21 ms·

Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

559 points by coherence73 2y ago

petre 2y ago
It loses the login every few months to the point that I got fed up to repeatedly login and obtain the token again and never touched it again.
euroderf 2y ago
Is anyone else trying to run HA with deCONZ & Conbee II ? AFAICT the documentation is scattershot and the software is ugly and fickle. OTOH maybe I'm just stupid.
- Sander_Marechal 2y ago
  I tried it for a year or so, then I moved everything to zigbee2mqtt and a slae.sh CC2652 stick (https://slae.sh/projects/cc2652/ https://slae.sh/projects/cc2652/). I had a lot of problems with deCONZ / Conbee II dropping messages and losing devices, forcing me to reset, re-pair and re-configure every few weeks (specifically my Hue lights). The new stick and zigbee2mqtt has been flawless so far (18 months)
- herbst 2y ago
  I tried. It was unreliable as f. Conbee lost connection whenever he wanted. HA was way to heavy for modern raspi. Documentation was horrible for all tools and plugins I needed. Many python connectors I found to work with HA in my research before turned out to be outdated and/or only work in specific setups. As the far majority of my devices is bound to random online APIs anyway, I hacked my own solution back then and today sometimes 'i port' HA plugins using chatgpt :)
- draugadrotten 2y ago
  I am running HA with Conbee II using zigbee2mqtt in docker, and it is very stable and easy to use. However the Conbee II stick needs to left at an older version of firmware. The most recent updates of Conbee II firmware are unstable. "Warning: Conbee 2 firmware versions newer than 0x26580700 will result in an unstable network with devices dropping randomly, see Issue 9554" https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/deconz.html https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/deconz.html
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  I have a Conbee II stick but it's running through Zigbee Home Automation. HomeAssistant is running inside a VM with the stick passed through from the host. It works mostly well, hasn't lost any of the Sonoff and Lixee sensors. The only issue is that I need to reboot the VM after an update, or it will lose access to the stick for some reason.
yejunsiu1 2y ago
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SusanTrobert 2y ago
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kwanbix 2y ago
I didn't know what it was, so: https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  It's the Land Rover of home automation systems. (Very capable, but also making programmers out of home owners since 2012) edit: I was referring to a sticker that I’ve seen often on enthusiasts' forum posts 'Land Rover - Proudly turning owners into mechanics since 1948'. The old school Defender is a very capable off road vehicle, but its need for regular unscheduled maintenance is legendary. Greetings from a Toyota HZJ80 driver :)
  - w0m 2y ago
    Are Land Rovers extra hackable? Will be in need of a new car in a few years and that would help o.0
    - 654wak654 2y ago
      I think they were referring more to Land Rovers making mechanics out of car owners (Due to their famously bad reliability), but I may have misunderstood the joke.
      - jajko 2y ago
        Definitely, I heard som many bad jokes like you need to buy 2 evoque models to be able to drive at least 1 etc. Really bad reliability despite good design.
    - slowmotiony 2y ago
      He meant shit keeps breaking and youll be constantly fixing it
    - goodpoint 2y ago
      HA is not hackable, is a massive blob
pawelduda 2y ago
I have some xiaomi bulbs that used to work until I needed to re-pair them to a new wifi and (unofficial) integration kept asking me for pairing code - which is nowhere to be found. I probably got rid of the boxes where it's supposed to be located. Wonder if there's a workaround for that.
- wetpaws 2y ago
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- jsheard 2y ago
  I think WiFi IoT stuff has a reputation for being janky pretty much across the board, the recommendation is usually to use Zigbee stuff instead wherever possible. That also has the security advantage of keeping the devices on their own little network that can't access your LAN or the internet directly.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    I've gone with Zwave instead - older house and hoping to keep wifi bands uncongested. It's about $30 per device, with Zooz as a big brand. It's been quite solid and the spousal-acceptance-factor is high.
  - pawelduda 2y ago
    Yeah - I bought them before I got into this, so thought it'd be nice to make use of them Defaulting to zigbee for anything new
- maxglute 2y ago
  Not familiar with xiaomi bulbs, do they have QR codes on the base? A few years ago Xiaomi started enforcing region locks to reduce gray market sales, so a bunch of products stopped pairing when app set to wrong region, without indication why. I had to repair my vacuum, air purifier, security cameras on profile with PRC region, and other stuff on profile with Singapore region. Very annoying.
- Havoc 2y ago
nevi-me 2y ago
Better late than never, I have 3 of their bulbs in the house, and not being able to integrate with HA prevented me from buying more (at least before Matter was announced). I've been using them with Google Home, so the lights weren't automated with HA. I'll try the integration out.
- hereonout2 2y ago
  I have bulbs from wiz, which already have HA support. Being new to all this home automation stuff I was quite intrigued how they worked though. They're exposed on the WiFi network over a really simple UDP based protocol which led me down a rabbit hole of writing a little go client to mess about with them, took a few evenings. Not saying Xiaomi bulbs would be quite as simple to write an integration for, but they might have been. It's kind of fun seeing how people have reverse engineered all these custom protocols.
- Havoc 2y ago
  They sold bulbs under various brands. I’ve got some very old ones branded yeelight that work entirely offline with HA. Tried to rebuy got a different brand and they don’t work offline properly. Bit of a crapshoot These days I try to buy preflashed tasmota gear. Things like athom.tech
  - Fabricio20 2y ago
    I got some of those Yeelight ones (gen 1/gray plastic and gen 2/white plastic!) but my experience has been really bad. Even if their app allows you to enable local mode it's laggy and just... stops working after a while, it also seems to break if it can't reach xiaomi servers (pihole). Wondering how you got yours to work, mine are just trash at this point and i've since switched to proper local devices.
    - Havoc 2y ago
