Clean Home Assistant setup thanks to Watchman Monitoring

Expected Reading Time: 8 minutes

Do you want to optimize your smart home with Home Assistant and ensure that everything runs smoothly at the same time? Then Watchman is exactly what you need as a monitoring tool. This powerful tool not only helps you to keep your Home Assistant setup clean and efficient, but also to detect and fix potential problems early on. Let's go through together how you can use Watchman to keep your smart home clean at all times.

For detailed instructions and an explanation of all configuration options, I recommend the YouTube video linked below. In this video, every single setting is explained in detail so that you receive comprehensive instructions for the exact setup. You can find any code from the video in this article so that you can use it directly without having to type it in.

What is Home Assistant?

Home Assistant is an open source platform for home automation that aims to connect and centrally control all devices in the home. It is designed to provide a unified user interface and simple, flexible control for a variety of smart home devices from different ecosystems. Here are some points in favor of Home Assistant:

1. CompatibilityHome Assistant supports thousands of devices and services from various manufacturers, including lighting, air conditioning, heating, cameras, weather sensors, voice assistants and more.
2. Local controlUnlike many commercial smart home platforms that rely on cloud services, Home Assistant runs locally on your network. This means increased privacy and reliability, as your smart home devices work even without an active internet connection.
3. Automation and scenesOne of the main features of Home Assistant is the ability to create complex automations and scenarios. For example, you can have lights switch on automatically when it gets dark or turn on the heating when the temperature falls below a certain level.
4. Simple user interfaceHome Assistant offers a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to monitor and control devices. This interface is fully customizable.
5. Integration with voice assistantsHome Assistant can be integrated with voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to enable voice-controlled control of your smart home devices.
6. Open source and community-drivenSince Home Assistant is open source, it is supported by an active community that is constantly developing new integrations and improving existing ones.
7. Data protection and securityAs a locally running platform, Home Assistant has the advantage that the data remains within its own network. This protects privacy and increases security compared to cloud-based solutions.

In summary, Home Assistant is a powerful and flexible solution for those who want to design their own smart home and control their devices centrally, regardless of the manufacturer or ecosystem.

Watchman: An overview

Watchman is a custom integration for Home Assistant that is used to monitor missing entities and services in the configuration files. It captures all Home Assistant entities and services mentioned in the YAML configuration files, checks their current status and reports which ones are unavailable or missing.

The results can be saved as a text table or sent via a notification service. The integration also provides settings options for notification services, entities/services to ignore and reporting options. Watchman facilitates proactive maintenance and helps to keep automations running smoothly

Watchman offers several advantages for Home Assistant users: It helps to monitor the integrity of the Home Assistant configuration by identifying missing or unavailable entities and services. This makes maintenance and troubleshooting much easier. By detecting problems at an early stage, users can avoid outages and ensure the reliability of their smart home systems. In addition, Watchman offers customization options for notifications and reports, allowing users to flexibly design their system monitoring. Further details can be found on the GitHub page from Watchman.

Monitoring your smart home components

With Watchman, you always have an overview of the status of your smart home devices. You can see at a glance which devices are working properly and which may need attention. This not only saves you time, but also the worry that unexpected problems could affect your smart home experience.

Proactive maintenance

One of the best features of Watchman is the ability to proactively respond to potential problems before they become serious. You receive notifications about updates that need to be carried out or about devices that show unusual activity. This allows you to take action to keep your system up to date and secure.

Personalized reports

Watchman provides you with detailed reports on the status of your Home Assistant setup. These reports are not only useful for keeping track, but also for identifying trends and adjusting your smart home configuration accordingly. You can even set how often you want to receive these reports, giving you flexible monitoring.

Security and data protection

Security is a crucial aspect of any smart home. With Watchman, you can be sure that your data is protected. The tool ensures that your information remains secure and private while monitoring your system. So you can relax knowing that your smart home environment is not only efficient, but also secure.

