11 ms·

Home Assistant OS Release 8

250 points by balaji1 4y ago

kristianpaul 4y ago
“ About Home Assistant Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server”
- eternityforest 4y ago
  "Run on a raspberry pi" is a little tricky. You seem to need an SSD, or else some careful configuration of what to include and exclude from logs, if you don't want the disk to corrupt in a year or two. It's a wonderful project but I wish they would be more careful about SD wear.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Counterpoint: I've got 2 instances running for several years now using their default Raspberry Pi image and still no issues.
    - alin23 4y ago
      I’ve just had one SD card with HomeAssistant on it, fail on me last week after a power cut. It’s easy to fall into this fallacy of “it’s been working fine until now, so it will keep working”, I had the same thinking. Luckily I was doing restic [1] backups daily to my Hetzner box, and my last HA backup was there, so I didn’t have to start from scratch. But it’s still annoying to have to buy another SD, flash it and find a way to restore the backup just to get your home running again. [1] https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    There must be some way to get at least a SATA SSD onto a raspberry without too much hassle. A cursory google search revealed lots of blogposts, videos etc on doing exactly that. Also, if you're using an Rpi, it's also because you like tinkering, so more tinkering could be seen as a bonus :)
    - eternityforest 4y ago
      That's one good reason to use a RasPi, the other is just that they are rock solid, almost bulletproof devices you can really trust, as long as you don't hammer the SD card. Also, they are affordable, small, and low power, and an actually good SSD kinda messes that up.
  - oaththrowaway 4y ago
    Running an SSD on a rPi 4b is pretty trivial
  - Avamander 4y ago
    I made a post on their forum how to mount HASS logs out of the container onto a tmpfs to avoid pointless wear.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  "Docker image on a server you'll have running somewhere in your house anyway" is the correct choice. Raspi is fine when you're still setting it up, but not worth the hassle when it breaks.
  - balaji1 4y ago
    I think an old laptop in the home network would work well
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    With electricity prices being what they are right now, a Raspi using <5W is fantastic for me.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      My current Docker host is an used Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny I bought. It's got a 65 watt power supply and it's definitely not using all of it. i5-6500T, 1TB of M.2 SSD, 16GB of ram and running a good two dozen Docker containers. I'd say that's a better bang for the buck than a closet full of Raspberries struggling under the load :)
      - cameronh90 4y ago
        65W would represent about a 30% increase on my average electricity usage or about £15/month, probably more later this year. HA is the only thing I run locally, and I mainly use it to save energy - also for watering plants and scaring foxes out of the garden. I know it isn't going to be pegging at 65W but if it's anywhere in the vicinity, it's cheaper to use AWS instead. I used to have a server that I used for Plex/HA, but in the end the energy cost was higher than a Netflix subscription. I could have upgraded it to more energy efficient hardware but it would have taken years to pay off.
      - int0x2e 4y ago
        I agree - a used corporate small form factor PC from the likes of HP/Lenovo/Dell has tons of power for HA and can still be had for a next to nothing. They also sip power - under 10W at the wall at idle.
alin23 4y ago
I’ve been using a Pi 4 with Home Assistant for the last 2 years, but I’ve accumulated so many devices in its dashboard that just turning a light off felt too cumbersome. Sure, I’ve automated everything I could, but humans are not predictable so I often need to adjust brightness or volume of some device. I had some keyboard shortcuts in BetterTouchTool using the HA REST API but it felt too fragile. In the end I created my own app to make this easier, called Volum (https://lowtechguys.com/volum https://lowtechguys.com/volum) It gives you macOS keyboard shortcuts and a really simple UI on iOS and iPadOS to control your HA devices and it’s completely free if you want to try it. I’ve also made a short unprofessional demo video here about it: https://youtu.be/nzz-xrEon7g https://youtu.be/nzz-xrEon7g
- pkulak 4y ago
  Home Assistant really is about home "automation", not home "buttons now on your phone". I have dozens of automations in my Home Assistant install and I only interact with Home Assistant when I'm updating it or screwing with the automations themselves. In the morning, depending on the weather, both of my floors set to heat, cool or heat/cool. The lights adjust to a cool temperature, fully on. Maybe the lawn gets watered, if it hasn't rained in a while and won't soon (I live in the PNW, so that one doesn't trigger often, haha). At sunset the lights adjust again, and finally most of them turn off at 9pm and the hvac system again adjusts, depending on the weather. The lights and shades in the media room adjust when the TV turns on. And a million other things that I won't bother to type out. But the point is, it all Just Happens, and I go to great lengths to keep it that way. If manual control is needed, just flip the switch or turn the thermostat.
  - alin23 4y ago
    Yes, I can go on about my automations in the same way, it does feel like a magical home sometimes :) But when I have guests and we need more light for a board game, or when the automation didn’t work as expected and lights are still off at sunset or the blinds got stuck at midpoint, or the heat is still too high and I’m already in bed etc. there’s a real need for fast and effortless manual control. I’m now investing in Zigbee switches and knobs to have more physical means for controlling the home, but in my engineer mind, an app made more sense at the time. I spend most of my time on my keyboard laptop anyway, why not use it for dimming the lights, or adjusting the speaker volume.
humanistbot 4y ago
Very frequently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=home-assistant.io https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=home-assistant.io
- dang 4y ago
  Thanks! the major threads look to be: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349767 - Feb 2022 (200 comments) Smoking a turkey with Prometheus, Home Assistant, and Grafana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361741 - Nov 2021 (71 comments) Home Assistant – open-source home automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28544835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28544835 - Sept 2021 (177 comments) Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27779453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27779453 - July 2021 (76 comments) IoT Unravelled Part 1: It's a Mess but Then There's Home Assistant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25184763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25184763 - Nov 2020 (188 comments) Open-Source Home Automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125 - Nov 2019 (231 comments) Home Assistant: Open-source home automation platform running on Python 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17826373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17826373 - Aug 2018 (196 comments) Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743 - Oct 2017 (170 comments)
throwaway_ha 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- privacyking 4y ago