      Zero lag. If they lose power they revert to cool white. All local. Checked home assistant and its direct integration (yeelight)...no mqtt. And looked up my old notes - copied in below though don't recall details of what I did. Suspect maybe I used the python stuff just to check that lan is enabled rather than editing ------ https://github.com/Squachen/micloud https://github.com/Squachen/micloud pip install micloud miiocli device --ip 192.168.1.88 --token FOOBAR info miiocli device --ip 192.168.1.88 --token FOOBAR info On iphone go to yeelight app, select the apps overall setting menu and enable lan control
mongol 2y ago
What is MIoT that is mentioned? I know IoT is internet of things.
- H8crilA 2y ago
  It stands for Mquantum-blockchain-self-driving-social-cloud Internet of Things.
- bhaney 2y ago
  Meaningless mashup of Xiaomi's "Mi" product branding and "IoT" that they use to refer to arbitrary aspects of their IoT products
- Havoc 2y ago
  Some sort of auto pairing tech with their own routers I believe
Someone1234 2y ago
I include this when considering buying something integrated. For example Philips Hue is overpriced, but their Home Assistant integration is top tier and ultra-reliable. Contrast that with myQ garage door openers (LiftMaster, Chamberlain and Craftsman) recently breaking Home Assistant support on purpose, to essentially replace it with nothing, and they're dead to me. So Xiaomi adding support, assuming it is reliable, definitely moves them into a better category.
- UberFly 2y ago
  After trying the lesser priced bulbs and sensors I always end up back to Hue. Rock solid quality - pays for itself in the long run.
- rsanek 2y ago
  Hue is amazing, the reliability of their products is truly impressive. I've had ~40 lights for years and not a single one has died or ever had connectivity issues.
- Filligree 2y ago
  Is there a list I could consult to find such companies?
  - mankyd 2y ago
    https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ It's worth clicking through and reading details on each one before you commit. Most of them are quite complete, but some only support a handful of devices or features. You can also get a sense if the control is local (i.e. no internet connection) or cloud based.
- michaelmior 2y ago
  In case anyone using a myQ opener comes across this, I feel the need to mention ratgdo which many have found to be a great inexpensive upgrade. https://ratcloud.llc/ https://ratcloud.llc/
WaitWaitWha 2y ago
In my opinion this is not Xiaomi into Home Assistant (HA). To me, an integration would mean that I need nothing from Xiaomi, all activities are within HA. from the Github page[0]: > Xiaomi Home Integration and the affiliated cloud interface is provided by Xiaomi officially. You need to use your Xiaomi account to login to get your device list. Xiaomi Home Integration implements OAuth 2.0 login process, which does not keep your account password in the Home Assistant application. However, due to the limitation of the Home Assistant platform, the user information (including device information, certificates, tokens, etc.) of your Xiaomi account will be saved in the Home Assistant configuration file in clear text after successful login. You need to ensure that your Home Assistant configuration file is properly stored. The exposure of your configuration file may result in others logging in with your identity. [0] https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home?tab=readme-ov-file#security https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home?tab=readme-ov-file#...
- greatgib 2y ago
  I agree that it totally sucks. If you use home assistant, it is mostly to not give control of everything in your home to the cloud of a company. Especially to a Chinese one... And there is no legitimate reason why control can't be local only, especially when home assistant is there to provide the gateway feature and remote access is needed! So this action of Xiaomi is just a marketing way to be able to print "compatible with home assistant" on their box despite still forcing to use their cloud!
- asveikau 2y ago
  This is how a lot of home assistant integrations work. Sure, many HA users (self included) try to avoid dependence on cloud services and opt for local only solutions, such as zwave or ZigBee or products that work with local-only wifi. But the nature of the beast is that some devices out there are built to talk only to a cloud service. Having a company start an upstream project is probably a better sign than not having that, however sure, they could pull the plug on their access to cloud service, people may have privacy and security concerns, etc.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
gpi 2y ago
Got my hopes up but it's a start. Was hoping to see more local support as opposed to Xiaomi cloud
carlgreene 2y ago
Home Assistant is one of the best open source projects I've come across. I've been using it for 5+ years on an older RPi and it's been pretty rock solid. Countless updates and everything just keeps on chugging. I've landed on a mixture of MQTT and Zigbee communicating devices, the latter being much easier to set up and maintain. There's an integration for just about everything I've wanted, some better than others, but all in all just a great project.
- diggan 2y ago
  > I've landed on a mixture of MQTT and Zigbee communicating devices Almost everything I use is ZigBee, but at first, I used the built-in Zigbee support for it, not realizing what I was missing out on. After a move, I setup everything again, but this time via ZigBee2MQTT instead and the compatibility is miles ahead of the built-in integration. Just a word of advice to others who are using the built-in integration atm, not realizing the big difference between the two :)
  - 3abiton 2y ago
    I second Zigbee2mqtt. Koen's work is legedenary, I also been fascinated by Zigbee and been using ever since. No need to 3rd part oem vendor lock-in. 99% of the devices I purchased currently nearly 52 on my zigbee network, were paird hassle free.
  - cassianoleal 2y ago
    I experimented a bit with ZHA (native Zigbee integration) but soon realised I needed something better, and Z2M was that something. It had all been working wonderfully, until I had a problem recently that meant I had to redo the entire Zigbee setup. I run HAOS on a VM, with the Zigbee radio being passed through from the host. Recently I wanted to play with Thread so I added a radio and passed it through to the VM as well. All was fine, though I wasn't having a lot of time to experiment and the Thread dongle was connected in an awkward position so I decided to yank it out. At this point all hell broke lose. Z2M wouldn't start, throwing cryptic error messages. After a lot of trial and error, I removed both USB passthroughs, rebooted the VM, shut it down again, re-plugged the Zigbee dongle and re-added the passthrough. At this point the hardware side of things was fine but my Zigbee network was gone. To make it worse, a new one couldn't be initialised because it was trying to use the same ID as the previous one. I had to manually change the ID in the config YAML, restart everything, then re-pair all devices. I really feel like this stuff should be more resilient to failures. Otherwise, it's pretty good!