Installation of HACS and integration of Watchman in Home Assistant

Step 1: Installing HACS in Home Assistant

Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) is a custom add-on for Home Assistant that provides access to a variety of custom integrations and plugins developed by the community. How to install HACS:

1. Check requirements: Make sure that your Home Assistant is ideally up to date.
2. Download Execute script: Open a terminal for the Docker container version or the core version.
   • Docker: Dial into the container with: docker exec -it homeassistant bash or (similar)
   • Core: Switch to the user who is running Home Assistant
   • Execute the following command for both variants:
     wget -O - https://get.hacs.xyz | bash -
3. Restarting the Home Assistant: After the files have been copied, restart Home Assistant.
4. Integrate HACS into Home Assistant: In the Home Assistant interface, go to "Configuration" > "Integrations" > "Add" and search for HACS. Add it and enter your GitHub token if prompted.

For the supervised version, please refer to the Documentation of HACS itself to read about the installation.

Step 2: Add Watchman integration via HACS

Once HACS is installed, you can simply add PowerCalc:

1. Open HACS: Go to HACS in the Home Assistant interface.
2. Search for integrationClick on "Integrations" and use the search function to search for "Watchman".
3. Install WatchmanFind Watchman in the list and click on "Install". This will add the integration to your Home Assistant.
4. Restarting the Home Assistant: Start Home Assistant again to apply the changes.
5. Configure WatchmanAfter restarting, you can set up and customize Watchman via "Configuration" > "Integrations" in Home Assistant.

Conclusion

With these steps, you have successfully installed HACS in your Home Assistant and added the PowerCalc integration. This powerful combination opens up a world of additional features and customizations that have been and are being developed by the Home Assistant community. More blog posts and videos on useful integrations to follow. If you don't want to miss out, subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Configuration of Watchman

You can create a map for the Home Assistant Dashboard using Markdown. You can use the following template for this:

<h2> <ha-icon icon='mdi:shield-half-full'></ha-icon> Watchman report</h2>
<h3>Missing Entities: {{ states.sensor.watchman_missing_entities.state }} </h3>
{%- for item in state_attr("sensor.watchman_missing_entities", "entities") %}
<hr> <table><tr> <td>
<ha-icon icon='mdi:{%- if item.state=="missing"-%}cloud-alert'
{%- elif item.state="="unavail"" -%}cloud-off-outline' else-%}cloud-question'
{%- endif -%}></ha-icon>
{{ item.id }} [{{item.state}}] <a title="{{item.occurrences}}">
{{item.occurrences.split('/')[-1].split(':')[0]}}</a>
</td></tr></table>
{%- endfor %}

<br>

<h3> Missing Services: {{states.sensor.watchman_missing_services.state }} </h3>
{%- for item in state_attr("sensor.watchman_missing_services", "entities") %} 
<hr> <table><tr> <td>
<ha-icon icon='mdi:cloud-alert'></ha-icon>
{{ item.id }}
<a title="{{item.occurrences}}">{{item.occurrences.split('/')[-1].split(':')[0]}}</a>
</td></tr></table>
{%- endfor %}

Automated report by Watchman

alias: Report - Watchman
description: Creates & sends a monthly Watchman Report
trigger:
  - platform: time
    at: "00:00:00"
  - platform: template
    value_template: "{{ now().day == 1 }}"
condition: []
action:
  - service: watchman.report
    data:
      create_file: true
      send_notification: true
      parse_config: false
      chunk_size: false
mode: single

This automation, named "Report - Watchman", is configured to create and send a Watchman report on a monthly basis. It is activated by two triggers: firstly, daily at midnight and secondly, when the current day is the first of the month. There are no conditions that must be met for the actions to be executed. The actions include creating a file for the report, sending a notification about the report without analyzing the configuration files and without splitting into chunks (chunk_size is false). The "single" mode means that the automation is only executed once.

YouTube video implementation

Conclusion

Watchman revolutionizes the way we manage and monitor our smart home with Home Assistant by providing an indispensable tool for keeping it running smoothly and efficiently. By identifying missing or faulty entities and services at an early stage, it makes maintenance and troubleshooting much easier, avoiding breakdowns and increasing the reliability of the system.

Integration with HACS and the ability to create personalized reports provide a flexible and user-friendly solution for monitoring smart home components. Security and privacy are always at the forefront, giving users peace of mind that their data is safe. The step-by-step guide to installing HACS and Watchman, complemented by the YouTube video, makes getting started and using Watchman accessible to everyone. With Watchman, managing your smart home system becomes a worry-free and efficient process that takes the performance and security of your home assistant setup to a new level.

Interested, but lack time or knowledge?

No problem. Contact me and we will discuss your requirements. No matter if business or private.