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Hungry Machines Docs

Install the App

The Hungry Machines app lives inside Home Assistant. It adds a sidebar panel for managing your appliances, schedules, and preferences, plus two optional dashboard cards for at-a-glance status. Once it’s installed and signed in, it collects the readings the optimizer needs and applies each day’s schedule to your devices automatically — no code, no API keys to manage.

This is the path for most people. If you’d rather build your own integration or a non–Home Assistant app, see For Developers.

What you need

Section titled “What you need”
  • Home Assistant — any installation type (HAOS, Container, Supervised, or Core).
  • HACS installed and configured.
  • A Hungry Machines account — created at hungrymachines.io.
  • For each HVAC you want optimized, a climate.* entity in Home Assistant. A power sensor, a dedicated indoor-temperature sensor, and a humidity sensor are optional but help Hungry Machines learn your home faster. A weather.* entity is optional too — pick it later to feed the optimizer your local forecast.

Step 1 — Create your Hungry Machines account

Section titled “Step 1 — Create your Hungry Machines account”

Go to hungrymachines.io and sign up. Confirm your email when the verification message arrives. The email and password you set there are what you’ll use to sign in inside Home Assistant.

Step 2 — Install through HACS

Section titled “Step 2 — Install through HACS”

  1. In Home Assistant, open HACS → ⋮ (top right) → Custom repositories.

  2. Add the repository:

    • Repository: https://github.com/hungrymachines/energy-dashboard
    • Type: Integration
    • Click Add.

  3. Search for Hungry Machines in HACS and click Download.

  4. Restart Home Assistant when HACS prompts you.

Step 3 — Add the integration

Section titled “Step 3 — Add the integration”

  1. Open Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration.

  2. Search for Hungry Machines and click it.

  3. Enter your hungrymachines.io email and password and click Submit.

That’s the only thing the setup dialog asks for — you’ll pick your appliances and their entities in the panel next. A Hungry Machines entry now appears in your sidebar, and the two dashboard cards become available in the card picker. The integration also starts working in the background: it captures readings from your appliances, pushes your weather forecast once a day, and each morning fetches and applies the day’s optimized schedules.

Step 4 — Sign in and add your appliances

Section titled “Step 4 — Sign in and add your appliances”

Click the Hungry Machines entry in the sidebar and sign in with the same email and password. The first time in, your dashboard is empty — use Add appliance to register each device you want optimized:

  • Pick a type — HVAC, EV charger, home battery, water heater, or solar.
  • For HVAC, choose the climate.* entity it controls, and optionally a dedicated indoor-temperature, humidity, or power sensor. Have more than one HVAC? Add each separately — every unit gets its own schedule and learns independently.
  • For EV charger, battery, or water heater, choose the switch and any state-of-charge or tank-temperature sensor.
  • Solar is forecast-only — enter your system size and orientation, no entity needed.

Each appliance then shows its own card with today’s schedule, an Edit constraints button, and a pause toggle. You can edit or remove an appliance any time.

Step 5 — Add the dashboard cards (optional)

Section titled “Step 5 — Add the dashboard cards (optional)”

The panel is the main surface; the cards are extras you can drop onto your existing Lovelace dashboards. In any dashboard, click Add card → search “Hungry Machines”, then fill in the entity IDs that match your home:

type: custom:hm-thermostat-card
# Optional: pick a specific HVAC when you have more than one registered.
# With exactly one HVAC the card resolves it automatically.
# appliance_id: 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555
entities:
  indoor_temp: sensor.living_room_temp
  outdoor_temp: sensor.outside_temp
  hvac_action: sensor.hvac_action
type: custom:hm-savings-card
# Optional: scope the savings figure to one HVAC.
# Omitted → whole-home average + next scheduled run.
# appliance_id: 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555
entities:
  power: sensor.home_power

Sign-in is shared with the panel — once you’ve signed in there, the cards light up immediately.

Installing without HACS

Section titled “Installing without HACS”

If you don’t use HACS:

  1. Download hungry_machines.zip from the latest release.

  2. Unzip it into your Home Assistant config at custom_components/hungry_machines/ (create the directory if it doesn’t exist).

  3. Restart Home Assistant.

  4. Continue from Step 3 above.

Keeping the app up to date

Section titled “Keeping the app up to date”

When a new release ships, HACS shows an update badge. Click Update, then restart Home Assistant. Your sign-in and preferences carry across updates.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”