T i m wrote:
Again, with advice here and in the hope of keeping it all local and
doing more powerful things, I've installed the Home Assistant system
(v Hassos) on a RPi3B and with a TI CC2531 ZigBee2MQTT (Coordinator
firmware) dongle ... and that also connects ok to a smart switch and I
can toggle that manually from the dashboard but I'm yet to get the
hang of any of the automation stuff.

I assume you or somebody reprogrammed the CC2531 with the zigbee2mqtt
firmware? So you're getting status and control of your devices OK in Home
Assistant?

Did you rename the devices to 'friendly' names, rather than 0x1583753737 or
whatever they come as? Whenever I pair a new device I immediately rename
it, otherwise I couldn't tell the individual devices apart (there's no IDs
printed on the outside).

Like when you go though creating the automation it doesn't seem to use
the 'friendly' name for the devices but the complex discovered names
(is that right?) and it seems to be un-intuitive / settings overload,
compared with the Lidl / Tyua 'Smart Life' app in any case.

I've not set this up before, but when I go to Configuration - Automations
there's a '+' button in the bottom right (sometimes this is hidden by a
popup which you need to dismiss - a bit of bad UI there).

Click + and it pops up a thing that says

"Type below what this automation should do, and we will try to convert into
a Home Assistant automation"

I don't trust such things, so I press SKIP.

Then it pops up a 'New Automation' box with:

Triggers - select a source of events. For example I could go with:
Trigger Type - Device
Device: 'Garage' (my name for it)
Then appears: Trigger: Garage_temperature temperature changes
Above: 0C
Below: 0C
Duration hh:mm:ss

(set to whatever thresholds and press 'Add Trigger')
I don't know how the 'Above', 'Below' and 'Duration' boxes work exactly, but
I could RTFM.


Actions:
Action type: Device
Device: 'Ikea power socket' (my name)
Action: Turn on Ikea power socket_switch
(press Add Action)

Click the floppy disc icon (bottom right) to save.


Seems simple enough to me. Yes there are lots of boxes, but that's because
there's lots of possible things you could do.


(I later went back and tried the 'we'll guess for you' thing - I typed in
something like 'turn on garage socket when temperature is below freezing'.
It guessed right about making a trigger based on a temperature sensor, but I
had to select the garage one. It seemed to think I wanted to turn on a
light, and my setup doesn't have any lights connected, so it left the rest
for me to set up. Doing it manually is less hassle)

So, can anyone point me to a very basic user guide / walkthrough for
say adding a smart light and remote control or making a smart switch
go on and off randomly please? I'm hoping if I have something that
works I'd be able to tweak it bit by bit and then understand it
better?

Just search 'Home Assistant automations' and there are YouTube videos.
I haven't watched them, but I'd be surprised if they didn't show you.

Theo