Windows developer machine build

Kiran Joy — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 09:55:39 GMT

For the last few months I have be waiting to finalise a custom build PC build to use as my developer workstation and also a home server. I will be using the Windows server 2016 as the main OS and multiple other OS as VM’s. With this in mind I wanted to get at-least 32 GB , will the option to upgrade it to 64 GB if needed. Below is the configuration I used for the build. Gaming was never considered while building this machine.

#	Item	Price	Comments
1.	Intel SSD 540 Series 240G 2.5in SATA	$119.00
2.	Intel Core i7 6700 Quad Core LGA 1151 3.4GHz CPU Processor	$439.00
3.	Gigabyte GeForce GT 730 2GB Video Card	$89.00
4.	Corsair CS55oM 550W ATX Power Supply, 80+ Gold Certified, Semi Modular Design, (4+4)pin EPS	$119.00	Initial plan was to buy a 240W, however after talking to the technician at the store changed it to 550W as he suggested that it is way too much for my needs
5.	Corsair Carbide Series 200R Compact ATX Case with Window	$95.00	Definitely way big for my needs by I also had in mind options to add additional HDD drives for media needs
6.	Corsair 32GB (2x16GB) CMK32GX4M2A2400C14 DD4 2400MHz Vengeance LPX DIMM Black	$249.00
7.	Asus Z170-K LGA1151 ATX Motherboard	$179.00
8.	ASUS PCE-N15 WLAN PCI-Express N300 LP	$18.00	This is a temporary addition and hence just purchased the cheapest one
	Total	$1307.00

I used a few items like a 2TB hdd and my dual monitor setup from my existing box in the new build and so not included in the above list. While I am not expert in PC building, I am fairly happy with this build and so far it is performing great.

Home assistant - Find who is home

Kiran Joy — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 23:49:55 GMT

One cool feature of home assistant to detect who is home by detecting what devices are connected to the WIFI network. This feature can then be used in a wide variety of situation to such as,

Detect an intruder if a sensor is activated when no one is home.
Turn off the lights\electrical equipments when no one is home to save power etc.

Setting this is really simple,

1) Update the configuration.yaml with the following and then restart home assistant. My home assistant is currently running on a Windows Server and the config file was found in this folder - C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming.homeassistant

device_tracker:
  - platform: ROUTER-PLATFORM
    host: ROUTER-IP
    username: YOURUSERNAME
    password: YOURPASSWORD
    interval_seconds: 10
    consider_home: 180

2) Set track to false for devices that you do not want to track in the newly created known_devices.yaml (This file will be automatically created after step 1.In my case, I only wanted to track our mobile phones and not the laptops. Restart home assistant again.

devicename:
  hide_if_away: false
  icon:Some icon
  mac: your mac
  name: friendly name
  picture:
  track: false
  vendor: ASUSTek COMPUTER INC.

3) Update the configuration.yaml to set "track_new _devices" to false. This wasn't initially added so that we could track all our devices to start with.Now that we have updated the config to track only the devices we want to track no new devices will show up in the dashboard.Without this, additional step all the devices that I set not to track keeps coming back every time Home Assistant was restarted

device_tracker:
  - platform: netgear
    host: 192.168.0.1
    username: admin
    password: password
    interval_seconds: 10
    consider_home: 180
    track_new_devices: false

Below is a screeshot of Me and my wife being detected based on the fact that both our phones are home.

Objectoverflow

Windows developer machine build

Home assistant - Find who is home

References