[HN Gopher] Home Assistant waters my plants
___________________________________________________________________
Home Assistant waters my plants
Author : finniananderson
Score : 235 points
Date : 2026-03-12 10:19 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (finnian.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (finnian.io)
| longtermemory wrote:
| Nice! For the hardware, why didn't you considered using a
| Raspberry Pi?
| H8crilA wrote:
| I used to run HA on an RPi, but eventually migrated it to a
| similar NUC. The RPi eventually just wasn't powerful enough
| (peak compute needs), while the NUCs are still quite cheap. And
| you can run a surprising amount of Proxmox VMs and LXCs on
| barely a few cores and gigabytes of RAM.
| davemp wrote:
| I use an RPi 4 w/ 4GB of RAM and a 1TB usb 3.2 SSD and it
| flies through all my workloads. Though I don't do any video
| encoding things.
| H8crilA wrote:
| The cool thing is that it's very easy to migrate it to
| better hardware. HA backup and restore system is highly
| reliable. For this reason I can definitely recommend an RPi
| to start with, and who knows perhaps it will be enough
| forever, but if not then moving is a matter of ~one
| evening.
| randusername wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, your comment helped me track down that
| my RPI HA was disk constrained. I didn't think to add a
| USB.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Wow, not sure how to interpret your experience that a RPi
| wasn't powerful enough to manage watering a few plants. I can
| only suspect the overall software setup is massively bloated.
| briHass wrote:
| If you want to run EspHome inside HA, and you recompile the
| devices (every release of EH), you want a decent
| processor/disk. The ESP stuff is a surprisingly heavy
| compile for a puny microcontroller.
| H8crilA wrote:
| A recent RPi is sufficient to handle a few plants -
| though, yes, recompilation will take time. The ESP is a
| beautiful piece of software, hence I highly recommend it.
| My native language has an expression that describes this
| situation perfectly: the appetite grows with eating. Next
| thing you know you have 2k or more entities, and your HA
| even handles some video feeds.
|
| The important thing is that it's pretty much always easy
| to make an upgrade thanks to the good design of the
| backup system. Don't forget to set up backups in either
| case, it's a sin to not use such a complete system :)
| belthesar wrote:
| Cost-wise, there's a solid chance that the Pi would have been
| more expensive. Jeff Geerling ran some numbers (^1) on this
| last year, before the current chip crisis we're in, and it was
| bad enough already.
|
| Home Assistant does a surprising amount of Disk I/O, if for
| nothing than for logs. Sibling commenters are also advising not
| running it on the SD card to avoid wearing it out, so there's
| definitely some truth here. This means we're adding a Pi M.2
| hat + SSD into the mix. The Pi5 SSD kit for 256 GB, when it was
| available, was around $60 USD. A Pi5 with 8 GB of RAM is $130
| USD. Now we need a cooler, a case that will fit the Pi5 with
| said M.2 hat, and a power supply. We're already well north of
| $250 USD, encroaching on $300, and we're not even using the
| core benefits of the Pi's platform. No need for GPIO pins,
| tightly integrated cameras or other sensors, none of that.
|
| For all we know, the blog author did this assessment (or
| trusted the assessment of others, eg: Jeff) and came to the
| came conclusion - it wasn't worth the price of entry.
|
| ^1: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/intel-n100-better-
| val...
| PetitPrince wrote:
| > I think I need more Zigbee repeaters to get a reliable mesh
| network, but to date I haven't found any consumer-grade devices
| certified for use in NZ.
|
| Since many devices are also Zigbee router (it's a mesh network
| after all), maybe some additional lightbulb for exterior would
| suffice ?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Pretty much all mains powered Zigbee devices also act as
| routers in the mesh.
| calgoo wrote:
| Exactly! I prefer the small power plugs that lets me control
| fans and other power systems as relays. Family has a habit if
| switching of light bulbs using light switches and i have not
| gotten the change approval to disable the physical switches
| in the house :)
| yoavm wrote:
| For me the best solution was to use smart switches (mainly
| dimmers) and dumb lightbulbs. People can use the switches
| like any other if they want, but I can still have my
| automations and remote control.
| stavros wrote:
| Agreed, people get very frustrated if they have to
| remember to not use certain switches. Using smart
| switches fixes this.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| I wouldn't recommend anyone to yank out physical controls
| for accessibility purposes.
