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Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

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Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#211

Post by Havoc »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can m…

I’ve had the opposite experience. The literally home assistant branded zigbee stick refuses to work with HA („unsupported forward“) even after updates so all the zigbee stuff is in a box

Have had much better luck with WiFi. Both commercial and self soldered circuits. 2.4ghz WiFi is as battle tested as it gets and between esphome and tasmota it’s pretty open and customizable. Just need to steer clear of the usual cheap trash that comes with an app etc

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#212

Post by ytch »

parineum wrote: post #62
diggan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think (some correct me) you can group most devices into the following categories: 1. Device requires internet for setup, and for usage 2. Device requires internet for setup, but after that don't need it anymore 3. Device can be fully setup without internet, and used without internet Personally I aim to be fully within 3 as much as I can, but some devices are really hard to find at a good price point that falls into…

I'm curious about what you're issue was finding cameras as, to me, that's the easiest thing to find cloud free since they have a long history of being used in closed networks as POE, onvif cameras long before smart homes were really a thing.

Agree, I buy some Dahua POE cameras, It can be configured via browser locally with powerful AI feature, and work without internet access, although some drawbacks:

# Some of them are limited to 25 fps

# The model name are really a mess

# Some models are without hardware reset button, the only way to reset is register device to Dahua's cloud service with China phone number (although it is not enforced)

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#213

Post by briHass »

mrandish wrote: post #198
wlesieutre wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why I’m sticking to Zigbee as much as possible. The only place where there’s an internet connection is at the Home Assistant computer which has a Zigbee USB stick.

I settled on Zigbee for door, window and some motion sensors, stand-alone buttons and other devices that need to be battery powered but for everything that's built into a wall or perma-attached to an outlet (like light switches, dimmers and wall plugs) I use generic commodity hardware running open source Tasmota firmware. These devices are based on standard reference designs, made by multiple Shenzen manufacturers an…

This is why I haven't fully bought into Zigbee for any device that could possibly be wired and Wifi. I've already invested considerable money building a 2.4G (5G, really) wireless network: why not throw a few more relatively quiet devices on there. Zigbee is on the overcrowded 2.4GHz spectrum anyway.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#214

Post by harrall »

Havoc wrote: post #211
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can m…

I’ve had the opposite experience. The literally home assistant branded zigbee stick refuses to work with HA („unsupported forward“) even after updates so all the zigbee stuff is in a box Have had much better luck with WiFi. Both commercial and self soldered circuits. 2.4ghz WiFi is as battle tested as it gets and between esphome and tasmota it’s pretty open and customizable. Just need to steer clear of the usual chea…

Wi-Fi is battle tested but the network stacks on a lot of these devices are not.

Not a lot of these devices seem to understand the complexities of IP addressing (ARP, IP, etc.) very well so I’ve noticed they can lose connection easily. I’m sure you can limit yourself to products that have good network stacks but it’s hard to tell until you’ve wasted money. My Zigbee/Z-Wave devices have fared a lot better because the protocol is simpler and there is less for developers to screw up.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#215

Post by beala »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #192
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can m…

Also a tip that will save you few days and save you few things from destroying in anger. If you have existing zwave integration in let say alarm.com hub you first need to remove the devices from the network. Resetting DOES NOT WORK. Enjoy!

If your devices are bound to an old or broken controller, you can rescue your devices by putting a zwave controller into exclusion mode near the device and triggering exclusion on the device (how to do this is device specific, but it usually means "pressing whatever switch the device has"). Note that this is different than what many devices call a reset, which usually doesn't fully reset the device.

Exclusion mode should work on all zwave devices, because they have been certified as zwave compliant with the zwave alliance. The problem is that exclusion mode is extremely counter intuitive. Here is what you need to know:

1. Any zwave controller can exclude a device from any network. It does NOT have to be the controller for that network.

2. The controller needs to be near the device, as other devices won't forward the exclusion messages... at least I think this part is true.

So to rescue your device, you can plug a zwave controller into your laptop and walk around your house excluding devices. I wrote a blog post on how to do this: https://notes.bayesup.date/How+I+Made+a+Mobile+Z-Wave+Exclus.... There are some USB zwave controllers that have a built-in battery specifically so you can do this without involving your laptop.

Anyway, this is so poorly designed I suspect many devices have been thrown away in frustration even though they could have been saved. I almost did this to over $1,000 in zwave switches until I figured out how to write the freaking exclusion program myself and walk around with my laptop.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#216

Post by madeofpalk »

demosthanos wrote: post #208
mrj wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few things you can't do with docker (my case was an addon that I wanted). The install docs have a good grid of the differences.

Can't do with docker or can't do as easily with docker as you can with HAOS? My understanding has been that everything can be done by just adding new containers or files, and it's worked for me thus far.

If you're using things like USB Zigbee dongles, they can be a pain to pass through to the docker container, or just not possible at all on macOS.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#217

Post by afh1 »

protocolture wrote: post #207
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can m…

I have the weirdest issues with HA. Like I can either make or find everything I need, except audio inputs and outputs which seem like some kind of horrifying netherworld of barely supported through config hacks. Which wouldnt be an issue if their voice assistant stuff wasnt otherwise fantastic. They seem to really rely on some kind of all in one third party device, but I havent found any that work for me.

Yeah, I never got the audio (stt and tts) / assistant pipeline quite working, always the weirdest issues. I tried running with Docker and other configurations I don't even remember. Discord folks weren't very helpful. It's too bloated to run on old Pi's, requires new ones which are just computers by now and not cheap anymore. Gave up on it long ago.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#218

Post by epcoa »

madeofpalk wrote: post #216
demosthanos wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't do with docker or can't do as easily with docker as you can with HAOS? My understanding has been that everything can be done by just adding new containers or files, and it's worked for me thus far.

If you're using things like USB Zigbee dongles, they can be a pain to pass through to the docker container, or just not possible at all on macOS.

HAOS uses docker to containerize everything, so it can’t be that difficult, and it really is not. Docker has a —-device flag for this purpose, udev makes it easy enough to assign stable names.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#219

Post by tw04 »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can m…

Pretty much any z-wave device is going to work as well.

Highly recommended zooz devices, they’ve been robust and get consistent firmware updates.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#220

Post by beala »

Havoc wrote: post #211
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can m…

I’ve had the opposite experience. The literally home assistant branded zigbee stick refuses to work with HA („unsupported forward“) even after updates so all the zigbee stuff is in a box Have had much better luck with WiFi. Both commercial and self soldered circuits. 2.4ghz WiFi is as battle tested as it gets and between esphome and tasmota it’s pretty open and customizable. Just need to steer clear of the usual chea…

I think this advice is pretty context dependent. Plenty of folks have tons of trouble with their wifi network. For example, someone in an apartment with a very crowded wifi spectrum might have better luck with zwave (900 MHz).
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