  They just don't want it to be repackaged with patches that cause them to receive support requests for issues which are essentially a distro fault
  - throwaway_ha 4y ago
    Use it but not modify it? With that attitude it can't even be classified as Open Source. Hard pass.
    - privacyking 4y ago
      Firefox does the same thing. By your definition, it is not open source either. They don't care if you use a different name (e.g. Fennec) though.
  - snapetom 4y ago
    They don't want you forking it for that purpose, either. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 Is it technically open source? Yes. Is it spiritually open source? No. Is it arrogance and poor management? Along with many ways this project is run, absolutely yes.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    Too bad. If they intentionally make it hard for people to make a software follow their distro conventions, be it immutability or reproceability, then they shouldn't be too surprised that forcing the software to behave properly could cause side-effects.
- eternityforest 4y ago
cjkarr 4y ago
I wanted to jump in and praise this project. After INSTEON suddenly shut down last month, I was able to set up Home Assistant and restore control to the perfectly functional network of devices orphaned by their makers. Great work, all!
minton 4y ago
I want to want this, but I have never found a use case that made it seem worth it.
- pottertheotter 4y ago
  I’m the same—I have several smart lights, but I can control them all through Google Home—but found a use for it this past winter. In my living room I have a Big Ass Fans Haiku fan, and the signal for volume up on my soundbar is the same as speed down on the fan. I don’t know how companies decide on IR remote signals, but I’ve never had this happen before. It really annoys me when I turn up the volume and my fan turns off, especially in winter when I want it on to stir up the air. So I set up an automation to check the fan setting and if it is off, turn it on. So far I haven’t really figured out what else to do with it.
- strombofulous 4y ago
  I agree, I feel like it's only for niche uses. But if you have a niche requirement it can be very useful - I have issues with my ISP provided modem and they won't replace it. I use HA to locally power cycle the modem's plug from my phone (my router still works so local networking is fine)
- contravariant 4y ago
  I think the main use case is avoiding non-open source alternatives. If you want something that actually offers more capability then something like node-red is probably more useful, it allows scripting all kinds of custom behaviour over many different protocols. (although even then it's rare to find a real use for it, besides having fun hacking things together, though they make it easy to build your own UI for stuff, which is neat)
  - xxpor 4y ago
    The integration between Node-Red and HA is excellent fwiw.
- chipsa 4y ago
  I'm using mine in part as a homekit bridge. Some of my smart home stuff doesn't play nice with homekit, but I can connect it up to HASS, and then I'm able to open my garage door from my phone easily.
phpisthebest 4y ago
I have been using home assistance for a few years now, having migrated from the SmartThings eco system. Over all I am happy with it, but it is increasingly harder to find devices that are not cloud encumbered, even some things that have integrations with HA are basically HA interacting with the OEM cloud API, which not local control. I prefer zigbee, but I fear the migration from Zigbee to "Matter" is going in the wrong direction, as Amazon and Google are really pushing cloud based control over Local Control...
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I use Shelly relays installed behind all my switches to automate every single light in the house: https://shelly.cloud https://shelly.cloud. As a perk you retain the functionality of the existing light switch. They are reasonably priced, are built with local control as the primary feature and there's not even a hint of Silicon Valley/VC/"growth & engagement" smell.
  - xxpor 4y ago
    It probably helps that they're based in Bulgaria.
  - ternus 4y ago
    And you can also reflash them with Tasmota/ESPHome for fully local control.
  - emilburzo 4y ago
    > I use Shelly relays installed behind all my switches [...] > As a perk you retain the functionality of the existing light switch This sounds super interesting, so both the control from shelly/HA and the physical light switch can be used? Do you have any pictures/blog/something about how to set that up? I briefly looked into this in the past, but it seemed impossible with the existing wiring (only the live wire is behind the physical switch, no neutral).
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
dividedbyzero 4y ago
I've been bitten by HA twice now. One time the Pi it was on simply slowed to a crawl all of a sudden; killing HA fixed that issue, including for large-ish writes to the SD, but that's hardly an option. Second time it broke on me it simply started throwing tons of errors after an upgrade. Both incidents at a time when I had other things to do than spend hours fixing the light switches. Also that terrible YAML DSL was a huge pain since I need this sort of thing infrequently enough to never remember how it works. I definitely can see the appeal but I don't want things like light switches to depend on something that flaky. Currently running an instance of deconz for all the zigbee essentials which is a lot less powerful but has been rock solid. I have a bunch of Go apps running on the living room Kubernetes, one that streams all events from Deconz and a few other sources to Kafka running on a Raspberry Pi and a few more that add automations that deconz can't do. I'd expected this to be flaky as hell, so the apps running there aren't critical, but it's been rock solid for over a year even though Kafka isn't even supposed to run on ARM.
- dugite-code 4y ago
  These issues are why I suggested to a co-worker to run it on a low spec intel nuc and not a Pi. They are cheap second hand and far more reliable than a Pi so are great for a HA server. He's had great success with the built in backup to google drive solution. He fragged the whole setup once without bothering to do any trouble shooting he just reinstalled the OS and applied the backup and was up and running in no time.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    The reliability issues are usually SD card related. I run my PI from a cheap 128GB SSD connected over USB3, it fixes all those issues.
    - tass 4y ago
      I had so many issues on RPi. Got an odroid instead and now it's running with no hassles off eMMC. SD card was probably a major reason, but i didn’t want yet another thing hanging off a usb port.
deadbunny 4y ago
I quite like Home Assistant, I really don't like their developers. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-dns/178108 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-dns/178108
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- snapetom 4y ago
  Used it for five years. You've distilled the all the problems of HA nicely to its source. The product is fine for a while, until the arrogance and disregard the devs have against the user base inevitably breaks something and you have to spend time fixing things. And it happens often. Edit: Just went through the DNS thread. Good lord. Just their typical M.O. on breaking things in the past.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  It's not reasonable to ask people to remove your code from their project when they've already done the work on integrating it and it's published under an accommodating license. (edit: It seems the person requesting the removal of his project is an HA dev, some context for those links would have been useful.) As for the DNS issue that seems to be a technical or design issue, I don't see in that thread any bad behaviour on the part of the devs, unless I missed a post.