MostlyStable 2y ago
I mean....I guess this is better than not having it, but I'm not personally interested in cloud-only smart integrations. Cloud option? Fantastic! Cloud-only? No thank you.
- _flux 2y ago
  I don't believe it's completely cloud only, "local control" https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home#:~:text=Home%20Integration%20support-,local%20control https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home#:~:text=Home%20Inte... sounds quite a bit like non-cloud control? Could still be behind cloud authentication, though.
  - KAMSPioneer 2y ago
    Read a little further down: > Xiaomi central hub gateway is only available in mainland China. In other regions, it is not available. Nonstarter for many, myself included. ETA: Yes it does say "partial" local control can be done without the gateway software, but is not recommended and does not work unless you are on the same local network. Better than nothing, but still a nonstarter.
    - _flux 2y ago
      It also says > If you do not have a Xiaomi central hub gateway or other devices having central hub gateway function, all control commands are sent through Xiaomi Cloud. Now I don't actually know what central hub gateway function entails :) but it does sound like some non-Xiaomi devices could also fulfill this role. In case of HASS I think local network is a pretty decent assumption. I have my HASS on both my local VLAN as well as the IOT VLAN.
tetris11 2y ago
Just use ZigBee or Z-wave devices and then use a bridge to connect to HA. Anything else is just WiFi and vendor lockdown
- cassianoleal 2y ago
  The WiFi and BLU Shelly devices are pretty rock solid, and couldn't be more compatible with HA.
- mgrandl 2y ago
  Some of the best home automation stuff is cloud-less wifi. For example Shelly switches with Tasmota are awesome and I much prefer those over zigbee bulbs.
- Fabricio20 2y ago
  Personal anecdote but at least for me WiFi devices are significantly more reliable and there exists good brands that don't have any vendor lockdown, such as Shelly or Sonoff. Others can do Tasmota. So you shouldn't go around discarding it just because it's wifi. I live in a concrete and metal house. My WiFi coverage is spotless with several APs around the house. Can't really do that with ZigBee. Almost all of my zigbee devices just fail to connect every other day. Z-wave offers that mesh network promise but man is it out of reach in the price range. WiFi is everywhere/in every house, I seriously think more vendors should offer devices that just integrate into it instead of trying to build this bespoke network on the same band. Specially since 2.4GHz is going into disuse more and more as people switch to 5GHz for phones/pcs/etc..
  - tetris11 2y ago
    I'm just worried about OTA updates. Shelly and Sonoff are playing nice now. They might not always. Plus, unless you fence off your wifi device from the router, it might be phoning home on you. At least a module without a WiFi stack can't do that
darknavi 2y ago
I'll be the one to plug Valetudo in this thread I guess. Primitively, it replaces the cloud functionality on-device for robot vacuums (see supported models) and replaces it with local services that run offline and can connect to Home Assistant easily. I will never buy another robot vacuum without Valetudo support as long as that project lives. It's great. https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/
- deleted 2y ago
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- cassianoleal 2y ago
  I've been eyeing Valetudo for a while. I think it's a shame that it doesn't and (according to the author) never will support multiple maps. I don't want to have to buy a separate robot for each floor when I can easily carry it to the next floor when it's done.
  - morsch 2y ago
    Some robots support restoring map snapshots. I wonder what's stopping people from using this as a multi floor implementation?
    - cassianoleal 2y ago
      Currently I can just get the robot from one floor to the next and press start. It takes a few seconds to find its bearings and switch maps, then goes on his merry way. Having to restore a snapshot each time I move floors is a lot more friction.
    - htgb 2y ago
      I use a fork [1] of Valetudo and it lets me do just this. I save one map per floor, then restore when carrying it between floors. One floor gets cleaned much more often, but so far I have preferred this over buying two robots. [1] https://github.com/rand256/valetudo https://github.com/rand256/valetudo
  - 2y ago
whalesalad 2y ago
Sidenote: I just installed Home Assistant this weekend for the first time. Insanely polished piece of software!
- deleted 2y ago
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monkeydust 2y ago
HA is awesome but I have found that over time entropy kicks in if you don't maintain it properly (which I haven't done for a year) connections fail, switches stop doing what they are supposed to...it's on my Xmas list to spend some time sorting it out!
- sedatk 2y ago
  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.
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    I have been using HA for 4 years, no such issues. But even if, restore from backup seems like an easy fix?
    - Semaphor 2y ago
      Almost 9 years, actually.
    - sedatk 2y ago
      I think he also had a problem with backups, but I’m not sure.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    If you need to store 15GB of sensor data, a MySQL derivate is not what I'd choose
    - sedatk 2y ago
      Why is that?
      - theshrike79 2y ago
        RDBMS isn't the best place to store time series data. There are better and more efficient options for that.
syntaxing 2y ago
Meanwhile MyQ “closed” their API and broke all HA integration because it “cost” the company too much. Where in reality, they just wanted people to use their app since they started serving ads. Say what you want about China and the security implications but a lot of their IoT companies are way more opened than our US counterparts.
WaitWaitWha 2y ago
