Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant • Hacker News Board

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#241

Post by grahamj » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 3:25 AM UTC

mminer237 wrote: post #28

Someone1234 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Land Rover the Land Rover of again? Highest cost per repair? Least likely off-road brand to be taken off-road? No.1 brand owned by rich land-owners? I legit don't get what that reference was going for. Home Assistant is a free and open source way of cross-connecting smart devices. It is incredibly powerful. It can easily save you money (e.g. garage door/motion sensor + thermostat temp adjustments), or allow y…

Closest to the first. He's joking that you can't own a Land Rover without being a mechanic and you can't use Home Assistant without being a programmer. I love Home Assistant, and except for the occasional update breaking config files it's been very reliable, but there is no way 95% of people could get it installed, let alone get it set up to do anything useful.

yeah I f'ing love HA, it's my favourite hobby. But as it turns out I'm a programmer so I guess it fits :D

HA is only good for normies if there's a techie setting it up and keeping it running.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#242

Post by grahamj » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 3:28 AM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #184

w0m wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Land Rovers extra hackable? Will be in need of a new car in a few years and that would help o.0

HA is not hackable, is a massive blob

huh? it's OSS

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#243

Post by grahamj » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 3:33 AM UTC

zyberzero wrote: post #54

qwertox wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been rolling my own stuff, mostly devices posting to custom python servers, storing data into influxdb and mongodb, triggering other servers on events, and lately also integrating Tasmota devices via MQTT, like the microwave, washing machine, computer monitors, small heating fans and the like. I migrated all Hue devices to zigbee2mqtt and am happy with the flexibility. Initially (7 years ago?) I refused to use H…

> What I'm missing out on is an (Android) app, and I think that this would be a good reason to think about moving over to HA. There is! The Home assistant companion - it brings you a lot of functionality in terms of location, notifications, sensors and what not into the HA world. https://companion.home-assistant.io/

I think they meant they're missing having one now, and so will switch to HA partly to have one.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#244

Post by XorNot » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 3:45 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #229

XorNot wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've ditched all ARP, mDNS in my setup. Everything is static IP addresses: it vastly improved robustness against network glitches, which absolutely will happen to you. If my router is unplugged or offline, everything with power can still communicate for example.

Nearly everything is static on mine too. I keep track of all the various devices' MAC addresses and assign them one IP. I also make sure that, even should I reinstall an OS on a device and "forget" to assign it a static IP, my router always assigns that MAC address the static IP I picked for that MAC address. I then keep a little range of IP addresses for unknown devices that the router is allowed to use when a new d…

Sorry what I meant was I don't depend on any dynamic discovery systems like inspecting ARP tables.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#245

Post by martyvis » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 3:50 AM UTC

mrandish wrote: post #132

dietr1ch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not buying any device that's not 3, everything else turns into a brick as soon as there's some larger change. I have some older Google Speakers, and while they seemed to be 2, after being powered off for long enough they can't be set up again, not even with internet access since their firmware was also outdated and the app isn't able to set them up again.

> I'm not buying any device that's not 3 Same here. My gold standard for this is hardware that comes with the open source Tasmota firmware (or which can be flashed to Tasmota). All 75 light switches in our new house run Tasmota firmware and to me it's the perfect combination of simple, flexible and yet deeply powerful. Devices can be controlled via MQTT, web requests, webUI console or serial and not only does it avoi…

/ All 75 light switches in our new house run Tasmota

75! Can't you just employ a butler? ;-)

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#246

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:12 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #240

farhanhubble wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way to go if you want get things running without wasting days. HA needs to be on on wired LAN for the best experience so one more reason to have it run on RPi and maybe have it sit next to your router.

Can openwrt run HA? To run it on the router itself?

[deleted]

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#247

Post by immibis » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:13 AM UTC

All I know about Xiaomi is that I bought a phone from them because the hardware specs were pretty good and the bootloader was unlockable. Upon trying to unlock the bootloader, I was told my account must be 30 days old (effectively, that I must have owned the phone for 30 days). Annoying, but not that unreasonable if it's some kind of anti-theft protection or something. After 30 days, every time I press the button for the first step of unlocking, I am told that I should try again on tomorrow's date. Apparently every 6 months they change the roadblocks to bootloader unlocking, and as of this moment there is no simple way to do it (their server no longer processes the requests), with rumours they plan to permanently disable it. This is pretty bad for my trust in their brand.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#248

Post by immibis » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:15 AM UTC

est wrote: post #230

seanvelasco wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you mean putting Bing on the start menu? Microsoft just made them opt-in by default and hoped that folks won't notice or care. you can disable them. for Chinese devices, there's no way to disable them. the difference is, for Windows, having Bing on start was a feature (although a bad one). for Chinese devices, you just get ads - you're stuck with ads while changing your brightness.

> for Chinese devices, there's no way to disable them. Uh can you stop spreading misinformation? Try google "disable xiaomi ads" it takes you like 5 minutes to make all ads gone on MIUI or HyperOS. Sure the opt-out buttons were hidden deep behind menus for maximizing profit. But be warned, in certain countries you are getting a modified ROM from your local re-seller, in that case some ads can't be disabled and they a…

Is there a way to unlock the bootloader? (The official ways give cryptic error messages on purpose to keep you distracted until your warranty runs out)

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#249

Post by sedatk » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:16 AM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #236

sedatk wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend has lost 15GB of sensor data because of corrupted MariaDB on his HA instance after an upgrade. It's definitely not a hands-off system.

Most people don't need 15GB of sensor data, so I don't think this is the best measure of HA being hands-off or suitable for the average person.

What makes you think that this issue is related to the amount of data? I see many reported MariaDB corruption issues after HA upgrade on the forums.

Re: Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

#250

Post by wlesieutre » Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 4:52 AM UTC

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…

Zigbee has hardwired switch options so you aren’t replacing batteries, but I haven’t done a lot of them because they’re far from dirt cheap. Only in places where I find automations or smartphone control to be particularly useful, or where existing dimmers died and I figured I might as well upgrade.

Inovelli Blue are the ones I’m using, but at $50 each they’re competing against products like Lutron Caseta.

In some other places where it’s not just wanting the zigbee control, but also that the hardwired switch is in a stupid location, I’m using IKEA’s RODRET remote combined with their relatively cheap Zigbee bulbs, instead of Zigbee wall switches. They run on AAA batteries and seem to last quite a while, but I can’t say how long yet.

For plug-in lights where you just want on/off (garage strip lights for instance) their TRETAKT Zigbee outlet is a steal at $7. There’s a fancier version with energy monitoring too.

I sleep a little better knowing all my line voltage devices are from real brands with UL or equivalent testing, and the only cheap parts from mystery vendors with unknown certifications are 3V coin cell door sensors.