  - snapetom 4y ago
    > As for the DNS issue that seems to be a technical or design issue, I don't see in that thread any bad behaviour on the part of the devs, unless I missed a post. The whole thread brings back PTSD when I was running it. It is reminiscent of every major problem they've had. > seems to be a technical or design issue This is the exact issue. The head devs don't keep contributors in line or provide any guidance at all. People just submit things, there's no checks on "is this a good idea?" and into master it goes. Does anyone actually want this? Does it make sense on how it's implemented? Will it break anything? Those are questions for later.
MakeUsersWant 4y ago
I wish there were something that opens the windows automatically at the right time to keep the heat* and humidity out. I'm sure other people will have had that idea, too. But I haven't come across easy-to-use hardware controls. That's not even talking about the full optimal control problem, i.e. weather forecast, the heat capacity and heat permeability of the walls, and any cigarette smoke coming in. *Air conditioning is hard to get permission for as a renter in Germany.
- Lukineus 4y ago
  > I wish there were something that opens the windows automatically at the right time to keep the heat* and humidity out. The latter part of your problem is a solved one. Weather forecasts and local conditions (from your own indoor/outdoor sensors) for the weather, heat capacity and permeability could be hardcoded or via helpers, cigarette smoke via air quality sensors. All of these can be integrated with Home Assistant. All that is left is something to physically open/close the window, which should also be a solved problem.
alerighi 4y ago
Always seamed to me overengineered. Maybe is because I'm skeptical about automations, and I like physical buttons, one button that does something, and automations made in solid and reliable ways (such as mechanical relays for example). But if I need something "smart", and I have a couple of devices in my house, with a couple of automations (basically for laziness, not something I couldn't have done by pulling some extra wires and with mechanical timers and relays), I do them in the most simple and clean solution. Now all the automations rely on a local MQTT server where my devices connects to an a ~300 lines python program, that communicates with the MQTT server and applies all the automations, and also exposes a simple REST API to do things with a simple `curl` if I need so. Everything (MQTT server and python script) runs on my home router that has OpenWRT on it. I find it simpler to express automations with code than with complex web interfaces or yaml configuration files that are as complex as a program.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  So you have your solution ... for you: cool. The rest of us need some assistance for something that is not our expertise. We need the bollards that are put down the sides of the 10 pin lanes to hit a strike. Not sure why you are complaining about needing a Mossie - I assume that refers to Zwave2MQTT. Zwave actually works these days in HA, thanks to a lot of work in a very short period of time. At work I have 40 odd windows with Zwave detectors and it used to be a bit hit and miss. At home I have been doing very long term trials of Zwave underfloor heating controllers. I have 10 zones of electric underfloor heating and two of them are running Heltuns (v1) at the moment - three years so far. One of them has run away madly twice ie run at high current and hot but not since a firmware update. Strangely enough one of the old controllers ran hot too after a power outage, recently (investigation ongoing). You describe handwritten Python programs whilst complaining about YAML configs elsewhere. How do you generalise your stuff?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I have to admit I feel the same way. For instance business people are drawn to products aimed at solving the "integration" problem between different enterprise products like a moth to a flame. What's ironic is that the "integration problem" is much less of a problem than developing user interfaces or database application. From the viewpoint of a coder an "integration problem" is often ten lines of Python which can be completed in less time than it takes to wait for a salesperson to pick up the phone or that you could spend waiting for the documentation of an integration framework to load in your web browser. You generally avoid the devilish data modeling problems that turn up in applications work.
snapetom 4y ago
This whole submission seems like a karma grab.
joshu 4y ago
why does this need to be an OS? Why can't it be a set of packages on top of an OS maintained by someone else?
- humanistbot 4y ago
  It is. The OS is Raspbian. Home Assistant is an ecosystem that runs on a customized install, like other images for pis (Kodi OS, RetroPie, etc)
  - joshu 4y ago
    except they make it for a variety of platforms. why does this need significant changes to the OS? It reeks of bad engineering to me.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Because it wants to act as an appliance and manage the whole system itself including network configuration, updates, etc. For most users this is the correct approach, though you can opt-out and manually run the actual application in a Python virtualenv on a distro of your choice (in this case HA won't be able to manage the system and updates will need to be done manually from the command-line).
- gerdesj 4y ago
  No idea. I've always run my HAs on Debian, which is supported - https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer .
- Tyr42 4y ago
  I don't want to deal with maintaining another OS, so I'm perfectly happy with them maintaining it and making updates easy.
llamataboot 4y ago
HASS makes it to the top of HN about once a month for good reason! Probably one of the most well developed open source projects I've seen, both from core contributors finding a way to get paid for what they do every day with nabu casa as well as a large and thriving community. Over the past two years there's been a ton of work put into making things more plug and play and GUI for folks, but all the technical wiring under the boards is still there for doing just about anything you want. I have basically everything off the cloud, except for a few things I want on there. If you want everything off the cloud you'd be wise to do a bit of research and get a zigbee and or zwave stick. Don't blame HASS for IoT providers that are routinely pushing up firmware that breaks anything that interfaces with their products without going through their cloud, but for most things there are things out there that work great without it.
- Eduard 4y ago
  My experience over the past six months of using Home Assistant is mixed. With every monthly update, something breaks, stuff gets deprecated, then removed. I report those issues, but they get quickly closed without being resolved.
  - louis-lau 4y ago
    I just don't update home assistant monthly. Maybe once or twice a year? Tbh that seems to work super well. Never have to think about it and it just works.
    - int0x2e 4y ago
      My solution is similar - I read the release notes every month or so, and upgrade only if I am interested in some of the new features. I am willing to fix stuff if it breaks, and I have a backup config I can downgrade back if needed. I take a similar approach to firmware upgrades for my IoT devices - I run them on a couple of separate vlans, so I feel okay only updating them every few months when I see the need (mostly custom builds of tasmota/esphome/etc.) HA is not ready for grandma, but most technically inclined folks should be able to get a ton out of it after you get past the initial learning curve.