If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can migrate to other solution if that does not end up to be the best choice. Make sure you get the latest Zigbee radio dongle the HA Forum recommends. I use in all my HA installs a combination dongle for Zigbee & Z-Wave and it works flawlessly (NORTEK Quickstick Combo). Start with a few cheap Zigbee devices. Stay away from WiFi, LoRaWAN and other solutions. Z-Wave devices are great, but more expensive. You know you do not know if you even want to do this. Initially, just use the built-in Zigbee (ZHA) integrations. Once you are comfortable deploying other ways, like MQTT can be established easily. Do not spend too much on the devices now. I suggest you pick up a PIR motion sensors, door & window opening sensors, temperature & humidity sensors, smart plugs, and light bulbs. Anything else is overkill to try out. Sub-tip: all of these are battery operated, so try to consolidate on a standard battery. The ones I listed can all run off of 2032 cell batteries. Ikea sells most of these, Aqara is well known, and so on. If it is Zigbee (not Matter) you will have 96% chance it will work with HA. Have fun!
- punnerud 2y ago
  Two more important notes: - Use an MicroSD card that can handle multiple read/write like the purple MicroSD cards. Can also be a benefit with too big card to save some writes, to make the card last longer. Talking about <1year vs +50 in how long they last. -It’s just Python, Jinja and Sqlite3 at the core. For custom programs I find it easier to write the Python program and then just convert to Jinja syntax.
  - consp 2y ago
    Good microsd cards have write cycle or bytes written estimates in their specs. I usually buy those meant for dashcams since they have a bigger reserve capacity and are decently fast.
  - alwyn 2y ago
mindwork 2y ago
Does that includes Qingping air monitors?
- erinnh 2y ago
  Dont those already work via Bluetooth? My Air Monitor Lite at least do.
pammf 2y ago
I love Home Assistant but I now have a pretty strict minimum effort rule after years of configuring integrations and building dashboards that I would forget about after 2 months: I only do automations (no dashboards at all), and try to keep them as simple as possible. Once I feel I’m reaching diminishing returns territory, I stop. Only use HA if I need to mix different vendors (e.g. turn on the hue lights if the tuya sensor switches to on) or if the vendor app/service has a limitation that doesn’t allow me to do what I want. For instance, I have some automations for my Mitsubishi airco units cause their app sucks. Otherwise I’ll just use the default app or service. Only configure an integration if I’m going to use it in an automation; I have a bunch of integrations detected that I don’t configure. I decided to follow these rules a couple of years back, and since then I could address all my needs with almost 0 maintenance.
- AdrianB1 2y ago
  How many apps do you have installed to control everything? And how is the stuff integrating if you have equipment from different vendor that need to talk to each other, like AC units with PV inverter to start and shutdown based on electricity net production and real temperature in the rooms (using external thermometers, not the one in the AC)? And how do you consolidate and monitor power consumption in a single place, are you using a different solution for that?
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 2y ago
    It sounds like I use HA in a similar manner. For me, I make HA available to Google Home and HomeKit. HA is just glue to hold everything together. I tried do make a dashboard some time ago but it felt rather complicated. Google Home and HomeKit integrate the best into my life and the lives of my family that there is no way HA can compete. Maybe that will change if I find myself in a house that I own… Maybe spending time to make a dashboard will have a better value prop.
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  At the other end of the spectrum, I just managed to split up my HA automation files and mount them into a ConfigMap on my K8s cluster https://github.com/shepherdjerred/homelab/tree/main/cdk8s/config/homeassistant https://github.com/shepherdjerred/homelab/tree/main/cdk8s/co...
guerrilla 2y ago
Why do people care about Xiaomi specifically? Tons of stuff is supported by HA.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
[flagged]
odiroot 2y ago
Interesting but this one doesn't work with my containerised Home Assistant. Xiaomi Miot Auto works on the other hand. There's also another, a built-in one.
perdomon 2y ago
Is this the software suggested by my new robot vacuum?
seanvelasco 2y ago
low-end Chinese phones, including Xiaomi and Huawei, show ads on system apps like Settings and Contacts. soon, smart home appliances might also display or speak ads. there's nothing stopping these Chinese companies from doing so - both technologically and ethically. Xiaomi definitely should not lead the way in smart home automation.
- noicebrewery 2y ago
  What makes you think this is unique to Chinese tech companies? Windows 11 put ads in our start menu.
  - dtquad 2y ago
    Windows 11 "advertise" Microsoft services for Windows 11. It's more like feature announcements.
    - evilduck 2y ago
      I wish they were that restrained. While they do include MS services in their advertising it's way more than that. They include a bunch of other crap, including hardware offerings like trying to sell you XBox controllers in popups near the taskbar. They advertise Candy Crush, Instagram, Adobe Express, etc, as listed apps "preinstalled" in Windows. They push clickbait MSN articles (ads) for games, travel, and buying guides in the search button of the taskbar that is enabled by default. They then push those in a widget popover panel too. They make Edge the default browser out of the box (and are relentless about getting you to switch if you change it) and Edge itself then shoves ads in your face with default bookmarks like Ebay and Netflix and Walmart and featured content. IIRC even things like their Maps, Weather, and Photos apps also had web advertising placements. There's probably more but I can't bear to use Windows more than minimally necessary so I've probably missed a bunch.
  - seanvelasco 2y ago
    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.
deleted 2y ago
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ancorevard 2y ago
There is a lot of upside of inviting CCP into your home, for instance...
- deleted 2y ago
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harry8 2y ago
I've had a reasonable run with athom pre-flashed tasmota kit and HA. https://www.aliexpress.com/store/5790427 https://www.aliexpress.com/store/5790427 Low effort, low maintenance, works good. mqtt & wifi, tasmota has everything you could want in a timer interface while still exposing switching etc to override it HA.
immibis 2y ago
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.

