My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story • Hacker News Board

Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story

#201

Post by luma » Sun, Feb 20, 2022, 9:21 AM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #198

luma wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary distribution method for Home Assistant is via a docker container, which should run just fine on most Linux platforms. There is a Home Assistant OS which is free to use and mostly exists as a lightweight docker host. It is the preferred installation method and is simple to deploy and keep updated.

No thanks. I wrote "distribution" and users should expect a home automation tool to be easily installed and updated without dedicated VMs, containers or other kludges.

Docker is pretty darn easy to install my man! Linux doesn’t make it easy to package applications that work cross platform, so docker makes that possible and it works on a wide range of platforms, including systems like the Raspberry Pi.

Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story

#202

Post by sanguy » Sun, Feb 20, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #196

sanguy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tried to sell it to Ubiquiti but they did not bite. So he ramped up the Nabu Casa approach to "control" the top community developers to ensure he did not loose control of the project. It can only fork if momentum to fork; and if you hire all the contributors that momentum is curbed. Many have also indicated he's also tried to sell it to Ikea as a center piece to their Smart Home line of products. This was quickly…

I don't think he tried to sell, ubiqiti sponsored him.

From Ubiquiti directly -- he tried to sell them Home Assistant. When it did not work out he left abruptly in what was described as a "temper tantrum"

Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story

#203

Post by goodpoint » Sun, Feb 20, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

luma wrote: post #201

goodpoint wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. I wrote "distribution" and users should expect a home automation tool to be easily installed and updated without dedicated VMs, containers or other kludges.

Docker is pretty darn easy to install my man! Linux doesn’t make it easy to package applications that work cross platform, so docker makes that possible and it works on a wide range of platforms, including systems like the Raspberry Pi.

"easy to install" is far, far from enough.

Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story

#204

Post by luma » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #203

luma wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker is pretty darn easy to install my man! Linux doesn’t make it easy to package applications that work cross platform, so docker makes that possible and it works on a wide range of platforms, including systems like the Raspberry Pi.

"easy to install" is far, far from enough.

Then what exactly is missing?

Currently, the Home Assistant OS offers the following: * Regular update checks and notification in the UI * Single-click update of the base OS and the docker images * Automated checks of your configuration versus the new version to alert if any breaking changes might impact you

So, it's easy to install and it's easy to update. What doesn't it do that you feel it should offer?

Re: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story

#205

Post by j45 » Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 8:26 PM UTC

bmicraft wrote: post #197

giobox wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it had a touchscreen built onto it it would be one step closer to being self sustained. Until there are proper standards that we can rely on to last for decades plus for automatable home devices in general, Home Assistant will never be truly self-sustaining. Almost all of its integrations rely on unofficial API access, those APIs change often enough to requiring patching etc. Finding a cheap reliable machine to…

That's way less of a problem than you make it out to be. As long as you don't use some kind of bridge but just a local zigbee or wifi network not connected to the internet everything will stay as is until a device physically breaks. Few devices actually need a cloud connection and and there are always alternatives that don't.

This has been my experience as well.

Still, some manufacturers like Lutron makes some nice switches however their cloud connectivity is not something I wish to keep a dependency on for the initial setup. There's simply no reason to make it mandatory.

Another piece of useful gear that is being discontinued is the Logitech Harmony Hubs... no replacement really, and the existing gear will be supported for an unknown period of time. Would be a great candidate to open source.