| squigz wrote:
| It seems like quite the hassle to have to pull out one's
| phone every time one enters or leaves a room just to turn
| on lights?
|
| Let's hope you don't have to get to the bathroom quickly
| late at night...
| ga_to wrote:
| Disabling the physical light switch should usually only
| come after setting up a different way of controlling the
| light by hand, without a phone.
|
| Most likely there is some sort of motion or presence
| sensor that turns on the lights which then turn
| themselves off after some time or no more presence is
| detected. There are also small wireless switches that
| could be used in place of the actual wall switch.
|
| I have done so in my apartment for example. Since the
| bedroom light switch is for some reason outside of the
| room I taped it down and put a wireless switch in a more
| reasonable spot. Another example is the hallway light,
| which only turns on by motion sensing when the sun is
| starting to go down.
| PetitPrince wrote:
| As a another comment said, the smarter way to have a
| smart light is to replace the switch with a smart one or
| even better put a relay behind the existing dumb switch
| to smartify the switch. For me it's important to have a
| manual override; you shouldn't need an app for a thing as
| basic as turning the lights on.
| liam_krewer wrote:
| I can recommend Shelly for light switches over smart bulbs.
| It's a relay that fits inside the wall switch with zigbee
| to sit between the light and the switch.
| rubzah wrote:
| That's what I am doing too, though I did have to drill
| out some wall to fit it, in some cases.
|
| There is another option that I don't think many people
| are aware of: You can put a battery powered relay
| downstream of the (dumb) switch, and have it broadcast
| events when power comes on and off, to control other
| smart devices, which just have to listen for the events
| (via a broker like HA).
| richardlblair wrote:
| This - the move is to grab some zigbee smart plugs. Once you
| have HA up and running there are so many applications for
| these.
|
| I have a door sensor that monitors my kids bedroom door, and
| when it opens it turns on a desk lamp in my room. This allows
| me to get to him before he gets to my partner who's sleeping
| with the new born.
| zerof1l wrote:
| I wanted home assistant compatible plant watering solution that
| works on a solar panel and does not require being connected to
| the water line and is Zigbee compatible. Unfortunately, I could
| not find any. So I did a DIY solution: a big barrel which I
| manually fill with water, a 12V pump (usually sold for camper
| vans), some rechargeable batteries, 10W solar panel, a solar
| charging controller, and Tuya ZG-2002-RF switch.
| atoav wrote:
| An art student of mine once needed a way to electrically
| control precise small amounts of water. We solved that using:
| 1. Water tank and gravity 2. Medical IV flow
| regulator1 3. Servo hooked up to that IV flow
| regulator via a 3D-printed part
|
| It worked very well. In medical applications off must be really
| off, so it was also quite safe in that regard as well. Her
| 3D-printed part had a little bit too much flex in it, but in
| principle this works quite well. If it is really, really safety
| critical I would still recommend a mechanical fallback that
| protects in case of power loss or when the servo fails open
| (e.g. bending the hose with the force of a spring if
| electricity is gone).
|
| 1: see https://www.gvs.com/en/catalog/iv-flow-regulators
| stinos wrote:
| > If it is really, really safety critical
|
| Your suggestions should be fine for hardware failure but I'd
| be more concerned about software failure: what if a bug in
| your software makes it unresponsive and stuck in the state
| with the flow open? Maybe a watchdog or some other system
| running in parallel checking for a heartbeat or a max amount
| of time water can be flowing?
| atoav wrote:
| Good point. In my case the program was so simple and the
| risk low enough that this wasn't needed. The worst thing
| thar could have bappened was some minor water damage to an
| exhibition space.
|
| Also my track record of writing stable, bug free embedded
| software has been pretty solid as of now. But if human life
| would be on the line (for example) special precautions like
| multiple independent failsafe mechanisms are non-
| negotiable.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| I dabbled in hydroponics for some years. Due to my inability to
| get my Rasberry Pi and Arduino working I ended up using a 12V
| pump and one of those cheap $10 electric timers on Aliexpress.
| I estimated how much time it took for my hydroponics system to
| drain and that's what I set on the timer. Other people I
| followed had all sorts of sensors rigged up, which I would have
| done if I had the time and skill but I failed, so in the end it
| was just the timer. I too had single solar panel and battery
| and the system worked for over 7 years with no issues. I just
| replaced the pump once or twice.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There are also irrigation controllers that use a ball valve and
| will work fine under gravity pressure e.g. raised rain barrel.