559 points by coherence73 2y ago

It loses the login every few months to the point that I got fed up to repeatedly login and obtain the token again and never touched it again.

euroderf 2y ago

Is anyone else trying to run HA with deCONZ & Conbee II ? AFAICT the documentation is scattershot and the software is ugly and fickle. OTOH maybe I'm just stupid.

Sander_Marechal 2y ago
I tried it for a year or so, then I moved everything to zigbee2mqtt and a slae.sh CC2652 stick (https://slae.sh/projects/cc2652/ https://slae.sh/projects/cc2652/). I had a lot of problems with deCONZ / Conbee II dropping messages and losing devices, forcing me to reset, re-pair and re-configure every few weeks (specifically my Hue lights). The new stick and zigbee2mqtt has been flawless so far (18 months)
herbst 2y ago
I tried. It was unreliable as f. Conbee lost connection whenever he wanted. HA was way to heavy for modern raspi. Documentation was horrible for all tools and plugins I needed. Many python connectors I found to work with HA in my research before turned out to be outdated and/or only work in specific setups. As the far majority of my devices is bound to random online APIs anyway, I hacked my own solution back then and today sometimes 'i port' HA plugins using chatgpt :)
draugadrotten 2y ago
I am running HA with Conbee II using zigbee2mqtt in docker, and it is very stable and easy to use. However the Conbee II stick needs to left at an older version of firmware. The most recent updates of Conbee II firmware are unstable. "Warning: Conbee 2 firmware versions newer than 0x26580700 will result in an unstable network with devices dropping randomly, see Issue 9554" https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/deconz.html https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/deconz.html
vladvasiliu 2y ago
I have a Conbee II stick but it's running through Zigbee Home Automation. HomeAssistant is running inside a VM with the stick passed through from the host. It works mostly well, hasn't lost any of the Sonoff and Lixee sensors. The only issue is that I need to reboot the VM after an update, or it will lose access to the stick for some reason.

yejunsiu1 2y ago

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SusanTrobert 2y ago

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kwanbix 2y ago

I didn't know what it was, so: https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
It's the Land Rover of home automation systems. (Very capable, but also making programmers out of home owners since 2012) edit: I was referring to a sticker that I’ve seen often on enthusiasts' forum posts 'Land Rover - Proudly turning owners into mechanics since 1948'. The old school Defender is a very capable off road vehicle, but its need for regular unscheduled maintenance is legendary. Greetings from a Toyota HZJ80 driver :)
- w0m 2y ago
  Are Land Rovers extra hackable? Will be in need of a new car in a few years and that would help o.0
  - 654wak654 2y ago
    I think they were referring more to Land Rovers making mechanics out of car owners (Due to their famously bad reliability), but I may have misunderstood the joke.
    - jajko 2y ago
      Definitely, I heard som many bad jokes like you need to buy 2 evoque models to be able to drive at least 1 etc. Really bad reliability despite good design.
  - slowmotiony 2y ago
    He meant shit keeps breaking and youll be constantly fixing it
  - goodpoint 2y ago
    HA is not hackable, is a massive blob

pawelduda 2y ago

I have some xiaomi bulbs that used to work until I needed to re-pair them to a new wifi and (unofficial) integration kept asking me for pairing code - which is nowhere to be found. I probably got rid of the boxes where it's supposed to be located. Wonder if there's a workaround for that.

wetpaws 2y ago
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jsheard 2y ago
I think WiFi IoT stuff has a reputation for being janky pretty much across the board, the recommendation is usually to use Zigbee stuff instead wherever possible. That also has the security advantage of keeping the devices on their own little network that can't access your LAN or the internet directly.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  I've gone with Zwave instead - older house and hoping to keep wifi bands uncongested. It's about $30 per device, with Zooz as a big brand. It's been quite solid and the spousal-acceptance-factor is high.
- pawelduda 2y ago
  Yeah - I bought them before I got into this, so thought it'd be nice to make use of them Defaulting to zigbee for anything new
maxglute 2y ago
Not familiar with xiaomi bulbs, do they have QR codes on the base? A few years ago Xiaomi started enforcing region locks to reduce gray market sales, so a bunch of products stopped pairing when app set to wrong region, without indication why. I had to repair my vacuum, air purifier, security cameras on profile with PRC region, and other stuff on profile with Singapore region. Very annoying.
Havoc 2y ago

nevi-me 2y ago

Better late than never, I have 3 of their bulbs in the house, and not being able to integrate with HA prevented me from buying more (at least before Matter was announced). I've been using them with Google Home, so the lights weren't automated with HA. I'll try the integration out.

hereonout2 2y ago
I have bulbs from wiz, which already have HA support. Being new to all this home automation stuff I was quite intrigued how they worked though. They're exposed on the WiFi network over a really simple UDP based protocol which led me down a rabbit hole of writing a little go client to mess about with them, took a few evenings. Not saying Xiaomi bulbs would be quite as simple to write an integration for, but they might have been. It's kind of fun seeing how people have reverse engineered all these custom protocols.
Havoc 2y ago
They sold bulbs under various brands. I’ve got some very old ones branded yeelight that work entirely offline with HA. Tried to rebuy got a different brand and they don’t work offline properly. Bit of a crapshoot These days I try to buy preflashed tasmota gear. Things like athom.tech
- Fabricio20 2y ago
  I got some of those Yeelight ones (gen 1/gray plastic and gen 2/white plastic!) but my experience has been really bad. Even if their app allows you to enable local mode it's laggy and just... stops working after a while, it also seems to break if it can't reach xiaomi servers (pihole). Wondering how you got yours to work, mine are just trash at this point and i've since switched to proper local devices.
  - Havoc 2y ago
    Zero lag. If they lose power they revert to cool white. All local. Checked home assistant and its direct integration (yeelight)...no mqtt. And looked up my old notes - copied in below though don't recall details of what I did. Suspect maybe I used the python stuff just to check that lan is enabled rather than editing ------ https://github.com/Squachen/micloud https://github.com/Squachen/micloud pip install micloud miiocli device --ip 192.168.1.88 --token FOOBAR info miiocli device --ip 192.168.1.88 --token FOOBAR info On iphone go to yeelight app, select the apps overall setting menu and enable lan control

mongol 2y ago

What is MIoT that is mentioned? I know IoT is internet of things.

