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Funny, because just a week ago, a post made it to the top talking about the problems of not only Z-Wave, but Home Assistant. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?
by snapetom 6y ago
Funny, because just a week ago, a post made it to the top talking about the problems of not only Z-Wave, but Home Assistant.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25099615
I chimed in to his blog and that thread about the problems I've had with Home Assistant:
First off, the project is schizophrenic. They are way too into rewriting things for the sake of rewriting things. You have to read the release notes because a routine pip upgrade can kill your whole installation. In the five years, I've run it, they have 1) Introduced, rebranded, and retired a recommended install method. 2) Completely redone the web architecture. 3) Completely redone the Z-Wave architecture. 4) Routinely release UI features that are just placeholders and useless.
This has ramifications when you're searching for a problem. Often examples on blog sites or Stack Overflow are obsolete after only a few months.
Second, they are trying to target a wider audience by moving functionality and maintenance to the web interface, but they are so far away from this, it will take years. They are trying to get around the inherent linux-ness of their project, which is a huge undertaking. Troubleshooting pretty much still requires journalctl. Because of this attempt hide away its linuxness, Home Assistant is now in an obnoxious state where some actions require you to start it in the web interface, but then you need to ssh in to finish the job.
Take deleting a Z-Wave node. You first have to Delete it in the UI. Some parts of it though, never work. The "Delete" button is greyed out. So then you have to ssh in and vi into the configuration file to delete it from config files.
Finally, the communication in terms of the UI and documentation are overly abstract. Everything is done in terms of "entities" and "nodes." When you add a Z-Wave device, you get an entry for it in entities, nodes, switches, Z-Wave, and devices panels. After five years, I can't succinctly tell you the difference between them.
Do I use Home Assistant still? Yes. It still is the most flexible and open product out there. Would I recommend it? If the user did not have a background in linux, I would definitely not recommend it. My biggest pet peeve with this project is how many people recommend HA regardless of audience, not taking into account the Linux knowledge required. HA is not a magic pill.
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoI agree. I use HA extensively for three years now and I still do not understand what is configured where (config files vs. the web UI). The web UI is more and more useful for that but then the config goes into the magical .storage bin and it is lost there. This is for people who do it for fun and are ready to maintain a system.
- wil421 6y agoHave you tried Homebridge?
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoThis seems to be very linked with Apple, I am in the Android team :)
- wil421 6y agoNot a problem we welcome fresh converts in Apples walled garden. ;-) I might give Home Assistant a try after reading this: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/buol9s/homebridge_vs_home_assistant_2019/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/buol9s/homeb...
- Onawa 6y agoThis is one of the things that has bothered me the most about Home Assistant. When devices get added suing the web interface, why are they not added into the same YAML configuration that you add devices to manually? Or even if not in the same file, a different file in the same location?
- BrandoElFollito 6y agoI think the devs were changing the design on the fly, and the direction itself changed a few times. I am still not sure what goes where (though using HA extensively)
- snapetom 6y agoPretty much. Adding devices are done through the UI these days. Manually adding them to config files is not recommended. Deleting devices are a different story. The functionality of deleting devices doesn't work in the UI. I have literally had to grep the entire config directory to find all references in yaml files and delete them.
- theshrike79 6y agoThis is what turned me off from HA too. It almost magically discovered a pretty much all of my devices (hue+ikea+xiaomi hub) and created a default dashboard for them. But then I wanted to change the dashboard, and stuff just didn't work. I wanted to add some scripting, but the WebUI didn't let me do the things I wanted (and knew the system could do). And "programming" in YAML makes me puke in my mouth a bit every time. Now I'm just consolidating all my devices to a simple MQTT-based environment with zigbee2mqtt, some python glue (BTLE sensors to MQTT) and NodeRED for automation and integration. Works like a charm.
- zrail 6y ago> I'm just consolidating all my devices to a simple MQTT-based environment I've been trying to move as many of my sensors and actuators to MQTT as possible, using HA only as a frontend. Most of my automations are in AppDaemon.