| Powered via battery that lasts months and months. No home
| assistant of course but water usage can be estimated from
| expected flow and programming.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| This feels like one of those cases where DIY ends up being
| simpler than waiting for the perfect product to exist
| denkmoon wrote:
| Cron waters my plants :)
| H8crilA wrote:
| HA is essentially a better cron. It unsurprisingly uses the
| cron syntax where appropriate.
| denkmoon wrote:
| HA is monstrously complex. cron just works. The same can't be
| said for my homebrew esp32 pump relay controller, but at
| least scheduling is never the problem.
| davemp wrote:
| Fun project. Though it's kind of unreal how complicated it is to
| set up HA and I literally do this for a living, both embedded sw
| and backend web dev.
|
| Docker compose with a zwave management server, reverse proxies
| for TLS, vlan isolation for the server, macvlan for HA container
| so it does see the host network, etc, etc. All to turn on and off
| a lightbulb with the sun. All the while AI is telling me to
| configure things insecurely.
|
| I think when I get some more spare time, I'd like to write a
| statically linked program that handles a zwave controller and
| basic automation scripting. No IP networking needed for my
| lightbulbs. Then it wouldn't feel risky to just make a system
| user and udev rule to give it permissions to the controller, and
| run with systemd.
| briHass wrote:
| You're making it complicated with all the VLANs. HAOS in a VM
| (proxmox helper scripts for one-line install), and HA has
| plugins for all the other things.
|
| Just deny WAN access to the IoT junk you don't trust at the
| router, or for things like cameras, a separate switch for
| those. That usually makes sense, since they're one of the few
| devices that must be powered with PoE and doesn't require gig+
| bandwidth. A cheap 100mbit PoE switch will handle a good number
| of cameras.
| davemp wrote:
| I'm not giving untrusted devices unfettered access to my lan
| and an airgapped network sounds more complicated tbh. VLANs
| aren't really that bad with good networking gear.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I have HASS running on a dedicated VLAN, IoT junk on its
| own, separate VLAN without internet access, through a
| managed switch. OPNsense sits in between and does the
| routing. Didn't have to mess around with anything, just ran
| the "vm appliance" or whatever it's called for hass and I
| was off to the races. Wireguard on the firewall gives me
| access from outside the house.
|
| Actually, both OPNsense and Hass are VMs on the same
| machine, with the latter's network not even connected to
| any physical port outside the box. I'm not even running
| Proxmox or anything fancy, just libvirt on Arch. The only
| "fancy" thing is a 2nd hand Mellanox NIC I got off eBay for
| 30 EUR, which presents virtualized interfaces to the VMs,
| but HASS doesn't actually use those.
|
| There's also no need to manually screw around with any
| reverse proxy for TLS; HASS does it with the Let's Encrypt
| add-on. The only missing piece when I set this up a while
| ago was something to regularly renew the cert (the add-on
| would only get started at boot-up).
| randusername wrote:
| I also feel overwhelmed with HA homelab stuff.
|
| HA on my RPI is just not reliable, requiring a reboot 4-6 times
| a year for reasons I don't understand. Frustration at being in
| the literal dark doesn't translate to the right mindset to root
| cause.
|
| What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable
| virtualization, but so much of the resources online are from
| folks that are homelabing maximalists.
|
| I feel the same temptation as parent to create a spartan
| solution.
| benmanns wrote:
| Same. The complexity of HA also leaves my family with a bus
| factor of one re: keeping the lights on.
| _flux wrote:
| I got myself a NUC. It's been worth it: tiny, has 16 GB of
| memory and 504 days of uptime.
|
| I have servers for running VMs and containers but I felt like
| it would be nice to have this one as a separate device. It's
| also easy to plug in radio devices.
| xolox wrote:
| If you are at all comfortable with Linux system
| administration, manually setting up one or a handful of
| KVM/qemu powered virtual machines is not actually that hard
| at all (in my experience). If you like a GUI to guide your
| initial steps, "virt-manager" is pretty okay. I've been
| running 3-5 virtual machines for several years now based on a
| pretty vanilla Ubuntu Linux install (Debian would work just
| fine as well).