H8crilA 2y ago
It stands for Mquantum-blockchain-self-driving-social-cloud Internet of Things.
bhaney 2y ago
Meaningless mashup of Xiaomi's "Mi" product branding and "IoT" that they use to refer to arbitrary aspects of their IoT products
Havoc 2y ago
Some sort of auto pairing tech with their own routers I believe

Someone1234 2y ago

I include this when considering buying something integrated. For example Philips Hue is overpriced, but their Home Assistant integration is top tier and ultra-reliable. Contrast that with myQ garage door openers (LiftMaster, Chamberlain and Craftsman) recently breaking Home Assistant support on purpose, to essentially replace it with nothing, and they're dead to me. So Xiaomi adding support, assuming it is reliable, definitely moves them into a better category.

UberFly 2y ago
After trying the lesser priced bulbs and sensors I always end up back to Hue. Rock solid quality - pays for itself in the long run.
rsanek 2y ago
Hue is amazing, the reliability of their products is truly impressive. I've had ~40 lights for years and not a single one has died or ever had connectivity issues.
Filligree 2y ago
Is there a list I could consult to find such companies?
- mankyd 2y ago
  https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ It's worth clicking through and reading details on each one before you commit. Most of them are quite complete, but some only support a handful of devices or features. You can also get a sense if the control is local (i.e. no internet connection) or cloud based.
michaelmior 2y ago
In case anyone using a myQ opener comes across this, I feel the need to mention ratgdo which many have found to be a great inexpensive upgrade. https://ratcloud.llc/ https://ratcloud.llc/

WaitWaitWha 2y ago

In my opinion this is not Xiaomi into Home Assistant (HA). To me, an integration would mean that I need nothing from Xiaomi, all activities are within HA. from the Github page[0]: > Xiaomi Home Integration and the affiliated cloud interface is provided by Xiaomi officially. You need to use your Xiaomi account to login to get your device list. Xiaomi Home Integration implements OAuth 2.0 login process, which does not keep your account password in the Home Assistant application. However, due to the limitation of the Home Assistant platform, the user information (including device information, certificates, tokens, etc.) of your Xiaomi account will be saved in the Home Assistant configuration file in clear text after successful login. You need to ensure that your Home Assistant configuration file is properly stored. The exposure of your configuration file may result in others logging in with your identity. [0] https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home?tab=readme-ov-file#security https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home?tab=readme-ov-file#...

greatgib 2y ago
I agree that it totally sucks. If you use home assistant, it is mostly to not give control of everything in your home to the cloud of a company. Especially to a Chinese one... And there is no legitimate reason why control can't be local only, especially when home assistant is there to provide the gateway feature and remote access is needed! So this action of Xiaomi is just a marketing way to be able to print "compatible with home assistant" on their box despite still forcing to use their cloud!
asveikau 2y ago
This is how a lot of home assistant integrations work. Sure, many HA users (self included) try to avoid dependence on cloud services and opt for local only solutions, such as zwave or ZigBee or products that work with local-only wifi. But the nature of the beast is that some devices out there are built to talk only to a cloud service. Having a company start an upstream project is probably a better sign than not having that, however sure, they could pull the plug on their access to cloud service, people may have privacy and security concerns, etc.
- reaperducer 2y ago

gpi 2y ago

Got my hopes up but it's a start. Was hoping to see more local support as opposed to Xiaomi cloud

carlgreene 2y ago

Home Assistant is one of the best open source projects I've come across. I've been using it for 5+ years on an older RPi and it's been pretty rock solid. Countless updates and everything just keeps on chugging. I've landed on a mixture of MQTT and Zigbee communicating devices, the latter being much easier to set up and maintain. There's an integration for just about everything I've wanted, some better than others, but all in all just a great project.

diggan 2y ago
> I've landed on a mixture of MQTT and Zigbee communicating devices Almost everything I use is ZigBee, but at first, I used the built-in Zigbee support for it, not realizing what I was missing out on. After a move, I setup everything again, but this time via ZigBee2MQTT instead and the compatibility is miles ahead of the built-in integration. Just a word of advice to others who are using the built-in integration atm, not realizing the big difference between the two :)
- 3abiton 2y ago
  I second Zigbee2mqtt. Koen's work is legedenary, I also been fascinated by Zigbee and been using ever since. No need to 3rd part oem vendor lock-in. 99% of the devices I purchased currently nearly 52 on my zigbee network, were paird hassle free.
- cassianoleal 2y ago
  I experimented a bit with ZHA (native Zigbee integration) but soon realised I needed something better, and Z2M was that something. It had all been working wonderfully, until I had a problem recently that meant I had to redo the entire Zigbee setup. I run HAOS on a VM, with the Zigbee radio being passed through from the host. Recently I wanted to play with Thread so I added a radio and passed it through to the VM as well. All was fine, though I wasn't having a lot of time to experiment and the Thread dongle was connected in an awkward position so I decided to yank it out. At this point all hell broke lose. Z2M wouldn't start, throwing cryptic error messages. After a lot of trial and error, I removed both USB passthroughs, rebooted the VM, shut it down again, re-plugged the Zigbee dongle and re-added the passthrough. At this point the hardware side of things was fine but my Zigbee network was gone. To make it worse, a new one couldn't be initialised because it was trying to use the same ID as the previous one. I had to manually change the ID in the config YAML, restart everything, then re-pair all devices. I really feel like this stuff should be more resilient to failures. Otherwise, it's pretty good!

