Home assistant advice

[Keizer]

Greetings fellow empty nesters and retirees! I want to finally migrate to setting up Home assistant. It's something I have been wanting to do for quite awhile. I have quite a few KASA switches and a few plugs. I also have a Nest thermostat, Chamberlain garage door openers, etc. I've been using their factory apps to control everything but want to switch to HA. I want to run it on a Raspberry Pi 4b with an M.2 SSD instead of an SD card.

My question is what SSD's and adapters are you guys using that are compatible with this setup?? Thanks!

 

[actran]

If your Raspberry Pi does not have built-in M.2 slot, it might be alot of work to add a M.2 card

If you haven't bought the raspberry pi yet, maybe buy something built for HA like Home Assistant Yellow (M.2 slot built-in)

Personally, I started out on raspberry pi on SD. It ran out of horsepower after I keep adding more stuff to my Home Assistant install. Now I run HA as a VirtualBox VM, easier to scale.

 

[Keizer]

If your Raspberry Pi does not have built-in M.2 slot, it might be alot of work to add a M.2 card

If you haven't bought the raspberry pi yet, maybe buy something built for HA like Home Assistant Yellow (M.2 slot built-in)

Personally, I started out on raspberry pi on SD. It ran out of horsepower after I keep adding more stuff to my Home Assistant install. Now I run HA as a VirtualBox VM, easier to scale.

I haven't bought anything yet. As far as the M.2 slot, I was just going to buy an enclosure for the SSD that has the slot built in. Then connect it to the pi with USB 3.

 

[actran]

FYI, there are people who swear that USB is not a good long-term connection for OS on SSD but it's your choice.

With respect to Chamberlain garage door opener, if you are using MyQ, they've shutdown public access to their API so integration to Home Assistant no longer works. Big mess:

One popular solution is Ratdgo What is ratgdo?

Ratgdo - local mqtt control for your Chamberlain/Liftmaster security+ 2.0 garage door opener

Chamberlain / Liftmaster Security+ 2.0 garage door openers use an encrypted rolling code serial protocol to control the door from a wired remote. Until now it was impossible to open or close your own garage door without resorting to some sort of hack. You either had to subscribe to their cloud...

community.home-assistant.io

 

[Keizer]

With respect to Chamberlain garage door opener, if you are using MyQ, they've shutdown public access to their API so integration to Home Assistant no longer works. Big mess:

One popular solution is Ratdgo What is ratgdo?

Ratgdo - local mqtt control for your Chamberlain/Liftmaster security+ 2.0 garage door opener

Chamberlain / Liftmaster Security+ 2.0 garage door openers use an encrypted rolling code serial protocol to control the door from a wired remote. Until now it was impossible to open or close your own garage door without resorting to some sort of hack. You either had to subscribe to their cloud...

community.home-assistant.io

There's also the option to install a smart Plug where the garage door opener plugs in. Add a converter that wires into the wall mount switch terminals of the garage door opener and plugs into the smart plug. Now you can open and close it from whatever dash board....phone/tablet etc. I did this with the opener on my gate and it works flawlessly.

 

[Mike A.]

Personally, I started out on raspberry pi on SD. It ran out of horsepower after I keep adding more stuff to my Home Assistant install. Now I run HA as a VirtualBox VM, easier to scale.

Same. Pass on the Pi. An inexpensive micro with SSD/NVMe will be a better platform to start with. By the time you're done you'll end up spending more on the Pi trying to build it into that.

 

[Keizer]

An inexpensive micro with SSD/NVMe will be a better platform to start with.

Any particular ones you suggest?

 

[Mike A.]

Not really. Whatever you can find that's decent quality and cheap. Doesn't take much to run HA but you don't want your house running on something sketchy. I use a surplus Dell i3 Micro myself to run HA and various other servers/utilities on the same box.

 

[Keizer]

These look affordable.

Homeassistant Thin Client Dual 2GHz 64GB preinstalled HomeAssistant Yellow Green | eBay

Wake on LAN. Audio CODECs include MP3, AAC stereo, HE AAC. The addition of optional modules increases the weight. 1918.7 g (4.23 lb). 961.6 g (2.12 lb). System weight (including stand). 35.05 x 199.90 x 199.90 mm (1.38 x 7.87 x 7.87 in).

www.ebay.com

 

[Mike A.]

Yeah, I looked at some of the thin clients too long ago. I don't know them well enough to help with what's good or not. They used to make more sense I think when micro costs were higher. Now you can get a Dell/HP/Lenovo i5 i6500 micro with a better processor and more memory and storage for the same cost so not as much now.

I wouldn't put much value on having HA preinstalled. HA's not difficult to install but it's something that you need to understand how it works and where things are, etc., if you're going to use it. So it's kind of good in a way to go through it more vs thinking that you're going to buy it as a plug-in appliance like SmartThings, Hubitat, etc. And you may want to virtualize it instead anyway to use the same box for other things.

 

[tangent]

Add a converter that wires into the wall mount switch terminals of the garage door opener and plugs into the smart plug. Now you can open and close it from whatever dash board....phone/tablet etc. I did this with the opener on my gate and it works flawlessly.

FYI, some newer chamberlain openers use serial communication to the wall button and wouldn't actuate with a simple relay.

Prior to this they had a fancier wall control that could erratically open or close the door due to failing capacitors in the control. This control had an automatic close function and motion sensor. Serial communication was an easy way to prevent this type of thing and force people to buy their parts / break comparability with other attempts to automate the door. Wins all around as far as the company is concerned. Ratgdo is a good solution.

 

[Keizer]

And you may want to virtualize it instead anyway to use the same box for other things.

I'm assuming that HA would run fine then virtualized with say my Channels DVR also running on the same box? HA as well as others recommend a NUC for installation. Even the low end models seem overkill to run just HA. So that's why I ask. Right now I run my Channels DVR on a Raspberry pi. But if I could run it along side HA on one box I could free up my pi for other things.

 

[concord]

The HP Thin Client that you mentioned above will definitely do the job. I've been using an old Dell/Wyse thin client for my HA, slapped in an SSD and installed HA....it's a low AMD processor, but much faster than the Pi3 I had. Also use an old HP thin client for PfSense, slapped a 4 port Intel card in the PCIe slot. So thin clients are a cheap way to go.

 

[Keizer]

So I installed VirtualBox on my Win 11 machine and I'm trying out Home assistant on it. It's pretty impressive so far. My lady is getting me an Intel NUC for Christmas to run HA on as a permanent home for it. I was wondering if it's possible to set everything up on my Windows PC, do a backup and then restore from the backup on the NUC when I get it? Or is it just better to wait before I get too deep into setting things up?

 

[actran]

@Keizer HA backup/restore feature should work. Not the same as your situation but I used it to transfer from my Raspberry PI to VirtualBox.

 

[Keizer]

@Keizer HA backup/restore feature should work. Not the same as your situation but I used it to transfer from my Raspberry PI to VirtualBox.

Cool......I will continuing tinkering then!