|
| Now I do like a challenge every now and then, so I'm
| currently setting up Proxmox to gain live migrations and high
| availability for virtual machines, because I've become quite
| dependent on all of these services in virtual machines
| actually running successfully :-) even in the face of
| eventual hardware failure (like what happened to me in the
| past months).
| the__alchemist wrote:
| IMO Linux system administration, KVM/Qemu, Docker, and
| virtual machines, and third-party tools in general are not
| something that should be involved in smart light
| bulb/sensor/pump etc management.
|
| Task for an RTOS or no OS IMO. Or a single executable that
| runs on any OS without config. Should be simple, fast,
| "just work".
| subscribed wrote:
| exactly. Its stunning it has to be like this.
| vablings wrote:
| I have had the opposite experience; I have an old trash intel
| NUC with a decent SSD and a moderate amount of RAM and it
| runs several services (on proxmox).
|
| - Smokeping - Nginx proxy manager (with tailscale and -
| copyparty - home assistant - regular samba fileserver
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable
| virtualization
|
| Get a nuc or a mini pc: i5-8500 or better (used, ebay
| https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-
| tinyminimic... for a baseline of what's out there)
|
| Ram is your friend (but prices are gross). Dont be cheap on
| storage.
|
| Get an external USB drive (3/2/1 rule).
|
| Install proxmox on said device.
|
| Use the proxmox community scripts to install HAOS as a VM.
| https://community-
| scripts.org/categories?category=operating-...
|
| Pass through what ever USB devices you need (or spring for
| POE devices ).
|
| Enjoy your HA setup.
|
| Proxmox is the way to go here. Once you have a working
| install dont over commit before you learn to: 1. back up, 2.
| restore. These should both be local and remote (HA can enable
| this to various sources).
|
| As a bonus you now have a runtime (proxmox) that can do tons
| of other things (see the whole community scripts link).
|
| I have been running HA for years now, and this method makes
| things a pleasure and is easy (at least if you're a nerd) and
| cheap (the solutions are lower power).
| dgacmu wrote:
| An enthusiastic two thumbs up to this approach. It's
| exactly what I run at home that has been working solidly. I
| run on an N100, which is just a hair smaller than an
| i5-8500, with 32GB DRAM and a 1TB SSD (total overkill). I
| keep it under proxmox; the box also runs my unifi SDN
| controller, pihole, and a linux VM for various little
| services. Two USB dongles for z-wave / zigbee / matter
| (because I'm a glutton for punishment). Backed up to a NAS.
| It's fast, easy, and has been very reliable.
| Larrikin wrote:
| The minimum viable setup is the Home Assistant Green. I run
| it on a slightly better ODroid, since the green did not exist
| at the time. Any heavy task, like using Ollama, are passed
| over to my far more main computer.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| 1.get a cheap used miniPC from ebay
|
| 2. Buy a relevant dongle/antenna for the protocol you want to
| use. I recommend the ones from Sonoff or from the Home
| Assistant foundation (I started with the sonoff for zigbee,
| but added the ZBT-2 for matter/thread. they are both good)
|
| 3. install proxmox to the metal.
|
| 4. use tteck's install script to make the HAOS vm. Don't make
| the containers, make the HAOS VM specifically:
| https://tteck.github.io/Proxmox/#home-assistant-os-vm
|
| 5. Plug in your dongle(s) and don't forget to assign them to
| the new VM. You should now be able to start using home
| assistant. If you're using zigbee, choose zigbee2mqtt rather
| than ZHA, it's more reliable overall.
|
| My setup is around 2 years old and I haven't had to
| administrate it at all.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| While you can run HA as a container. I think it's a mistake -
| Its more complicated and has reduced features.
|
| I would instead recommend people use HAOS instead - either
| running on dedicated hardware OR as a VM. Just dont run it from
| an SD card if you go down the Raspberry Pi/SBC route - it will
| kill the card from IO cycles.
|
| I have an IOT VLAN on my network that all the IOT bits sit in,
| including WIFI devices. What internet access it gets (if any)
| depends on the device profile.
|
| I tried splitting things up into multiple VLANs but a whole lot
| of things assume just a flat network, so things stop working if
| you get too fancy.
