Home Assistant Thread

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everettpsycho

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#3274570 22-Aug-2024 20:13

I'm on the fence here about getting and old PC with proxmox and going down this route. On the one hand it looks fun, but on the other hand I'm not sure I have the time to sink in to it at the moment.

My biggest annoyance with early playing was Toshiba heat pumps don't worm with it without some temperamental hack job python code. I'm wondering if kts worth the effort if one of my main automations from Google home won't even work.

richms

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#3274718 23-Aug-2024 11:59

Rather than an old PC, look at some of the mini PCs on aliexpress. ~$200 will get you a N100, 8 gigs ram and 256 SSD in it with a power brick and lower power use than some old powerhog desktop.

Ive just ordered another firebat one because the last one is now running my screens for watching my cameras on my 3d printers since it has 3 HDMI outputs on it.

Richard rich.ms

neb

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#3274726 23-Aug-2024 12:40

I got an ODroid H4, fanless operation, runs from a laptop power supply, costs a bit more but slightly less dodgy than the Ali stuff.

Handle9

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#3274857 23-Aug-2024 19:01

tieke:

It's noticeable that at least four of the complaints in that rant are about lights, which probably reflects that the author/other users/guests interact with them on a daily basis. I've found the light integrations are one of the most solid in HA, so it's not the software or updates that is the issue here, it is the physical interface.

It's often the network not the devices or integration. Once zigbee networks get to a certain size they need a bit of structure about them. If they have grown organically from a couple of devices close to the coordinator to something fairly large over a whole house they need enough permanently powered routers to work well.

I bit the bullet a couple of years ago and redid my zigbee network. It's gone from pretty flaky to rock solid with around 60 devices on it. This is in a fairly large 2 level house made of concrete so it's a pretty poor environment for RF.

Handle9

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#3274858 23-Aug-2024 19:04

kiwijunglist:

Someone mentioned docker was best way to run HA.

A lot of people feel virtual machine is better because home assistant has addon features that run in separate dockers and HA manages all the complimentary docker addons for you if you run it as a virtual machine.

Hard agree. I went from docker to a HASSIO VM a year or so ago. It's all sooooo much simpler to work with. I have around 30 docker containers doing other things so I'm not bad with docker but it was a royal PIA with all the HA services.

Tinkerisk

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#3274888 24-Aug-2024 02:37

Odroid M1-8GB, 64GB eMMC, 1TB NVME, PoE-supplied from the „core network“ UPS

Home Assistant ZBT-1 thread+zigbee radio, homematic BidCoS radio (both USB)

Direct control - no hubs involved.

- NET: FTTH & VDSL, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

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Tinkerisk

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#3274890 24-Aug-2024 03:26

richms:

Ive just ordered another firebat one because the last one is now running my screens for watching my cameras on my 3d printers since it has 3 HDMI outputs on it.

I do nearly the same with a single Raspberry Pi 3+ with Octoprint for two 3D printers and two cameras (4x USB 2.0). The camera streams are displayed in the Octoprint dashboard.

Tinkerisk

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#3274946 24-Aug-2024 15:15

tieke:

The simplest method is to adopt the existing interface - for instance I use Xiaomi Yeelight ceiling lights in most of our rooms, so just stick their big battery-powered switch/dimmers either next to or over the existing light switches, or use Shelley relays in light switch enclosures to make non-Xiaomi lights automation-compatible. Home automation examples that make people's everyday lives worse are unlikely to be adopted.

I only use zigbee/thread controllable lights/lamps, bridge the old light switch with a terminal to ‘continuous light’ and mount this over instead of the old cover: (So there is nothing that is incompatible - it is either the smart lamp from the beginning or the old lamp with a zigbee bulb mostly from ikea or a few from hue - as said, I don‘t use any hubs and prevent WiFi as much as possible).

everettpsycho

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#3275009 24-Aug-2024 19:59

richms:
Rather than an old PC, look at some of the mini PCs on aliexpress. ~$200 will get you a N100, 8 gigs ram and 256 SSD in it with a power brick and lower power use than some old powerhog desktop.

Ive just ordered another firebat one because the last one is now running my screens for watching my cameras on my 3d printers since it has 3 HDMI outputs on it.

Tempting but my plan for the PC is also trying some other things out including moving the plex server from a machine that can't handle transcoding. I want to swap my old "server" that was set up in a hurry with windows 10 and a single hard drive over to be purely a nas with a raid array on a better OS. The newer 8th gen i7 machine will be a small desktop and just shove a single big drive inside to back up the key nas files then experiment with home assistant, vpn, pi hole, octo print, local photo backup and anything else I can think of using it for.

Only using the old PC as works offloading them dirt cheap for their specs.

jogiles

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#3310539 19-Nov-2024 08:56

One thing that I've been working on, with a bunch of others around the world (but largely in NZ), is the eSpa project - a combination of custom firmware (running on an ESP32) and a hardware spec (or, buy a pre-built PCB) for controlling spanet spa pools. This integrates nicely with Home Assistant. You can learn more about our project at https://espa.diy, and join us on Discord at https://discord.gg/faK8Ag4wHn. Building the hardware is relatively simple, but for those who do not want to risk shorting out their spa pool, I have put together this PCB (almost at cost price) here: https://store.jonathangiles.net/product/espa-mini/

-- Jonathan

neb

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#3310658 19-Nov-2024 15:06

Tinkerisk: Odroid M1-8GB, 64GB eMMC, 1TB NVME, PoE-supplied from the „core network“ UPS

How has the eMMC held up? Or are you directing all the writes to the NVME?

(For non-HA people wondering about the question, HA never stops scribbling to disk and is notorious for trashing storage media).

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Tinkerisk

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#3313007 26-Nov-2024 11:33

neb:

Tinkerisk: Odroid M1-8GB, 64GB eMMC, 1TB NVME, PoE-supplied from the „core network“ UPS

How has the eMMC held up? Or are you directing all the writes to the NVME?

(For non-HA people wondering about the question, HA never stops scribbling to disk and is notorious for trashing storage media).

Yup, to NVMe and recording to NAS. eMMC is for OS only

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