Solar Automation Planner

Tell us about your solar setup and we'll recommend the right HA automations — with the logic thresholds and YAML snippets to implement them.

How to use — Solar Automation Planner
  1. Select your inverter integration type — SolaX, Solarman, Victron, Shelly EM, or other. This determines which sensor entity names are used in the generated YAML.
  2. Enter your solar system size (kWp) and battery capacity (kWh). These set the threshold values in the automations.
  3. Tick the loads you want to automate: geyser, AC, pool pump, washing machine, EV charger.
  4. Click Generate Plan — the tool creates working HA automation YAML for each selected load, tailored to your system.
  5. Click any automation card to expand it and see the full YAML, logic explanation, and implementation notes.
  6. Copy the YAML and paste it into your Home Assistant configuration.yaml or automations.yaml file.
⚡ Your Solar System
5 kW
10 kWh
🏠 Your Loads
Air Conditioner / Heat Pump
Biggest controllable load — 1–3.5kW
Electric Geyser / Water Heater
2–3kW — huge solar opportunity
Pool Pump
0.5–1.5kW — ideal solar load
Washing Machine / Dryer
Schedule to run during peak solar
EV Charger
Best solar use case — charge from excess
Battery-backed loads (load shedding)
Protect battery for outage use
Configure your system on the left to see automation recommendations

Hardware & Protocol Chooser

Zigbee, WiFi, Z-Wave or Matter — the right choice depends on what you're automating. Select what you want to control and we'll recommend the best protocol and specific devices.

How to use — Hardware & Protocol Chooser
  1. Select your priority: reliability and local control (Zigbee), easy setup (WiFi), or a combination.
  2. Select your setup level — whether you already have a Zigbee coordinator and MQTT broker set up.
  3. Tick every category you want to automate: lights, smart plugs, temperature sensors, door sensors, motion detectors, energy monitoring, covers, outdoor.
  4. The tool recommends specific device models for each category, rated by reliability, local control, and value.
  5. If you don't yet have a Zigbee coordinator, the tool will recommend the SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus as the top choice.
  6. Each recommendation includes the reason for the suggestion and setup notes.
🎛️ What Do You Want to Automate?
Lights
Switching, dimming, colour
Smart Plugs / Switches
On/off with power monitoring
Temperature / Humidity Sensors
Room climate monitoring
Door / Window Sensors
Security and climate automation
Motion Sensors
Presence detection, light automation
Energy Monitoring
Whole-home or circuit-level power
Covers / Blinds / Curtains
Motorised window coverings
Outdoor / Garden
Irrigation, outdoor lights, weather

📡
Configure your requirements on the left

Automation Ideas Generator

Tick what hardware you have. Each idea expands with working YAML, implementation steps, and required hardware. A printable shopping list builds automatically.

How to use — Automation Ideas Generator
  1. Tick every type of hardware you currently have installed in your Home Assistant setup.
  2. The tool shows automations you can implement right now with your existing hardware, and ones that need additional devices.
  3. Click any automation card to expand it — you'll see the YAML code, step-by-step implementation instructions, and a hardware list.
  4. Expanding a card automatically adds its hardware requirements to the Shopping List sidebar on the right.
  5. Use the 🖨️ Print button on the sidebar to print your hardware shopping list.
  6. Difficulty ratings: Easy (copy-paste YAML), Intermediate (some HA configuration required), Advanced (Node-RED or complex logic).
🎛️ What Do You Have?
💡
Select what you have above to see automation ideas
🛒 Hardware Shopping List
Select automations to build your shopping list

Node-RED Flow Gallery

Real production Node-RED flows from a live Home Assistant installation — 869 entities, 10kW solar, 3-zone irrigation, biltong box monitoring, and AI-powered AC control. Import the JSON directly into your Node-RED.

💡 Why Node-RED instead of HA automations? HA automations are great for simple triggers. Node-RED shines for complex logic: multi-condition decision trees, CSV logging, API calls, sequential timing with delays, stateful flows, and retry logic. For solar automation especially, the visual flow editor makes complex behaviour easy to understand and debug.
🔴 Getting started with Node-RED in HA: Install the Node-RED Community addon from the HA addon store. The fs node (for CSV writing) requires setting up via a Setup tab with global.set('fs', require('fs')) — it cannot use require() inside regular function nodes due to sandbox restrictions. See our Node-RED blog post for full setup instructions.

