RTL SDR sticks are used with RTL_433.
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The brand of the weather station is Xiron. It’s a cheap one and I don’t know where the receiver is (I bought it a long time ago).
I’ve seen RFLink but it’s a bit pricey to me., about €75,-. I already bought some stuff for HA, so my budget is exhausted now. I have to wait next month. Also, for that price I rather go for RFXCom.
My goal is to attach Zigbee, ZWave and 433 MHz as usb sticks to my RPi. I really want to avoid Wifi dependent devices.
Anyway, RTL-SDR sticks are really interesting. So if you guys know of a cheap and well supported RTL-SDR stick, please share 
I don’t know where you got the 75 € price tag for a rflink. If you don’t mind some DIY
I use one with a weather station that is recognized as a xiron ( actually it is a digoo)
For RTL SDR, this one find my weather station too, in combination with rtl_433
Thnx my friend,
I’ll try to find one on a local online shop. Via AliExpress it takes more than 6 weeks to get it :)
That is the problem with Ali. It is cheap, but you have to wait long.
Is that rtl_433 link an add-on for Home Assistant?
I’m about to buy a RTL SDR dongle from a local marketplace, but the Home Assistant needs to know how to communicate with. I don’t think HA will automatically detect the usb stick and load drivers do something with it. But I could be wrong.
How is your HA installed ?
I downloaded an image from https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/installation/ for RPi 2B.
Actually, I don’t even know what OS runs on RPi with that image. I’m more of a guy that install Raspbian OS and from there install the necessary software.
That is HassOS + Hassio. I don’t know if you can install the bare rtl_433 libraries on that. If you add this repository to the hassio add-on store :
there is a RTL_433 to MQTT Bridge add-on.
Thnx Francis, I really appreciate your help.
I’ll try that link.
I’m planning to install another HA instance on a RPi 3 with Raspbian.
I think if you install Raspbian and then follow the guide ‘install hassio on generic linux’, it is better to build rtl_433 yourself.
Yes, I’ll sure do that. Thnx!
Note that the RTL SDR dongle is a receive only device.
The RFXtrx433XL is a transceiver and able to transmit 433.92MHz and 433.42MHz Somfy RTS, Funkbus and 434.50MCZ pellet stove commands and receive many sensors, see chapter 2 in the RFXtrx User Guide.
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Weather station --> rtl_433 --> weewx --> mqtt --> home assistant. I use one of those $10 USB receivers.
Andy
Well, I didn’t managed to buy a RTL-SDR usb dongle, but I did buy RFXCOM device.
I reinstalled Home Assistant by using a Raspbian Lite image and from there I installed Home Assistant. To my big surprise I found out I can’t install Add-Ons, as it’s not possible to install Hass.io. See discussion over here: Hass.io does not show on new install
The reason to choose for the above installation method is to be flexible with using RTL-SDR or other future devices that are not supported by HA yet.
I also don’t know what OS Hass.io is, with Raspbian I kind of know the folders are strucured and know where to find or edit files. On Hass.io I don’t know.
So in the end, I installed the recommended Hass.io image and am now able to install Add-Ons.
After work when I arrive home, I’ll connect my RFXCOM to RPi 3B and hopefully get something to work.
I’ll let you know if it works.
Sure it is.
It’s right there in the installation options, and lined out for you.
Hassio doesn’t have an OS. Hassio is 2 docker containers (technically they run Alpine), but you are referring to HassOS.
If you installed hassio using the GENERIC LINUX INSTALL method lined out in the DOCUMENTATION, you can use Raspbian AND hassio.
The image you are referring to, is HassOS, which is a stripped down Linux distro that acts as a Docker host only. It’s not a general distro, and changes made to it, will not be retained.
Thnx for your response.
The problem I had with the link you provided, is that I thought it was an installation guide of Home-Assistant, the one that you see on the browser. Hass.io menu item was for me just a menu item that is part of Home-Assistant as a whole.
I followed the following link to install Home-Assitant manually: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/raspberry-pi/
I ended up with a Home-Assistant without Hass.io and than I got lost in understanding Docker and so on…
I also avoided Hasspbian, because I read that it won’t be supported anymore.
For advanced users, it is also possible to try Hass.io on your Linux server or inside a virtual machine.
It says hassio in the description.
Yes my friend, but for beginners you can’t expect from them that they know the difference between Home Assistant and Hass.io.
Anyway, we learn every day something new. Thank you for helping.
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