MostlyStable 2y ago

I mean....I guess this is better than not having it, but I'm not personally interested in cloud-only smart integrations. Cloud option? Fantastic! Cloud-only? No thank you.

_flux 2y ago
I don't believe it's completely cloud only, "local control" https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home#:~:text=Home%20Integration%20support-,local%20control https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home#:~:text=Home%20Inte... sounds quite a bit like non-cloud control? Could still be behind cloud authentication, though.
- KAMSPioneer 2y ago
  Read a little further down: > Xiaomi central hub gateway is only available in mainland China. In other regions, it is not available. Nonstarter for many, myself included. ETA: Yes it does say "partial" local control can be done without the gateway software, but is not recommended and does not work unless you are on the same local network. Better than nothing, but still a nonstarter.
  - _flux 2y ago
    It also says > If you do not have a Xiaomi central hub gateway or other devices having central hub gateway function, all control commands are sent through Xiaomi Cloud. Now I don't actually know what central hub gateway function entails :) but it does sound like some non-Xiaomi devices could also fulfill this role. In case of HASS I think local network is a pretty decent assumption. I have my HASS on both my local VLAN as well as the IOT VLAN.

tetris11 2y ago

Just use ZigBee or Z-wave devices and then use a bridge to connect to HA. Anything else is just WiFi and vendor lockdown

cassianoleal 2y ago
The WiFi and BLU Shelly devices are pretty rock solid, and couldn't be more compatible with HA.
mgrandl 2y ago
Some of the best home automation stuff is cloud-less wifi. For example Shelly switches with Tasmota are awesome and I much prefer those over zigbee bulbs.
Fabricio20 2y ago
Personal anecdote but at least for me WiFi devices are significantly more reliable and there exists good brands that don't have any vendor lockdown, such as Shelly or Sonoff. Others can do Tasmota. So you shouldn't go around discarding it just because it's wifi. I live in a concrete and metal house. My WiFi coverage is spotless with several APs around the house. Can't really do that with ZigBee. Almost all of my zigbee devices just fail to connect every other day. Z-wave offers that mesh network promise but man is it out of reach in the price range. WiFi is everywhere/in every house, I seriously think more vendors should offer devices that just integrate into it instead of trying to build this bespoke network on the same band. Specially since 2.4GHz is going into disuse more and more as people switch to 5GHz for phones/pcs/etc..
- tetris11 2y ago
  I'm just worried about OTA updates. Shelly and Sonoff are playing nice now. They might not always. Plus, unless you fence off your wifi device from the router, it might be phoning home on you. At least a module without a WiFi stack can't do that

darknavi 2y ago

I'll be the one to plug Valetudo in this thread I guess. Primitively, it replaces the cloud functionality on-device for robot vacuums (see supported models) and replaces it with local services that run offline and can connect to Home Assistant easily. I will never buy another robot vacuum without Valetudo support as long as that project lives. It's great. https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/

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cassianoleal 2y ago
I've been eyeing Valetudo for a while. I think it's a shame that it doesn't and (according to the author) never will support multiple maps. I don't want to have to buy a separate robot for each floor when I can easily carry it to the next floor when it's done.
- morsch 2y ago
  Some robots support restoring map snapshots. I wonder what's stopping people from using this as a multi floor implementation?
  - cassianoleal 2y ago
    Currently I can just get the robot from one floor to the next and press start. It takes a few seconds to find its bearings and switch maps, then goes on his merry way. Having to restore a snapshot each time I move floors is a lot more friction.
  - htgb 2y ago
    I use a fork [1] of Valetudo and it lets me do just this. I save one map per floor, then restore when carrying it between floors. One floor gets cleaned much more often, but so far I have preferred this over buying two robots. [1] https://github.com/rand256/valetudo https://github.com/rand256/valetudo
- 2y ago

whalesalad 2y ago

Sidenote: I just installed Home Assistant this weekend for the first time. Insanely polished piece of software!

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monkeydust 2y ago

HA is awesome but I have found that over time entropy kicks in if you don't maintain it properly (which I haven't done for a year) connections fail, switches stop doing what they are supposed to...it's on my Xmas list to spend some time sorting it out!

sedatk 2y ago
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.
- Semaphor 2y ago
  I have been using HA for 4 years, no such issues. But even if, restore from backup seems like an easy fix?
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    Almost 9 years, actually.
  - sedatk 2y ago
    I think he also had a problem with backups, but I’m not sure.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  If you need to store 15GB of sensor data, a MySQL derivate is not what I'd choose
  - sedatk 2y ago
    Why is that?
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      RDBMS isn't the best place to store time series data. There are better and more efficient options for that.

syntaxing 2y ago

Meanwhile MyQ “closed” their API and broke all HA integration because it “cost” the company too much. Where in reality, they just wanted people to use their app since they started serving ads. Say what you want about China and the security implications but a lot of their IoT companies are way more opened than our US counterparts.