Lovelace Dashboard Builder

Select what you want to display and get ready-to-paste Lovelace YAML for your Home Assistant dashboard. Based on real card configurations from a live 10kW solar system.

How to use — Dashboard Builder
  1. Select your inverter brand — this loads the correct sensor entity names for SolaX, Solarman, Victron, or Shelly.
  2. Toggle the cards you want on your dashboard: solar production graph, battery gauge, grid power, energy flow diagram, AC control, load toggles, weather.
  3. Select your layout: Grid (responsive masonry), Vertical (mobile-friendly), or Compact (information-dense).
  4. The YAML panel on the right updates in real time. Click Copy All to copy the complete Lovelace configuration.
  5. In Home Assistant: go to your dashboard → Edit → three-dot menu → Raw Configuration Editor → paste the YAML.
  6. Required HACS frontend addons are listed in the info box — install these first for the best card support.
🎨 What to Display?
Solar production overview card
Live PV power, daily production, self-consumption
Battery status card
SOC gauge, charge rate, estimated runtime
Grid import/export card
Live grid power, daily import/export totals
Energy flow diagram
Visual solar → battery → home → grid flow
AC / Climate control card
Thermostat card with solar mode indicator
Load controls (geyser, pool, plugs)
Quick toggles with power monitoring
Weather + forecast
Tomorrow's solar forecast from weather integration
Notification history log
Recent automation alerts in a logbook card

💡 Required frontend addons: For the best cards, install via HACS: mini-graph-card (sparkline graphs), button-card (custom buttons), mushroom cards (clean modern look), and apexcharts-card (full chart support).
📋 Generated Lovelace YAML

Paste into HA Dashboard → Edit → Raw Config Editor

Configure options on the left to generate dashboard YAML

Alexa + Home Assistant + Local AI

3-layer DIY integration. Free-form voice queries answered from live sensor data in 3-5 seconds. Zero cloud AI costs — all processing runs on your Pi.

How to use — Alexa Integration
  1. Start with Layer 1 (Nabu Casa Smart Home Skill) — direct device control, no code, 15 minutes.
  2. Add Layer 2 (AWS Lambda + Alexa Developer Console) for free-form voice queries to local AI.
  3. The two most critical gotchas: AWS region must be eu-west-1 (Ireland not Stockholm), and rest_command needs a full HA restart to load — not just a reload.
  4. For Layer 3 (Ollama + Node-RED): the warmup and process function nodes must use byte-identical SYSTEM prompts. One character different = 22-second responses instead of 3-4 seconds.
  5. The scripts guide has copy-paste YAML for all 21 voice commands from a real Pi 5 installation.
Architecture
Echo Dot → Alexa → Lambda
                    │
                    ▼ input_text.alexa_query
              Home Assistant
                    │
                    ▼ Node-RED webhook
              Ollama qwen2.5:1.5b
                    │
                    ▼ HA script → sensors
              Echo Dot speaks ✓
Total latency3–5 seconds
Cloud AI costR0
Nabu Casa~R150/month
Lambda (AWS)Free tier
Ollama modelqwen2.5:1.5b
⚠️ Critical Gotchas
AWS region must be eu-west-1 (Ireland) — Stockholm silently fails
rest_command needs a full HA restart — not just reload
KV cache mismatch = 22-second responses — both SYSTEM prompts must be identical
Pick "Provision your own" — Alexa-hosted shows Amazon's ARN not yours
🎤 Voice Commands
Layer 2 — "Alexa, ask house..."
🔋 battery status / will the battery last
⚡ charge overnight / import to 75 percent
☀️ solar status / good morning / good night
🔌 is there loadshedding / start Eskom import
💧 run zone 2 for 8 minutes / stop sprinklers
❄️ set aircon to 22 cool mode / aircon boost
🥩 biltong status / geyser boost
Layer 1 — Direct (no "ask house")
💡 turn on geyser / set aircon to 22