| 93n wrote:
| I go the container route, and have only had one issue:
| allowing HA to access my system's Bluetooth adapter. I had
| some ESP32s lying around, so I used ESPHome to make a
| Bluetooth proxy, which solved that issue.
|
| I don't run addons though, which might be part of it.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Interesting. I also run HA in a container and getting it to
| pick up my Zigbee dongle was so easy I don't even remember
| how I did it.
|
| I haven't tried BT, but my HA box lives underneath a couch
| with a big steel pull-out bed so I don't imagine it would
| work very well anyway.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| I haven't done it either. But it should just be a case of
| passing the device to the container. You might need to
| disable the host from using it and pass admin rights to
| the container too.
|
| But it was also quite easy to pass a USB device to the
| HAOS VM in Proxmox.
| 93n wrote:
| The host I run HA on is Ubuntu server. If memory serves
| me right, the Bluetooth issue was related to apparmor and
| dbus restrictions on docker
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| Add-ons (now apps) can't be done without HAOS. It's one of
| those non-obvious things.
|
| There's other things I forget which are also more
| difficult/annoying to manage on the container version.
|
| I have a rather large docker compose stack so my first
| experiments with HA were as running it there.
|
| That lasted maybe a week before I went and ran it as a VM
| instead.
| tjoff wrote:
| Apps/add-ons is just another container, so you can add
| them manually in the compose file.
| 93n wrote:
| Yep, I run esphome in a separate stack w/o issues.
| rickypp wrote:
| Yeah, I ended up buying a dedicated mini PC ($100 refurb)
| to install HAOS on. HA is pretty much useless without
| being able to run add-ons. I run everything on k8s in my
| home server, I don't have a VM system set up and didn't
| want to bother just for HA. It's funny, the pattern of a
| central application that uses docker containers to add
| plugins seems like a perfect fit for a Kubernetes
| Operator. I suppose it still misses out on some of the
| advantages of running everything "on metal" for
| integrating with physical components like USB dongles.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > it will kill the card from IO cycles.
|
| It might not. I have a Raspberry Pi 2 that has been running a
| weather station for over 12 years, and it has been on the
| original SD card. I have other RPi's doing dumb things around
| the house and I have never had an SD card failure.
|
| YMMV and all that.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| I wouldn't put running a weather station in the same class
| of disk activity as running Home Assistant. It is writing a
| fairly large amount of logs, plus statistics for every
| attribute/sensor for every device. The more devices you
| have, the more you will be writing.
|
| There are regularly threads from people with "I restarted
| HA and now I get this weird boot error message", and it's
| because their SD card died.
|
| You do you, but it's common enough of a problem that I
| think it's worth calling out as a "Don't do this".
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I run HA on another RPi, so I am familiar.
|
| On the weather station I wrote to the SD card 1,068,266
| database records, along with all the nginx logs, etc...
|
| > it's common enough of a problem
|
| It's probably survivorship bias, where everyone complains
| about SD card corruption, while those with no issues
| really don't say anything. Well, except my comments
| today.
| cossray wrote:
| Fair point on survivorship bias. But, I think SD card
| being flash memory is technically expected to fail over
| time, with that failure compounded by the number of write
| cycles. These cycles are a spec of the SD card. If a
| section/page of the flash is being overwritten more
| frequently than the other, then surely it'll fail faster
| than an SD card whose erase/write cycles are distributed
| uniformly across all the sections/pages.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Yeah, I haven't had issues with SD cards in a long time.
| Many years ago (maybe 10), I think they weren't quite as
| good and I probably skimped too much when buying a card.
| RPi 1 also had power regulation issues. Now I only use
| higher tier cards and make sure there's enough free space
| for wear leveling and operations.
| KeepFlying wrote:
| Dirty power kills my raspis faster then write cycles. I've
| been really surprised with the stability once I moved by
| Pis to my UPS
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > While you can run HA as a container. I think it's a mistake
|
| Just because you CAN run something in a container, does not
| mean you should.
|
| HAOS exists because it is a docker run time. It is a whole
| ecosystem, not just the home assistant software itself.
| grvdrm wrote:
| What router and associated configuration software are you
| using? I have a Eero mesh network that leaves a lot to be
| desired for a fiddler like me.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| I'm using OPNSense for the router, on their dedicated
| hardware - DEC750 iirc.
|
| The switches are mostly Mikrotik, with some Unifi switches.
