set Scene XYZ". Basically it doesn't trigger the scene until it knows for sure that playback has started, and not the handshake.

Ohhhh. So you're adding a 6 second delay into your HA/K pause/play/turn on or turn off lights automation if I understand you correctly? That is a good idea. I'm going to do that.

 

[thrillcat]

Ohhhh. So you're adding a 6 second delay into your HA/K pause/play/turn on or turn off lights automation if I understand you correctly? That is a good idea. I'm going to do that.

Correct. 6 is actually what I was using before I upgraded my projector, because it took longer to finish the handshake. I believe I have it set for 4 second now.

 

[Furnace Inferno]

Interesting, I don’t have to do that on mine, the KScape when it plays goes straight to off and the Zidoo goes into paused/dimmed as I have a 7s delay before it starts playing and then they go off. The handshake doesn’t impact mine although I do have a lumagen scaling everything so perhaps that stops it. Might use the delay on my Firestick though as that thing gets triggered by just opening some apps.

 

[thrillcat]

Interesting, I don’t have to do that on mine, the KScape when it plays goes straight to off and the Zidoo goes into paused/dimmed as I have a 7s delay before it starts playing and then they go off. The handshake doesn’t impact mine although I do have a lumagen scaling everything so perhaps that stops it. Might use the delay on my Firestick though as that thing gets triggered by just opening some apps.

I'm also using a Lumagen.

Basically, without the time requirement, what happens is the playback device goes into Play, but then immediately goes to Pause while the handshake is negotiated, so the lights begin to dim, then come back up, then dim again when playback officially begins. The delays make Home Assistant ignore the initial Play that instantly Pauses, and it all times out perfectly so the lights are just finishing up their dimming process as the first studio title begins and everything is locked.

 

[LoveCinema]

I'm also using a Lumagen.

Basically, without the time requirement, what happens is the playback device goes into Play, but then immediately goes to Pause while the handshake is negotiated, so the lights begin to dim, then come back up, then dim again when playback officially begins. The delays make Home Assistant ignore the initial Play that instantly Pauses, and it all times out perfectly so the lights are just finishing up their dimming process as the first studio title begins and everything is locked.

I assume this also addresses the issue with light up/down while playing scripts?

 

[thrillcat]

I assume this also addresses the issue with light up/down while playing scripts?

Yes, it does.

 

[Furnace Inferno]

I'm also using a Lumagen.

Basically, without the time requirement, what happens is the playback device goes into Play, but then immediately goes to Pause while the handshake is negotiated, so the lights begin to dim, then come back up, then dim again when playback officially begins. The delays make Home Assistant ignore the initial Play that instantly Pauses, and it all times out perfectly so the lights are just finishing up their dimming process as the first studio title begins and everything is locked.

Interesting, yeh mine doesn’t do that, the Strato V just goes straight to play mode and dims the lights to off and the Zidoo goes straight to paused and dims the lights 25% but if I remove the pause it goes straight to play and turns them off, they never dim and then brighten and dim again during the sync.

I wonder why mine isn’t doing that then?!

 

[thrillcat]

Every system and component is different, and each can be configured many different ways. I'm using 60Hz menus but content playback at the original framerate, which creates the longest possible handshake while the projector switches framerate/refresh rate. If you're running everything at 60 or 24 your handshakes will be quicker and might not be enough to put the player back in pause to wait for the handshake to complete.

 

[thrillcat]

Hey everyone....thanks to @Mr. Big for volunteering, I was finally able to put together this easy step-by-step video to help you with the basics of automating your smart home devices with your Kaleidescape and Home Assistant!

 

[Gerald.d]

Oh wow - really looking forward to watching this!

/edit

OK so this was so useful - finally I got to understand how everything fits together. Thank you so much!

Just a couple of things. I'm not sure if it's due to a recent update (I'm running the latest version of HA), but for me in Automations the Activate Scene bit was different.

I wasn't able to simply select the scene after adding the action "Activate Scene" in the "Then do" section of the automation (19'00" into the video). Instead, I was presented with this:



Had me stumped for a while, but Googling I discovered that you have to hit the "Choose Entity" button, and then you get a dropdown to select your desired scene -



The other (very welcome) difference that you may notice from the above screenshots is that the Transition option was in there by default - no need to go to edit the YAML to get it to appear!

 

[giri]

Thanks Travis. Nice video. I see that for each Lumagen command, you created a script. I guess it is needed when I get the unfolded circle 3 remote as the Lumagen remote is not supported from unfolded circle 3.

I did learn now, scenes are useful to define once and use in scripts/automations. It is a nice background for the dashboard. Are you using themes? Need to figure this out.

 

[thrillcat]

Thanks Travis. Nice video. I see that for each Lumagen command, you created a script. I guess it is needed when I get the unfolded circle 3 remote as the Lumagen remote is not supported from unfolded circle 3.

I did learn now, scenes are useful to define once and use in scripts/automations. It is a nice background for the dashboard. Are you using themes? Need to figure this out.

Yes, the scripts for Lumagen are required to get those desired commands into the Unfolded Circle Remote, though there may be a shortcut coming, since the Remote 3 and Dock 3 will directly support RS232, it's possible it could control your Lumagen directly vs having to use a serial to IP adapter and Home Assistant. That will be a wait and see, but creating the scripts was pretty simple and has been rock solid.

The background is a theme, yes, using this repository.

 

[giri]

Yes, the scripts for Lumagen are required to get those desired commands into the Unfolded Circle Remote, though there may be a shortcut coming, since the Remote 3 and Dock 3 will directly support RS232, it's possible it could control your Lumagen directly vs having to use a serial to IP adapter and Home Assistant. That will be a wait and see, but creating the scripts was pretty simple and has been rock solid.

The background is a theme, yes, using this repository.

Thanks. I will check the theme. Glad to know that Remote 3 might support RS232. But, I really liked Lumagen control through HA. I am not sure if both (RS 232 and serial to IP) could simultaneously work.

 

[thrillcat]

Thanks. I will check the theme. Glad to know that Remote 3 might support RS232. But, I really liked Lumagen control through HA. I am not sure if both (RS 232 and serial to IP) could simultaneously work.

I believe they should be able to work simultaneously, as long as your programming doesn't end up duplicating commands.

 

[Mr. Big]

A big thank you to @thrillcat for hosting this training session - I now have a basic understanding of hew HA works and it's really quite simple (as long as you stay away from YAML) once you grasp its basic concept. From here I think I can figure out how to add more automations as I add more components to my system.

 

[Mr. Big]

And I'd like to add that my response time in that video was actually a lot faster than what's shown - there must've been a lag in the screen share. My reflexes are actually quite good.

 

[thrillcat]

And I'd like to add that my response time in that video was actually a lot faster than what's shown - there must've been a lag in the screen share. My reflexes are actually quite good.

My AOL was acting up that day. I think I was almost out of hours and needed to track down another floppy.

 

[cwalter]

My AOL was acting up that day. I think I was almost out of hours and needed to track down another floppy.

Unfortunately I’m actually old enough to understand that reference…and I still have an AOL email account.

 

[Mr. Big]

I'd like to chime in again to let you know that I've been able to integrate my motorized blinds into my home theater automation. The blinds I have are not the usual ones you see around here - I got them from The Shade Store. They don't manufacture their own wifi hub, it's a rebranded Pulse Automate unit so it was kinda tricky setting it up. Had to install a custom HACS repository and then configure it from there. But from not knowing a thing about how HA works a couple of weeks ago to today, I find that it's an inexpensive and powerful way to automate your home, all from an old Raspberry Pi that I had collecting dust in a junk drawer.