I'm in the same situation as I started with Home Assistant about 5 years ago too. All my configuration is within Packages. The GUI is nice these days but still doesn't have the same organisation as Packages with respect to having all config for a particular "thing" in one place.
Really find your videos so helpful!!! I recently started with building a irrigation system also with nextion display, inspired by your video…but then discovered the new sprinkler in esphome… would love to see what you have done, cant wait for the video!! Also would like to know more why you moved to zha? Finally whats your opinion on node red? I use it for 80% of my automations…. Sorry this was a loaded comment :) started by just expressing your videos are a great inspiration!!! Keep it up
The springler video is coming next week, with 3 variants, from basic, more advanced, and some extras. And I will update the github repo as well. I am doing a video for the shutters in parallel. Will release it few days later. Current status - all works nicely, now just to do the video. I am not going to compare Node Red with native automation. All I do is to show you how it works, and I'll leave it for everybody to do own assessment. As with everything, there are people who prefer NR, other prefer other things, and that's fine. I liked Z2M, but ZHA is developed by the HA team, and I'd like to follow the development, so I installed that. Both work. Z2M gives you more control, ZHA is simpler and more closely integrated to HA I suppose.
Looking forward to the videos. Particularly to see what you do with your outside venetian window blinds. I posted a nice shelly 2.5 espbome yaml with current sensing, angles for swiss style switches to the HA forum. The cover logic 100% equals fully open of HA is still a pain to use workarounds. There is a month of what the heck thread about it but the programmers won't implement a option to reverse the logic.
The time-based cover in ESPHome does not support tilt. So I'd probably have to make it as a custom cover and write everything on C++ code - basically copy what I have in the Arduino code. And there I have a few tweaks like self calibration at the extended position. Not sure how would that work. I might eventually do that, but I might also throw away the whole thing and just buy some consumer Zigbee actuators. Have not decided yet.
I would love to have the tilt support within the Shelly 2.5s as they are so reliable and easy to handle. Currently I use Homematic IP FBLs for my raffstore blinds as I have Homematic in the house for controlling floor heating. It’s working but self calibration of the Shellies is another level.
It sounds like I'm getting into Home Assistant at a good time. I'm going to probably have a minimalist dashboard designed around HA Floorplan, with a lot of my interaction with the system being handled by text to speech (MaryTTS) and Rhasspy Speech to Text.
Všetko sa snažia zlepšit ale ten Dashboard podľa mna je katastrofa je to proste strašne škarede v zaklade, ani to nema žiadne dajake dobre funkcie, hrany su ostre tiene su tam ako keby sme v 2010, a toto tam hlavne chyba žeby karty išlo presuvať pomocou myšou kde chceš, ešte že existuje vertical card lebo to je katastrofa.