WaitWaitWha 2y ago

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road. All of the following are "for now, as you start out": Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can migrate to other solution if that does not end up to be the best choice. Make sure you get the latest Zigbee radio dongle the HA Forum recommends. I use in all my HA installs a combination dongle for Zigbee & Z-Wave and it works flawlessly (NORTEK Quickstick Combo). Start with a few cheap Zigbee devices. Stay away from WiFi, LoRaWAN and other solutions. Z-Wave devices are great, but more expensive. You know you do not know if you even want to do this. Initially, just use the built-in Zigbee (ZHA) integrations. Once you are comfortable deploying other ways, like MQTT can be established easily. Do not spend too much on the devices now. I suggest you pick up a PIR motion sensors, door & window opening sensors, temperature & humidity sensors, smart plugs, and light bulbs. Anything else is overkill to try out. Sub-tip: all of these are battery operated, so try to consolidate on a standard battery. The ones I listed can all run off of 2032 cell batteries. Ikea sells most of these, Aqara is well known, and so on. If it is Zigbee (not Matter) you will have 96% chance it will work with HA. Have fun!

punnerud 2y ago
Two more important notes: - Use an MicroSD card that can handle multiple read/write like the purple MicroSD cards. Can also be a benefit with too big card to save some writes, to make the card last longer. Talking about <1year vs +50 in how long they last. -It’s just Python, Jinja and Sqlite3 at the core. For custom programs I find it easier to write the Python program and then just convert to Jinja syntax.
- consp 2y ago
  Good microsd cards have write cycle or bytes written estimates in their specs. I usually buy those meant for dashcams since they have a bigger reserve capacity and are decently fast.
- alwyn 2y ago

mindwork 2y ago

Does that includes Qingping air monitors?

erinnh 2y ago
Dont those already work via Bluetooth? My Air Monitor Lite at least do.

pammf 2y ago

I love Home Assistant but I now have a pretty strict minimum effort rule after years of configuring integrations and building dashboards that I would forget about after 2 months: I only do automations (no dashboards at all), and try to keep them as simple as possible. Once I feel I’m reaching diminishing returns territory, I stop. Only use HA if I need to mix different vendors (e.g. turn on the hue lights if the tuya sensor switches to on) or if the vendor app/service has a limitation that doesn’t allow me to do what I want. For instance, I have some automations for my Mitsubishi airco units cause their app sucks. Otherwise I’ll just use the default app or service. Only configure an integration if I’m going to use it in an automation; I have a bunch of integrations detected that I don’t configure. I decided to follow these rules a couple of years back, and since then I could address all my needs with almost 0 maintenance.

AdrianB1 2y ago
How many apps do you have installed to control everything? And how is the stuff integrating if you have equipment from different vendor that need to talk to each other, like AC units with PV inverter to start and shutdown based on electricity net production and real temperature in the rooms (using external thermometers, not the one in the AC)? And how do you consolidate and monitor power consumption in a single place, are you using a different solution for that?
- c0wb0yc0d3r 2y ago
  It sounds like I use HA in a similar manner. For me, I make HA available to Google Home and HomeKit. HA is just glue to hold everything together. I tried do make a dashboard some time ago but it felt rather complicated. Google Home and HomeKit integrate the best into my life and the lives of my family that there is no way HA can compete. Maybe that will change if I find myself in a house that I own… Maybe spending time to make a dashboard will have a better value prop.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
At the other end of the spectrum, I just managed to split up my HA automation files and mount them into a ConfigMap on my K8s cluster https://github.com/shepherdjerred/homelab/tree/main/cdk8s/config/homeassistant https://github.com/shepherdjerred/homelab/tree/main/cdk8s/co...

guerrilla 2y ago

Why do people care about Xiaomi specifically? Tons of stuff is supported by HA.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

[flagged]

odiroot 2y ago

Interesting but this one doesn't work with my containerised Home Assistant. Xiaomi Miot Auto works on the other hand. There's also another, a built-in one.

perdomon 2y ago

Is this the software suggested by my new robot vacuum?

seanvelasco 2y ago

low-end Chinese phones, including Xiaomi and Huawei, show ads on system apps like Settings and Contacts. soon, smart home appliances might also display or speak ads. there's nothing stopping these Chinese companies from doing so - both technologically and ethically. Xiaomi definitely should not lead the way in smart home automation.

noicebrewery 2y ago
What makes you think this is unique to Chinese tech companies? Windows 11 put ads in our start menu.
- dtquad 2y ago
  Windows 11 "advertise" Microsoft services for Windows 11. It's more like feature announcements.
  - evilduck 2y ago
    I wish they were that restrained. While they do include MS services in their advertising it's way more than that. They include a bunch of other crap, including hardware offerings like trying to sell you XBox controllers in popups near the taskbar. They advertise Candy Crush, Instagram, Adobe Express, etc, as listed apps "preinstalled" in Windows. They push clickbait MSN articles (ads) for games, travel, and buying guides in the search button of the taskbar that is enabled by default. They then push those in a widget popover panel too. They make Edge the default browser out of the box (and are relentless about getting you to switch if you change it) and Edge itself then shoves ads in your face with default bookmarks like Ebay and Netflix and Walmart and featured content. IIRC even things like their Maps, Weather, and Photos apps also had web advertising placements. There's probably more but I can't bear to use Windows more than minimally necessary so I've probably missed a bunch.
- seanvelasco 2y ago
  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.

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ancorevard 2y ago

There is a lot of upside of inviting CCP into your home, for instance...

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harry8 2y ago

I've had a reasonable run with athom pre-flashed tasmota kit and HA. https://www.aliexpress.com/store/5790427 https://www.aliexpress.com/store/5790427 Low effort, low maintenance, works good. mqtt & wifi, tasmota has everything you could want in a timer interface while still exposing switching etc to override it HA.

immibis 2y ago

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.