hamandcheese 4y ago
I haven’t used home assistant much in earnest, but I have some gripes after dabbling: - to get the most out of it, it wants to be installed as an “OS” on a dedicated device (like a raspberry pi). Without doing this, you can’t install add ons from the store. I’m guessing this might be because the add-ons themselves are packaged with docker? - I went ahead and did what they wanted, and dedicated an entire raspberry pi to home assistant. But from there, it seemed extremely GUI oriented… I had to install an add on just to see my config files! I know plenty of people have had success keeping their configs in version control, but that seems to be fighting the current. So as a particularly advanced user, I don’t think Home Assistant is for me. Which is perfectly fine! Does anyone have any recommendations on home automation software for people who write code for a living? The main thing I’m after is a decent library of supported devices that I don’t have to reverse engineer and write SDKs for myself. I’d also like to dump any/all sensor readings and switch states into Prometheus and view data with grafana.
- zrail 4y ago
  I have Home Assistant OS running in a VM on an HP EliteDesk 600 G3 Mini running Proxmox. I don't really use this for automations directly, although I do have some alerts. Primarily I use this as a dashboard and as a common API for everything in the house (zwave, zigbee, hue, Lutron, Shelly, etc). I honestly don't do a ton of automations. The one really important one controls a hot water recirculating pump with a Shelly One set up as a temperature sensor. This is a small ruby program that uses MQTT to set the state of the zwave switch controlling the pump switch and directly talks to the Shelly for temperature readings. It talks to the HA API for settings but has reasonable fallbacks if things fall over.
- Gatsky 4y ago
  It’s understandable why they do this. Given the complexity of a home automation set up with countless error modes across devices, sensors and connectivity alone, reducing any potential problems on the software side at least is logical.
- dugite-code 4y ago
  > Without doing this, you can’t install add ons from the store. Usually you can do it yourself, because yes they are just docker containers. I don't use them myself as I don't find much use for most of them. The more important addon tool is HACS and that works in the stand alone docker container. > But from there, it seemed extremely GUI oriented… I had to install an add on just to see my config files Yes it's very GUI focused now, you can usually get to the basic yaml config in any screen though if you click through to manually configue that component. This was generally done because the yaml config method was a pain even for the tech literate... because yaml. If you want proper code in HomeAssistant have a look at AppDaemon https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/HASS_TUTORIAL.html https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/HASS_TUTORIAL.htm... Makes it easy to use Python in HomeAssistant. Alternatively there is Node-red https://nodered.org/ https://nodered.org/ (js visual node programing automation) and huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn (Python automation) They will never offer as much integration as HA so I tend to find using HA as a dashboard/device integrator and then Node-red/AppDaemon for the actual automations to be more optimal.
dugite-code 4y ago
My biggest issue with HomeAssistant at the moment is the refusal of the Devs to support Single sign on methods. Several have been submitted via pull requests and almost gone through and then dropped based on very poor reasoning in my opinion. There is an auth header addon in HACS but without official support the android app is a buggy mess to get working. HA is the only service I am running now that isn't hooked into my SSO and it's a niggling frustration to say the least.
- simcop2387 4y ago
  I'd love it to have some kind of LDAP or other directory service thing. I've got a few other things I run for myself and some friends or family members that already can work with that (notably NextCloud) that would be really cool to connect up with HA too.
  - dugite-code 4y ago
    Good news, you can use HA with LDAP (ish) and it's sorta supported using the built in command line auth - https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/authentication/providers/#command-line https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/authentication/providers/... and the ldap-auth-sh script - https://github.com/bob1de/ldap-auth-sh https://github.com/bob1de/ldap-auth-sh Not quite SSO, but at least the passwords and users a synced across, so that's nice.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  When it comes to internal services that don't implement auth or have inadequate auth support, there are several projects out there that act as a reverse proxy and handle auth, only passing requests through once authentication is complete. You can use this with Home Assistant's local IP auth (that just bypasses auth and assigns everything to a single HA user) so you don't have redundant auth mechanisms.
  - dugite-code 4y ago
    Yeah that's basically what the Auth header add-on is used for. It's just a pain for the Android app. I got it working briefly but hit a snag where my yubikey I use for passwordless login couldn't be used as it's using a webview container and you can't easily just use a yubikey in that scenario. If SSO was supported mainline support for that could be added. What I have been meaning to do is have my Auth provider fall back to basic password or something else for HomeAssistant logins, just need to figure out HOW to do that.
peterhajas 4y ago
I love HomeAssistant, and use it to power my whole house. I automate most lights, my whole house audio setup, my security system, and more. I highly recommend it. I recently wrote about how to do a declarative model for automations, which I use throughout the house: http://peterhajas.com/blog/declarative_home_automation.html http://peterhajas.com/blog/declarative_home_automation.html
fake-name 4y ago
Can we stop calling custom distros an "OS"? Like, this is linux. Linux is the OS. This is home assistant distro.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  If you’re going to be pedantic, at least make sure to be right. Linux is a kernel!
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    It's a floor wax and a dessert topping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Kab1r 4y ago
I run home assistant on kubernetetes, but I've been annoyed by things breaking often on updates and reliability issues when running ZHA with a combo USB dongle.
kkfx 4y ago
Honestly I see exactly NO purpose for such dedicated distro: I use H.A. on my homeserver, deployed via pip, simple, lightweight and effective without the burden of a dedicated distro with the need for security upgrades and enormous integration effort for what? On my homeserver I do many things, there is no point in having many different homeserver or container to run single service if I can consolidate ALL in a single hw, easy to recreate/extend as I with thanks to NixOS/Guix or anything else + some IaC behind. Such moves have only commercial reasons and normally in practice are commercial fails due to the inevitably low quality of the output. I still have to see ANY dedicated distro with a commercial success behind and without a large number of angry users.