|
| The wifi APs are all Unifi - they are all PoE and wired
| into the same network, no mesh. Even between buildings I
| ran fibre.
|
| For the switching and routing, were I to do it again now I
| might go all Unifi. They recently implemented some much
| needed updates to make doing things like firewall rules and
| routing based on device much easier. I have a complicated
| set of rules in OPNsense to route IOT VLAN traffic out via
| a VPN connection, which require static IP assignments via
| DHCP, but under the new Unifi network I could do it with a
| few clicks and being able to use device attributes rather
| than a static IP.
|
| I am also using an SLZB-MR1 for a ZigBee controller and
| Matter over Thread border router. I've got a bunch of IKEA
| and Mercator ZigBee light bulbs/fixtures that act as ZigBee
| routers. It's a strong enough mesh I rarely have issues
| with the ~180 devices on the net.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Sounds like the complexity is somewhat self-inflicted?
|
| I set up HA from scratch on a new mini PC with Proxmox and HAOS
| in about 30 mins having never touched either before.
|
| For VLANs, I just used port-based VLAN to attach it to the IoT
| VLAN, with firewall rule to allow UI access, but Proxmox has
| tagging support if preferred.
| davemp wrote:
| There's like 10 replies telling me it's not actually that
| complex then describe an equally or more complex solution
| that's probably missing some of the security or features I
| have. I guess I wrote "complicated to set up" when I meant
| "complicated stack".
|
| A heavyweight blob of python running in a container talking
| to other containers running node-js on a Linux VM on a Linux
| host behind layers of networking to toggle 1 bit of
| information over a UHF link is really complex even if it only
| took 1 button click. My solution just removes the linux VM.
|
| I'm not even saying I struggled, it took me like 1-4hrs
| depending on if you include the non HA stuff. I can clone the
| repo I made, populate the secrets/gateway, and type 'make' to
| rebuild my setup on a new machine. Everything is "zero-trust"
| with signed SSL certs, dynamic DNS+wireguard to tunnel in
| from a stable url, and room for more services. It's cool, but
| it's only toggled 1 light for years.
| dewey wrote:
| The happy path is to buy https://www.home-assistant.io/green/
| and then go from there. That's what I did and it was a very
| smooth setup for everything. I've long resisted HA as I thought
| it's one extra thing to fiddle with but the whole process, the
| updates, adopting my devices was much nicer than expected.
|
| I've since also bought https://www.home-
| assistant.io/connect/zwa-2/ and got rid of all my third party
| bridges (Ikea, Hue etc.). I also feel good about buying devices
| from them as it supports the project and the work they are
| doing on it.
| MintPaw wrote:
| I've never heard about "Home Assistant Green". Seems like
| another step down the slippery slope of "work on my machine".
| First docker, than a dedicated OS, now dedicated hardware. I
| wonder why is Home Assistant so complex as to require all
| this.
| rickypp wrote:
| I have no problem with them offering a ready-to-run
| hardware solution for Home Assistant, but I am annoyed that
| it's probably a motivating factor for why there isn't a
| self-installing image for HA on BYO hardware...
| ArchOversight wrote:
| https://www.home-
| assistant.io/installation/generic-x86-64/
|
| you mean an image like this?
|
| This is what I've been running on my generic x86-64
| system for a couple of years now, 0 issues. Even migrated
| to a newer system recently because I wanted something
| that was slightly faster for ESPHome compilations.
| rickypp wrote:
| "self-installing" being the key point. Those instructions
| require you to use some other piece of software to write
| the image onto your boot disk. In my case I used an
| Ubuntu livecd to download and write the image to the
| machine. It's obviously not a showstopper but it is
| slightly annoying.
| troupo wrote:
| > hose instructions require you to use some other piece
| of software to write the image onto your boot disk.
|
| I mean... That is how a lot of OSes are distributed: by
| giving you an ISO that you burn onto a USB dongle to
| install.
|
| > In my case I used an Ubuntu livecd to download and
| write the image to the machine.
|
| So... Same thing?
| rickypp wrote:
| I'm worried that my writing is unclear and is being
| misinterpreted here.
|
| The HAOS ISO cannot install itself onto a machine. That
| is my minor complaint.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| It's not that it's that complex to need all of this. It's
| about ease of use. Home Assistant OS makes life simpler for
| users (such as myself), it makes it easy to use adding that
| run as additional docker containers, it makes plugging in
| USB z-wave/zigbee devices a breeze.
