101–110 of 276 posts
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How is the container version crippled? An anecdotal data point, but I've been running the home-assistant container image on k8s without any issue, and I have a lot of integrations.
You can't run HACS, supervisor mode, Kelvin-sun matching plugin ...
Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…
They've also been pretty hostile to OS packagers trying to let you run it without dedicating an entire device to it, most publicly NixOS but they indicated they planned to insist the same against Fedora and Gentoo too: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 That behaviour kind of makes it hard to trust that it won't lead to the next Marak situation.
That said you have a point but in my usage of Home Assistant almost since birth when it was a single pip install command I can tell you the sheer functionality, integrations, etc make getting it fully running a nightmare. Not to mention from their perspective actually supporting it almost impossible. Maybe this speaks to a wider problem but I'm very happy to install it with docker on the distro and hardware of my choice and have everything more-or-less just work.
I referenced the operating system approach here because it's the quickest and easiest path to get up and running on a Raspberry Pi and therefore relevant to the article.
Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…
They've also been pretty hostile to OS packagers trying to let you run it without dedicating an entire device to it, most publicly NixOS but they indicated they planned to insist the same against Fedora and Gentoo too: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 That behaviour kind of makes it hard to trust that it won't lead to the next Marak situation.
Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…
My personal focus would be on cloud-free/self-hosted systems. Looping through the cloud as a convenience is fine but I don't really want to rely on cloudshit 100% for the operation of my house.
Also I've heard really good things about the Lutreon stuff? Not open, and not cheap, but it works, and I've heard the z-wave stuff isn't always 100%.
Home Assistant[1] is the best approach I've found for this. It's pretty amazing but has a pretty steep learning curve (although they're getting better and better at this). The real power of HA is the rich integration ecosystem[2], the Community Store[3], and that it runs locally (more reliable and much faster for things like motion sensors, etc). It expresses everything from every integration as an entity in various…
I'm still figuring out Home Assistant. I love that it has a real ecosystem and that it seems to have a decent HTTP/WebSocket API (that I just started playing with). Some things I don't love: * A lot of the integrations seem half-baked or to not quite fit the generic Lovelace cards. I think to some extent this is an inherent problem in supporting a lot of devices that have crappy, non-standardized APIs. Example: if I…
The "solution" I found was to poll, and use "choose", and sometimes some helper switches for state, to do what is needed. But, I think at any reasonable level of complexity, you're better off using one of the three python components: the one built into Home Assistant, pyscript, or AppDaemon.
Home Assistant Python: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/python_script/ No imports.
pyscript: https://github.com/custom-components/pyscript Full python. Supports Jupyter. Straightforward.
AppDaemon: https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/HASS_TUTORIAL.htm... Full python. A little lower level. Allows the creation of dashboards.
Related, the Matter protocol is on its way. I'm waiting for these devices before I redo my house, or put much more effort into any of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)
Better yet, run your home on Dell/HP micro computers that get decommissioned by enterprises/hospitals/big-orgs every 3 years. Find them on Offerup or FB or Craigslist market place for $100-$200. These are built solid with metal enclosures, fan cooled, UL certified PSU, ~7k CPUbenchmark.net. Usually i5 6thGen Intel CPU, 8GB-16GB RAM and have REAL storage(SSD) and M.2 NVMe. If you are lucky you might find vPro version…
I have to ask others, have people had good luck with this? I have tried to do this multiple times, with multiple models of Pi and every time after 6ish months it just seems to completely stop working. I can't get it to boot even off of a new sd card. Am I doing something wrong or does the hardware really not want to be run consistently in this manner? I have since decided to just run some home automation VM's on my m…
Have had the same problems, though it's always the Pi chewing up the SD card, a new card solves it. These guides really need a warning saying "If you find this useful, switch to using a server that doesn't rely on an SD card after ~6 months" The Pi is fantastic for getting a taste of self-hosting / home automation as it's so cheap but by no means should it be relied on. I moved our Home Assistant install to a docker…
The long-term solution for this (if you're up for it) is to PXE boot from your fileserver, so you don't need a SD card at all.
Slightly OT: > Run Your Home on a Raspberry Pi If you can get hold of one! I've been looking for a Pi4 for ages to use with PiHole but sold out everywhere, some have back orders for 2023 O_O Anyone got any recommendations of other devices that work well with PiHole? I have a Mac Mini acting as a home server but from what I've read, PiHole does not run great on it via Docker...
You don't need any in fact. It's Python so it runs on any powerful enough Linux platform, and there's a boatload of them out there; the Raspberry Pi is just the 1st one to become popular and it's the most advertised. Hoarders depleted all stocks to sell them overpriced? Well, screw them, we're going to the competition instead.
Here's a list, updated yearly, of the most known Linux boards available with data and prices. https://linuxgizmos.com/catalog-of-136-open-spec-community-b...
Take a look also at the devices supported by Armbian and DietPi.
https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
Also worth visiting is the Linux-sunxi site, where you can find a huge load of open documentation about hardware and software for Allwinner CPUs used in some of these boards.
https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page
Also available are Amlogic CPUs docs at the Hardkernel site.
Example: here's the over 1000 pages long S905x3 full data sheet.
https://dn.odroid.com/S905X3/ODROID-C4/Docs/S905X3_Public_Da...
The public Raspberry Pi CPU data sheet is 166 pages long.
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Pis are horrendously unreliable. Even if you pull out all the stops to make them work reliably (like disabling SD card writes), they don't. The broadcom chips they use are complete garbage. I was hopeful I could use the watchdog timer to make a pi more reliable (by restarting it when it inevitably crashed). Guess what? The internal watchdog timer doesn't f*cking work! You'll notice that every project using pi hardwar…
I've used the internal watchdog without any issue. I mean the one you enable from systemd with RuntimeWatchdogSec=10 (where 10 iirc is a number less than 14 which is the number of seconds where the timer overflows). Not really much to configure or customize but it works reliably.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have had the same problems, though it's always the Pi chewing up the SD card, a new card solves it. These guides really need a warning saying "If you find this useful, switch to using a server that doesn't rely on an SD card after ~6 months" The Pi is fantastic for getting a taste of self-hosting / home automation as it's so cheap but by no means should it be relied on. I moved our Home Assistant install to a docker…
I have my PI running off a USB-SSD instead. It works very well, though initial set up can be a bit of a hassle.