250 points by balaji1 4y ago

“ About Home Assistant Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server”

eternityforest 4y ago
"Run on a raspberry pi" is a little tricky. You seem to need an SSD, or else some careful configuration of what to include and exclude from logs, if you don't want the disk to corrupt in a year or two. It's a wonderful project but I wish they would be more careful about SD wear.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Counterpoint: I've got 2 instances running for several years now using their default Raspberry Pi image and still no issues.
  - alin23 4y ago
    I’ve just had one SD card with HomeAssistant on it, fail on me last week after a power cut. It’s easy to fall into this fallacy of “it’s been working fine until now, so it will keep working”, I had the same thinking. Luckily I was doing restic [1] backups daily to my Hetzner box, and my last HA backup was there, so I didn’t have to start from scratch. But it’s still annoying to have to buy another SD, flash it and find a way to restore the backup just to get your home running again. [1] https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  There must be some way to get at least a SATA SSD onto a raspberry without too much hassle. A cursory google search revealed lots of blogposts, videos etc on doing exactly that. Also, if you're using an Rpi, it's also because you like tinkering, so more tinkering could be seen as a bonus :)
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    That's one good reason to use a RasPi, the other is just that they are rock solid, almost bulletproof devices you can really trust, as long as you don't hammer the SD card. Also, they are affordable, small, and low power, and an actually good SSD kinda messes that up.
- oaththrowaway 4y ago
  Running an SSD on a rPi 4b is pretty trivial
- Avamander 4y ago
  I made a post on their forum how to mount HASS logs out of the container onto a tmpfs to avoid pointless wear.
theshrike79 4y ago
"Docker image on a server you'll have running somewhere in your house anyway" is the correct choice. Raspi is fine when you're still setting it up, but not worth the hassle when it breaks.
- balaji1 4y ago
  I think an old laptop in the home network would work well
- cameronh90 4y ago
  With electricity prices being what they are right now, a Raspi using <5W is fantastic for me.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    My current Docker host is an used Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny I bought. It's got a 65 watt power supply and it's definitely not using all of it. i5-6500T, 1TB of M.2 SSD, 16GB of ram and running a good two dozen Docker containers. I'd say that's a better bang for the buck than a closet full of Raspberries struggling under the load :)
    - cameronh90 4y ago
      65W would represent about a 30% increase on my average electricity usage or about £15/month, probably more later this year. HA is the only thing I run locally, and I mainly use it to save energy - also for watering plants and scaring foxes out of the garden. I know it isn't going to be pegging at 65W but if it's anywhere in the vicinity, it's cheaper to use AWS instead. I used to have a server that I used for Plex/HA, but in the end the energy cost was higher than a Netflix subscription. I could have upgraded it to more energy efficient hardware but it would have taken years to pay off.
    - int0x2e 4y ago
      I agree - a used corporate small form factor PC from the likes of HP/Lenovo/Dell has tons of power for HA and can still be had for a next to nothing. They also sip power - under 10W at the wall at idle.

alin23 4y ago

I’ve been using a Pi 4 with Home Assistant for the last 2 years, but I’ve accumulated so many devices in its dashboard that just turning a light off felt too cumbersome. Sure, I’ve automated everything I could, but humans are not predictable so I often need to adjust brightness or volume of some device. I had some keyboard shortcuts in BetterTouchTool using the HA REST API but it felt too fragile. In the end I created my own app to make this easier, called Volum (https://lowtechguys.com/volum https://lowtechguys.com/volum) It gives you macOS keyboard shortcuts and a really simple UI on iOS and iPadOS to control your HA devices and it’s completely free if you want to try it. I’ve also made a short unprofessional demo video here about it: https://youtu.be/nzz-xrEon7g https://youtu.be/nzz-xrEon7g

pkulak 4y ago
Home Assistant really is about home "automation", not home "buttons now on your phone". I have dozens of automations in my Home Assistant install and I only interact with Home Assistant when I'm updating it or screwing with the automations themselves. In the morning, depending on the weather, both of my floors set to heat, cool or heat/cool. The lights adjust to a cool temperature, fully on. Maybe the lawn gets watered, if it hasn't rained in a while and won't soon (I live in the PNW, so that one doesn't trigger often, haha). At sunset the lights adjust again, and finally most of them turn off at 9pm and the hvac system again adjusts, depending on the weather. The lights and shades in the media room adjust when the TV turns on. And a million other things that I won't bother to type out. But the point is, it all Just Happens, and I go to great lengths to keep it that way. If manual control is needed, just flip the switch or turn the thermostat.
- alin23 4y ago
  Yes, I can go on about my automations in the same way, it does feel like a magical home sometimes :) But when I have guests and we need more light for a board game, or when the automation didn’t work as expected and lights are still off at sunset or the blinds got stuck at midpoint, or the heat is still too high and I’m already in bed etc. there’s a real need for fast and effortless manual control. I’m now investing in Zigbee switches and knobs to have more physical means for controlling the home, but in my engineer mind, an app made more sense at the time. I spend most of my time on my keyboard laptop anyway, why not use it for dimming the lights, or adjusting the speaker volume.

humanistbot 4y ago

Very frequently discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=home-assistant.io https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=home-assistant.io

dang 4y ago
Thanks! the major threads look to be: My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349767 - Feb 2022 (200 comments) Smoking a turkey with Prometheus, Home Assistant, and Grafana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361741 - Nov 2021 (71 comments) Home Assistant – open-source home automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28544835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28544835 - Sept 2021 (177 comments) Home Assistant iOS app adds local push notification support - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27779453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27779453 - July 2021 (76 comments) IoT Unravelled Part 1: It's a Mess but Then There's Home Assistant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25184763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25184763 - Nov 2020 (188 comments) Open-Source Home Automation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125 - Nov 2019 (231 comments) Home Assistant: Open-source home automation platform running on Python 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17826373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17826373 - Aug 2018 (196 comments) Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform running on Python 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15521743 - Oct 2017 (170 comments)

