this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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anybody using homeassistant and having success? i feel like everything i try with it is extra complicated, but i'd love to hear others' success stories.

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[–] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yes. It's not a kettle as in the pot you put on the stove, but an electric water ... heater ... thingy. I honestly have no idea how to call it in english. The german word would be "Heißwasserspender", literally translating to "hot water dispenser". I disassembled it, soldered a tiny raspberry pi board to it that could control the device as you could with the buttons and wrote a rudimentary API that I now control via home assistant.

Within HA, I can control the kettle via calling the API of the pi. For example, I got a script that triggers if my girlfriends phone is entering my WLAN-network.

The call to the API looks like this:

rest_command:  
  kettle_set_params:  
    url: "http://kettle.local/"  
    method: POST  
    content_type: "application/json"  
    payload: '{"amount": {{ amount }}, "temp": {{ temp }}}'  

It's dynamic, so for the "default black tea" she likes, these are the arguments

set_kettle_default_black_tea:  
  alias: "Set Kettle"  
  sequence:  
    - service: rest_command.kettle_set_params  
      data:  
        amount: 500  
        temp: 100  

And this is the trigger:

- alias: "Start kettle when Ana home"  
  trigger:  
    - platform: state  
      entity_id: device_tracker.pixel6_ana  
      from: "not_home"  
      to: "home"  
      for: "00:00:10"  
  condition:  
    - condition: time  
      after: "18:00:00"  
      before: "20:00:00"  
  action:  
    - service: script.set_kettle_default_black_tea  

That call is received by the pi, who then triggers the kettle. So every time my girlfriends phone is entering the wifi, it's between 18:00 and 20:00 and there's a cup present (done via a simple proximity sensor that I glued to the side of the kettle. That's also not known to the home assistant, I didn't really know how to feedback that information to it so I just had it handled by the pi itself), the kettle triggers and dispenses hot water. She can also do it manually via the home assistant app, I made a widget for that where you can just select temperature, amount and that's it.

I just hope the thing never breaks because I reassembled it using superglue, but then I noticed I forgot to install SSH on the pi, making it kinda an isolated piece of software that I just hope keeps running indefinitely lol.