|
| While it is technically no longer supported, you can still
| install the whole kit and caboodle using pip in a Python
| virtual environment, but why would you?
| subscribed wrote:
| I think you're talking past each other. You're talking of
| capabilities, GP is talking about complexity.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I went through a similar process with Home Assistant. And the
| kicker is that months or years down the line, you'll hit some
| feature that doesn't work with the Docker version (I've ran
| into a couple)
| aconsult1 wrote:
| I've tried using HA a couple years ago and gave up. It was too
| complicated to run it in a Pi4 - I'm an experienced software
| engineer, familiar with containers and Linux.
|
| I was trying to get some of the IoT I have at home like pool
| equipment, lights, HVAC, blinds, etc. Some of the setup were an
| uphill battle looking for more information in forums and trying
| to figure out what was broken.
|
| Recently I decided over the weekend to use Claude and write a
| small app that controls my pool equipment and then deployed it
| using Cloudflare Zero Trust (kind of a reverse VPN). What a
| joy! Not only I had lots of fun reverse engineering my pool
| equipment API (I didn't want to depend on existing libraries -
| which I know exist) but I managed to create a fun and custom UI
| with React that my kids and wife love using. For example,
| whenever the pool heater is on, it adds an animated flame to
| the UI and change the background to a red-ish color. Plus it
| has a bar chart that shows the pool temp progression (takes
| hours to heat it up) with an animated volcano colors. The theme
| of the app is beach/pool vibe.
|
| I don't think anyone here would be that excited if we were
| using the lower-denominator that HA turns out to be. I know
| it's a very cool automation tool, but just not very exciting
| and pretty obscure to configure every equipment I have at home.
|
| I've been thinking about writing a blog post with the details
| of my fun project, let me know if anyone is interested in this.
| So far I've done the blinds and pool equipment. Next will be
| HVAC and lights. Took me 1-2 weeks total for each using Claude
| in my spare time.
| amluto wrote:
| HA is an absurdly heavyweight pile of Python and Docker. Get
| it a real computer -- a used "thin client" with 8 GB of RAM
| is probably less expensive than an RPi4 plus case and power
| supply.
| baq wrote:
| an intel n100/150 minipc is perfect, if you get an old
| enough build (don't ask) you can install proxmox on it and
| set up hass as a vm as God intended.
|
| if you have to ask, mine was too new and had to settle for
| a non-LTS Ubuntu Server. it works, but I can't wait for LTS
| in a few months.
| finniananderson wrote:
| > I've been thinking about writing a blog post with the
| details of my fun project
|
| I'd love to read more about this!
| turtlebits wrote:
| "pretty obscure to configure every equipment I have at home"
|
| HA actually makes configuring every piece of equipment and
| integrating them easy. If I have only 1 thing to control,
| then yeah, it's probably overkill.
| steezeburger wrote:
| I run an HAOS vm via VirtualBox and then use Tailscale for a
| secured network.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Though it's kind of unreal how complicated it is to set up HA
| and I literally do this for a living, both embedded sw and
| backend web dev.
|
| I had the same thought after I joined a local group for Home
| Assistant users.
|
| Everyone always talks about a happy path where you pick the
| right choices, use the right setup, and everything just works
| immediately. More often when people come to this local group's
| shared Slack channel it's because they're 10s of hours into
| trying to set up something that appeared to be simple. Then all
| of the old timers remember that they, too, suffered through
| something similar once and share what they can remember.
|
| I think HA can be a lot of fun for people who like to
| experiment and debug, but if you're not the kind to be
| entertained by debugging your home's operation then it can feel
| like a chore. Some have an easy time setting it up and then get
| trapped when an upgrade breaks something or they try to add a
| new device with less than mature support.
| bravoetch wrote:
| HA on R-pi running for almost a decade without issues here,
| including moving house a few times. Sounds like you're making
| it difficult with that setup. Mine is connected to light
| switches, alarm, duckdns for outside network access, motorized
| blinds, garage door opener, hvac, landscape lighting. It's
| magically awesome and takes none of my time to maintain.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| This is a pretty common experience with Home Assistant
| troupo wrote:
| > Though it's kind of unreal how complicated it is to set up HA
| and I literally do this for a living, both embedded sw and
| backend web dev.