throwaway_ha 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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privacyking 4y ago
They just don't want it to be repackaged with patches that cause them to receive support requests for issues which are essentially a distro fault
- throwaway_ha 4y ago
  Use it but not modify it? With that attitude it can't even be classified as Open Source. Hard pass.
  - privacyking 4y ago
    Firefox does the same thing. By your definition, it is not open source either. They don't care if you use a different name (e.g. Fennec) though.
- snapetom 4y ago
  They don't want you forking it for that purpose, either. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 Is it technically open source? Yes. Is it spiritually open source? No. Is it arrogance and poor management? Along with many ways this project is run, absolutely yes.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Too bad. If they intentionally make it hard for people to make a software follow their distro conventions, be it immutability or reproceability, then they shouldn't be too surprised that forcing the software to behave properly could cause side-effects.
eternityforest 4y ago

cjkarr 4y ago

I wanted to jump in and praise this project. After INSTEON suddenly shut down last month, I was able to set up Home Assistant and restore control to the perfectly functional network of devices orphaned by their makers. Great work, all!

minton 4y ago

I want to want this, but I have never found a use case that made it seem worth it.

pottertheotter 4y ago
I’m the same—I have several smart lights, but I can control them all through Google Home—but found a use for it this past winter. In my living room I have a Big Ass Fans Haiku fan, and the signal for volume up on my soundbar is the same as speed down on the fan. I don’t know how companies decide on IR remote signals, but I’ve never had this happen before. It really annoys me when I turn up the volume and my fan turns off, especially in winter when I want it on to stir up the air. So I set up an automation to check the fan setting and if it is off, turn it on. So far I haven’t really figured out what else to do with it.
strombofulous 4y ago
I agree, I feel like it's only for niche uses. But if you have a niche requirement it can be very useful - I have issues with my ISP provided modem and they won't replace it. I use HA to locally power cycle the modem's plug from my phone (my router still works so local networking is fine)
contravariant 4y ago
I think the main use case is avoiding non-open source alternatives. If you want something that actually offers more capability then something like node-red is probably more useful, it allows scripting all kinds of custom behaviour over many different protocols. (although even then it's rare to find a real use for it, besides having fun hacking things together, though they make it easy to build your own UI for stuff, which is neat)
- xxpor 4y ago
  The integration between Node-Red and HA is excellent fwiw.
chipsa 4y ago
I'm using mine in part as a homekit bridge. Some of my smart home stuff doesn't play nice with homekit, but I can connect it up to HASS, and then I'm able to open my garage door from my phone easily.

phpisthebest 4y ago

I have been using home assistance for a few years now, having migrated from the SmartThings eco system. Over all I am happy with it, but it is increasingly harder to find devices that are not cloud encumbered, even some things that have integrations with HA are basically HA interacting with the OEM cloud API, which not local control. I prefer zigbee, but I fear the migration from Zigbee to "Matter" is going in the wrong direction, as Amazon and Google are really pushing cloud based control over Local Control...

Nextgrid 4y ago
I use Shelly relays installed behind all my switches to automate every single light in the house: https://shelly.cloud https://shelly.cloud. As a perk you retain the functionality of the existing light switch. They are reasonably priced, are built with local control as the primary feature and there's not even a hint of Silicon Valley/VC/"growth & engagement" smell.
- xxpor 4y ago
  It probably helps that they're based in Bulgaria.
- ternus 4y ago
  And you can also reflash them with Tasmota/ESPHome for fully local control.
- emilburzo 4y ago
  > I use Shelly relays installed behind all my switches [...] > As a perk you retain the functionality of the existing light switch This sounds super interesting, so both the control from shelly/HA and the physical light switch can be used? Do you have any pictures/blog/something about how to set that up? I briefly looked into this in the past, but it seemed impossible with the existing wiring (only the live wire is behind the physical switch, no neutral).
  - Nextgrid 4y ago

dividedbyzero 4y ago

I've been bitten by HA twice now. One time the Pi it was on simply slowed to a crawl all of a sudden; killing HA fixed that issue, including for large-ish writes to the SD, but that's hardly an option. Second time it broke on me it simply started throwing tons of errors after an upgrade. Both incidents at a time when I had other things to do than spend hours fixing the light switches. Also that terrible YAML DSL was a huge pain since I need this sort of thing infrequently enough to never remember how it works. I definitely can see the appeal but I don't want things like light switches to depend on something that flaky. Currently running an instance of deconz for all the zigbee essentials which is a lot less powerful but has been rock solid. I have a bunch of Go apps running on the living room Kubernetes, one that streams all events from Deconz and a few other sources to Kafka running on a Raspberry Pi and a few more that add automations that deconz can't do. I'd expected this to be flaky as hell, so the apps running there aren't critical, but it's been rock solid for over a year even though Kafka isn't even supposed to run on ARM.

dugite-code 4y ago
These issues are why I suggested to a co-worker to run it on a low spec intel nuc and not a Pi. They are cheap second hand and far more reliable than a Pi so are great for a HA server. He's had great success with the built in backup to google drive solution. He fragged the whole setup once without bothering to do any trouble shooting he just reinstalled the OS and applied the backup and was up and running in no time.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  The reliability issues are usually SD card related. I run my PI from a cheap 128GB SSD connected over USB3, it fixes all those issues.
  - tass 4y ago
    I had so many issues on RPi. Got an odroid instead and now it's running with no hassles off eMMC. SD card was probably a major reason, but i didn’t want yet another thing hanging off a usb port.

deadbunny 4y ago

I quite like Home Assistant, I really don't like their developers. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-dns/178108 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-dns/178108

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snapetom 4y ago
Used it for five years. You've distilled the all the problems of HA nicely to its source. The product is fine for a while, until the arrogance and disregard the devs have against the user base inevitably breaks something and you have to spend time fixing things. And it happens often. Edit: Just went through the DNS thread. Good lord. Just their typical M.O. on breaking things in the past.
ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
It's not reasonable to ask people to remove your code from their project when they've already done the work on integrating it and it's published under an accommodating license. (edit: It seems the person requesting the removal of his project is an HA dev, some context for those links would have been useful.) As for the DNS issue that seems to be a technical or design issue, I don't see in that thread any bad behaviour on the part of the devs, unless I missed a post.
- snapetom 4y ago
  > As for the DNS issue that seems to be a technical or design issue, I don't see in that thread any bad behaviour on the part of the devs, unless I missed a post. The whole thread brings back PTSD when I was running it. It is reminiscent of every major problem they've had. > seems to be a technical or design issue This is the exact issue. The head devs don't keep contributors in line or provide any guidance at all. People just submit things, there's no checks on "is this a good idea?" and into master it goes. Does anyone actually want this? Does it make sense on how it's implemented? Will it break anything? Those are questions for later.

