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Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

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Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#41
post #4
post #2

Very handy considering myself (and most people I know) have their HA+devices setup with as local-only. I don’t want my home automation connected to the internet at all, but I still want notifications if my kids room temps dropped too low or my garage door opens in the middle of the night.

I've been using the signal-cli add-on for this with a lot of success. I can add attachments, have the notifications show up on all my devices, and share a group with my partner so we both get the same notifications. All end-to-end encrypted.

I also use signal-cli for notifications including my own custom integrations using MQTT. And to connect remotely to the Home Assistant (HA) UI I use an SSH tunnel. But this is how I enjoy using HA, integrating with my own projects.

What I also learned to enjoy about HA is the diversity of the community of users that found success in home automation without completely relying on "cloud" solutions. I think this is the ethos of this project: local control comes first.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#42
post #39

HA is great and their support Discord is the easiest way I’ve had getting tech support for any software product ever. I wish they had a better system for packaging it than their current system (either you run their closed down Docker image or their even more closed down Linux distro where you can’t enable ssh without an add on). But once you get it up and running it does exactly what it says on the tin and does it we…

> either you run their closed down Docker image or their even more closed down Linux distro where you can’t enable ssh without an add on What would you suggest? For their target audience (people who are tech savvy, but don't necessarily know anything about Linux or programming) this seems like the ideal way to distribute it. Their website also has virtual machine images in various formats, and instructions to manuall…

I also wish there was an option for people wanting to have a bit more control or fit it more tidily into an existing home stack. I hacked my own container image so that I could run it in my home k8s, but it wasn't easy — there are lots of undocumented dependencies, and there's no clear separation of state and config. It has by far the untidiest architecture of all the software I run on my home servers. Once it's up and running, though, HA is an amazing bit of software.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#43
post #36

What kind of hardware do people install Home Assistant hubs on? Does anyone have a good guide to a minimal but clean smart home setup?

I use openHAB, but they're comparable enough I guess. I have a Raspberry Pi 4 that runs it, with a connected Aeotec Z-Wave USB stick that I have all my smart switches, thermostat, security system, etc. connected to. The OS is running off a SD card, and despite the horror stories I hear about them wearing out and dying, mine's been running for a couple years now without issue. I've been planning to replace it with a S…

I burned through 3 SD cards (even "endurance" SD cards) before I finally switched to an NVMe over USB for my HA RaspPi. I highly recommend the switch even if you aren't having card failures. The performance improvement alone makes it worthwhile.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#44

What kind of hardware do people install Home Assistant hubs on? Does anyone have a good guide to a minimal but clean smart home setup?

I run it on my Synology NAS inside a docker container, managed via the command line rather than the web GUI. I know this is not the best solution but since my NAS is on 24/7 anyway and has heaps of spare RAM and CPU, it's the best solution for me. If you want to buy hardware, get the ODROID N2. It's the closest thing to an officially supported hardware platform in the HA universe. (The ODROID N2 was bundled and sold…

I do this too. What are the downsides to this solution?

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#45

Has Home Assistant settled on what you can configure via YAML and what needs to be done via the web UI yet? I left the ecosystem last year after the split became too hard to mentally keep track of.

Officially yes, practically no.

It's defined, but it's still a total mess as not everything is updated completely to support UI configuration.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run it on my Synology NAS inside a docker container, managed via the command line rather than the web GUI. I know this is not the best solution but since my NAS is on 24/7 anyway and has heaps of spare RAM and CPU, it's the best solution for me. If you want to buy hardware, get the ODROID N2. It's the closest thing to an officially supported hardware platform in the HA universe. (The ODROID N2 was bundled and sold…

I do this too. What are the downsides to this solution?

Probably none. But Synology software updates could brick anything at any time.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#47

Has Home Assistant settled on what you can configure via YAML and what needs to be done via the web UI yet? I left the ecosystem last year after the split became too hard to mentally keep track of.

Of course not. Now there's a third way - Blueprints.

I've bitched about HA before and won't rehash all of it. The project requires a lot of time investment and the devs care mainly about playing with the latest tooling. From introducing and sunsetting a major installation method in the span of ~4 years to dropping Python 3.7 despite it not being EOL until 2023, I don't have time or patience to relearn everything with every little release.

Switched to Hubitat earlier this year. The GUI is ugly and there's a small learning curve. However it just works.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#48

Has Home Assistant settled on what you can configure via YAML and what needs to be done via the web UI yet? I left the ecosystem last year after the split became too hard to mentally keep track of.

What did you switch to, if anything? I eventually just stopped updating altogether due to the constant breaking changes, but haven't settled on anything else yet.

I bought a Hubitat earlier this year. It just works.

GUI's a bit dated, and you kind of have to get used to the philosophy. However, once you get the hang of it, it's reliable, easy, and flexible enough for my needs.

Re: Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support

#50

What kind of hardware do people install Home Assistant hubs on? Does anyone have a good guide to a minimal but clean smart home setup?

I use a good enough NUC with an i7 core. But it runs multiple other services. I have some notes on how I set it up on my old blog: https://blog.braincoke.fr/homelab/homelab-introduction/.
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