|
| I just bought Home Assistant Green: https://www.home-
| assistant.io/green and a z-wave dongle
| estimator7292 wrote:
| I spun up a VM on my proxmox server and loaded HAOS. Job done.
| The only added steps involved giving the HAOS IP to my reverse
| proxy, now it's reachable from the outside net.
|
| That's about as easy as it gets.
| sloped wrote:
| I have been using HA to water my garden for 4 summers. I setup a
| Tempest weather station this fall, and will have some fun
| experimenting with using rain and temperature data collected in
| my back yard to make watering decisions.
| marcogarces wrote:
| I love HomeAssistant, and my second time on a new home, i'm
| slowly getting what i want in terms of interface and devices;
| doing it slowly helps you plan better and execute it perfectly.
| I've also been watering my garden (sprinklers) and i even built
| my custom ESPHome device: https://github.com/mgarces/open-esp-
| sprinklers
| julianozen wrote:
| Seems like a really cool thing to have hooked up to openclaw
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Don't try that indoors
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| After years of doing this, I determined that dumb controllers are
| superior for my uses. A once a week irrigation with a simple rain
| sensor results in the same quality lawn/beds and better can run
| with pretty much zero maintenance burden on the sw/hw side. The
| vegetable garden is even dumber, just drip lines, a hose bib, and
| a dumb timer that flips daily in the morning powered by AS
| batteries. In my apartment days I just used an elevated water
| container and the same dumb timer to gravity feed my garden.
|
| I find home lab stuff has far more return on investment for like
| automatic blinds, lights, etc. It's not like you can just stay
| inside anyways and get amazing vegetables, you still need to be
| on top of thing like checking for pests and disease. The
| automatic garden is a myth.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Yeah when I got to the point he was building a PC for this in
| the article it was a little shocking given the task at hand. I
| make do with a little $30 programmable dual zone unit that has
| lasted several seasons now. All I had to do was add a water
| hammer arrester.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| There's a difference between automation for reliability and
| automation for tinkering
| ternus wrote:
| I have almost everything in my house HA-automated, but anything
| touching the water supply is all on dumb physical valves and
| electrical timers. If my light switches don't work, that's
| annoying. If a robot vacuum doesn't run, that's frustrating. If
| a water valve is stuck open, that's catastrophic.
| tamimio wrote:
| I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the
| dashboard to control and monitor the house, plus the app. It's
| very easy to setup and work with, maybe a bit convoluted in the
| initial setup but once done, you barely do anything until you add
| new sensor. You can setup a whole SCADA-like system with it,
| controlling your garden, power grid/solar and monitoring it,
| integrating CCTV and all, and it's free. A similar industrial
| project I did before, SCADA and RTUs that monitored and
| controlled many actuators and solenoid valves and sensors, cost
| wise was ~$9M, and all the functionalities were implemented can
| be done with HA on principle.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Ten years ago a lot of this would have required expensive
| proprietary systems or a lot of custom engineering
| tamimio wrote:
| Pretty much yeah, that SCADA system was in 2012 and the
| complexity was off the charts: electric panels, Allen Bradley
| expensive hardware and software,
| ladder/C#/MSSQL/historianDB/etc tech stack,
| modbus/profibus/hart protocols, it is a nightmare to
| maintain, even editing the HMI was a process by itself. If
| that project would be done now, probably won't cost 25% of
| the original cost.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| "Find a problem for Home Assistant" is a dangerous starting
| point. Next thing you know you've built a small distributed
| system to water parsley.
| lolcw wrote:
| A glorious feature when you need an equivalent of sixteen cray-3
| supercomputers to water plants is here.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| How to spot a man without wife.
|
| My home assistant also waters my plants. She generally enjoys
| working in the garden.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| If you want to do this yourself
|
| 1) install HAOS, running it any other way is a step towards
| madness
|
| 2) get a decent zigbee controller
|
| 3) https://sonoff.tech/en-uk/products/sonoff-zigbee-smart-
| water...
|
| Job done, the rest is all up to taste using either sensors or
| public data to infer water state.
| zarmin wrote:
| home assistant is designed by terrorists who love cortisol. i
| can't believe it's by far the best home automation solution
| available.
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