MakeUsersWant 4y ago

I wish there were something that opens the windows automatically at the right time to keep the heat* and humidity out. I'm sure other people will have had that idea, too. But I haven't come across easy-to-use hardware controls. That's not even talking about the full optimal control problem, i.e. weather forecast, the heat capacity and heat permeability of the walls, and any cigarette smoke coming in. *Air conditioning is hard to get permission for as a renter in Germany.

Lukineus 4y ago
> I wish there were something that opens the windows automatically at the right time to keep the heat* and humidity out. The latter part of your problem is a solved one. Weather forecasts and local conditions (from your own indoor/outdoor sensors) for the weather, heat capacity and permeability could be hardcoded or via helpers, cigarette smoke via air quality sensors. All of these can be integrated with Home Assistant. All that is left is something to physically open/close the window, which should also be a solved problem.

alerighi 4y ago

Always seamed to me overengineered. Maybe is because I'm skeptical about automations, and I like physical buttons, one button that does something, and automations made in solid and reliable ways (such as mechanical relays for example). But if I need something "smart", and I have a couple of devices in my house, with a couple of automations (basically for laziness, not something I couldn't have done by pulling some extra wires and with mechanical timers and relays), I do them in the most simple and clean solution. Now all the automations rely on a local MQTT server where my devices connects to an a ~300 lines python program, that communicates with the MQTT server and applies all the automations, and also exposes a simple REST API to do things with a simple `curl` if I need so. Everything (MQTT server and python script) runs on my home router that has OpenWRT on it. I find it simpler to express automations with code than with complex web interfaces or yaml configuration files that are as complex as a program.

gerdesj 4y ago
So you have your solution ... for you: cool. The rest of us need some assistance for something that is not our expertise. We need the bollards that are put down the sides of the 10 pin lanes to hit a strike. Not sure why you are complaining about needing a Mossie - I assume that refers to Zwave2MQTT. Zwave actually works these days in HA, thanks to a lot of work in a very short period of time. At work I have 40 odd windows with Zwave detectors and it used to be a bit hit and miss. At home I have been doing very long term trials of Zwave underfloor heating controllers. I have 10 zones of electric underfloor heating and two of them are running Heltuns (v1) at the moment - three years so far. One of them has run away madly twice ie run at high current and hot but not since a firmware update. Strangely enough one of the old controllers ran hot too after a power outage, recently (investigation ongoing). You describe handwritten Python programs whilst complaining about YAML configs elsewhere. How do you generalise your stuff?
PaulHoule 4y ago
I have to admit I feel the same way. For instance business people are drawn to products aimed at solving the "integration" problem between different enterprise products like a moth to a flame. What's ironic is that the "integration problem" is much less of a problem than developing user interfaces or database application. From the viewpoint of a coder an "integration problem" is often ten lines of Python which can be completed in less time than it takes to wait for a salesperson to pick up the phone or that you could spend waiting for the documentation of an integration framework to load in your web browser. You generally avoid the devilish data modeling problems that turn up in applications work.

snapetom 4y ago

This whole submission seems like a karma grab.

joshu 4y ago

why does this need to be an OS? Why can't it be a set of packages on top of an OS maintained by someone else?

humanistbot 4y ago
It is. The OS is Raspbian. Home Assistant is an ecosystem that runs on a customized install, like other images for pis (Kodi OS, RetroPie, etc)
- joshu 4y ago
  except they make it for a variety of platforms. why does this need significant changes to the OS? It reeks of bad engineering to me.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Because it wants to act as an appliance and manage the whole system itself including network configuration, updates, etc. For most users this is the correct approach, though you can opt-out and manually run the actual application in a Python virtualenv on a distro of your choice (in this case HA won't be able to manage the system and updates will need to be done manually from the command-line).
gerdesj 4y ago
No idea. I've always run my HAs on Debian, which is supported - https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer https://github.com/home-assistant/supervised-installer .
Tyr42 4y ago
I don't want to deal with maintaining another OS, so I'm perfectly happy with them maintaining it and making updates easy.

llamataboot 4y ago

HASS makes it to the top of HN about once a month for good reason! Probably one of the most well developed open source projects I've seen, both from core contributors finding a way to get paid for what they do every day with nabu casa as well as a large and thriving community. Over the past two years there's been a ton of work put into making things more plug and play and GUI for folks, but all the technical wiring under the boards is still there for doing just about anything you want. I have basically everything off the cloud, except for a few things I want on there. If you want everything off the cloud you'd be wise to do a bit of research and get a zigbee and or zwave stick. Don't blame HASS for IoT providers that are routinely pushing up firmware that breaks anything that interfaces with their products without going through their cloud, but for most things there are things out there that work great without it.

Eduard 4y ago
My experience over the past six months of using Home Assistant is mixed. With every monthly update, something breaks, stuff gets deprecated, then removed. I report those issues, but they get quickly closed without being resolved.
- louis-lau 4y ago
  I just don't update home assistant monthly. Maybe once or twice a year? Tbh that seems to work super well. Never have to think about it and it just works.
  - int0x2e 4y ago
    My solution is similar - I read the release notes every month or so, and upgrade only if I am interested in some of the new features. I am willing to fix stuff if it breaks, and I have a backup config I can downgrade back if needed. I take a similar approach to firmware upgrades for my IoT devices - I run them on a couple of separate vlans, so I feel okay only updating them every few months when I see the need (mostly custom builds of tasmota/esphome/etc.) HA is not ready for grandma, but most technically inclined folks should be able to get a ton out of it after you get past the initial learning curve.

hamandcheese 4y ago

I haven’t used home assistant much in earnest, but I have some gripes after dabbling: - to get the most out of it, it wants to be installed as an “OS” on a dedicated device (like a raspberry pi). Without doing this, you can’t install add ons from the store. I’m guessing this might be because the add-ons themselves are packaged with docker? - I went ahead and did what they wanted, and dedicated an entire raspberry pi to home assistant. But from there, it seemed extremely GUI oriented… I had to install an add on just to see my config files! I know plenty of people have had success keeping their configs in version control, but that seems to be fighting the current. So as a particularly advanced user, I don’t think Home Assistant is for me. Which is perfectly fine! Does anyone have any recommendations on home automation software for people who write code for a living? The main thing I’m after is a decent library of supported devices that I don’t have to reverse engineer and write SDKs for myself. I’d also like to dump any/all sensor readings and switch states into Prometheus and view data with grafana.

zrail 4y ago
I have Home Assistant OS running in a VM on an HP EliteDesk 600 G3 Mini running Proxmox. I don't really use this for automations directly, although I do have some alerts. Primarily I use this as a dashboard and as a common API for everything in the house (zwave, zigbee, hue, Lutron, Shelly, etc). I honestly don't do a ton of automations. The one really important one controls a hot water recirculating pump with a Shelly One set up as a temperature sensor. This is a small ruby program that uses MQTT to set the state of the zwave switch controlling the pump switch and directly talks to the Shelly for temperature readings. It talks to the HA API for settings but has reasonable fallbacks if things fall over.
Gatsky 4y ago
It’s understandable why they do this. Given the complexity of a home automation set up with countless error modes across devices, sensors and connectivity alone, reducing any potential problems on the software side at least is logical.
dugite-code 4y ago
> Without doing this, you can’t install add ons from the store. Usually you can do it yourself, because yes they are just docker containers. I don't use them myself as I don't find much use for most of them. The more important addon tool is HACS and that works in the stand alone docker container. > But from there, it seemed extremely GUI oriented… I had to install an add on just to see my config files Yes it's very GUI focused now, you can usually get to the basic yaml config in any screen though if you click through to manually configue that component. This was generally done because the yaml config method was a pain even for the tech literate... because yaml. If you want proper code in HomeAssistant have a look at AppDaemon https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/HASS_TUTORIAL.html https://appdaemon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/HASS_TUTORIAL.htm... Makes it easy to use Python in HomeAssistant. Alternatively there is Node-red https://nodered.org/ https://nodered.org/ (js visual node programing automation) and huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn (Python automation) They will never offer as much integration as HA so I tend to find using HA as a dashboard/device integrator and then Node-red/AppDaemon for the actual automations to be more optimal.

dugite-code 4y ago

My biggest issue with HomeAssistant at the moment is the refusal of the Devs to support Single sign on methods. Several have been submitted via pull requests and almost gone through and then dropped based on very poor reasoning in my opinion. There is an auth header addon in HACS but without official support the android app is a buggy mess to get working. HA is the only service I am running now that isn't hooked into my SSO and it's a niggling frustration to say the least.

simcop2387 4y ago
I'd love it to have some kind of LDAP or other directory service thing. I've got a few other things I run for myself and some friends or family members that already can work with that (notably NextCloud) that would be really cool to connect up with HA too.
- dugite-code 4y ago
  Good news, you can use HA with LDAP (ish) and it's sorta supported using the built in command line auth - https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/authentication/providers/#command-line https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/authentication/providers/... and the ldap-auth-sh script - https://github.com/bob1de/ldap-auth-sh https://github.com/bob1de/ldap-auth-sh Not quite SSO, but at least the passwords and users a synced across, so that's nice.
Nextgrid 4y ago
When it comes to internal services that don't implement auth or have inadequate auth support, there are several projects out there that act as a reverse proxy and handle auth, only passing requests through once authentication is complete. You can use this with Home Assistant's local IP auth (that just bypasses auth and assigns everything to a single HA user) so you don't have redundant auth mechanisms.
- dugite-code 4y ago
  Yeah that's basically what the Auth header add-on is used for. It's just a pain for the Android app. I got it working briefly but hit a snag where my yubikey I use for passwordless login couldn't be used as it's using a webview container and you can't easily just use a yubikey in that scenario. If SSO was supported mainline support for that could be added. What I have been meaning to do is have my Auth provider fall back to basic password or something else for HomeAssistant logins, just need to figure out HOW to do that.

peterhajas 4y ago

I love HomeAssistant, and use it to power my whole house. I automate most lights, my whole house audio setup, my security system, and more. I highly recommend it. I recently wrote about how to do a declarative model for automations, which I use throughout the house: http://peterhajas.com/blog/declarative_home_automation.html http://peterhajas.com/blog/declarative_home_automation.html

fake-name 4y ago

Can we stop calling custom distros an "OS"? Like, this is linux. Linux is the OS. This is home assistant distro.

tinus_hn 4y ago
If you’re going to be pedantic, at least make sure to be right. Linux is a kernel!
- CharlesW 4y ago
  It's a floor wax and a dessert topping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

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Kab1r 4y ago

I run home assistant on kubernetetes, but I've been annoyed by things breaking often on updates and reliability issues when running ZHA with a combo USB dongle.

kkfx 4y ago

Honestly I see exactly NO purpose for such dedicated distro: I use H.A. on my homeserver, deployed via pip, simple, lightweight and effective without the burden of a dedicated distro with the need for security upgrades and enormous integration effort for what? On my homeserver I do many things, there is no point in having many different homeserver or container to run single service if I can consolidate ALL in a single hw, easy to recreate/extend as I with thanks to NixOS/Guix or anything else + some IaC behind. Such moves have only commercial reasons and normally in practice are commercial fails due to the inevitably low quality of the output. I still have to see ANY dedicated distro with a commercial success behind and without a large number of angry users.