A lot of questions about installation and gateways from a newcomer

Installation
1

Hello everyone,

I hope I’m at the right place to ask my questions. Sorry I had to remove almost all of my links, I can post only 2 links. Ok well first I’m a total newcomer, I’ve never used Home assistant but I’ve read A LOT and seen A LOT about it. First, I have fully read getting started

I have so many questions that I’m not even sure to ask them in the right order or even correctly.

I want to install a raspberry PI with the official touchscreen on the wall and install home assistant on this system. Ok now I need to understand everything that is needed for this setup and I struggle to understand everything.

Using the PI as home assistant with the GUI

First, in the getting started it seems that I need to access the home assistant configuration on the network but will I be able to use the screen connected to the pi itself to configure home assistant (reminder : Home assistant is installed on the RPI and the touchscreen will also be connected to this same RPI) ?

Within a few minutes you will be able to reach Home Assistant on homeassistant.local:8123. If you are running an older Windows version or have a stricter network configuration, you might need to access Home Assistant at homeassistant:8123 or http://X.X.X.X:8123 (replace X.X.X.X with your Raspberry Pi’s IP address).

Is it possible to install home assistant on the PI and that the same PI will be the GUI (I’d like to avoid buying another PI or a tablet to have access to the GUI). This question is not very clear but when reading what I have quoted above I’m afraid I need to access the configuration over the network with ANOTHER computer/tablet/RPI. I don’t even know what is displayed on the RPI output after installing Home assistant on the RPI itself. People who have installed servers knows probably what I am talking about, connect a server to a screen and nothing very user friendly will be displayed.

Protocols

From what I’ve read there’s a f***ing bunch of protocols that are used I can’t even list them that would be stupid…

  • Zigbee
  • Zwave
  • MQTT (I still don’t really understand what MQTT is but I will find more information myself don’t bother with that)
  • proprietary something
  • proprietary something else
  • …

This means that for each protocol I need what is usually called a “gateway” (correct ?). Which means that in order to be compliant with a lot of protocols I need as many gateways as protocols (or a gateway that is multi-protocols of course). Some equipments are directly wifi but let’s forget those for the moment.
If this is true : What is the most useful gateway (by useful I mean not overpriced but still compatible with as many protocols as possible (and compatible with RPI of course), I don’t want to buy something around 200 euros for compatibility).

oh and ESP stuff do not need a gateway ?

This integration allows ESPHome devices to connect directly to Home Assistant with the native ESPHome API

Gateway connection

Then

  • I need to connect this gateway to the usb port of the raspberry pi correct (in case of a USB gateway) ?
  • It auto-configure itself to communicate with home assistant installed on the RPI ?
  • I need to download the “integration” to use it for example for zigbee : /integrations/zha/ (sorry can’t link) ?
  • Then I need to learn how to configure the equipment itself in the GUI

I’ve read here that

Home Assistant will show any devices that it has discovered on your network

You might notice a “discovered” section. This section contains integrations that were found on your network and can easily be added with a few clicks

So maybe I just need to connect the gateway to the RPI and then everything is automated, home assistant sees every object that is connected to the gateway as long as it is compatible (not always according to what I’ve quoted).

Sorry for all those questions but I have not found explicitly answers to those questions

Oh one more bonus question for me. I have seen that some gateways can be installed directly on the fuse box someone has already tried ? It seems way cleaner than having multiple usb gateways connected to the RPI ? Oh forget that you of course still need to connect the gateway to the RPI and because I want the screen in the middle of the living room this is impossible.

Thanks

2

Ok woah killer. Welcome. Congrats on the start of the journey.

First though - the forums work best if you ask one question at a time.

How about we attack the first one. Pi and display.

Sonyoubwant automation, and you want a wall panel interface. Most of us donthat with a tablet mounted on a wall that connects to yohr HA instance over the network. Allows you to place the gear where it makes sense technically not hamstring it wo where you can fit it… (which becomes important with mesh networks) any reason you want to ise a directly attached display?

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The reason is that I already got the display (well not yet but let’s consider that I already have it). And I’d like to avoid paying an extra 50-100 euros for a tablet.

First though - the forums work best if you ask one question at a time.

You mean I will not have answers to all my questions on this topic then… ?

4

I think what @NathanCu is saying is that having a wall of questions means a lot of folks will just glaze over and skip your post, while others won’t want to take the time to answer every single bullet point - whereas a single question is much more likely to get responses. Also consider that someone may see some portion they can’t answer and not answer anything, at least with multiple posts people can chime in on what they know.

As for your gateway questions: Zigbee and Zwave are going to have USB sticks (or external hubs) that you connect to HA. ESPHome is directly integrated because it’s WiFi, so no proprietary hub is needed.

Auto configure works on the integrations that support it, not all do. This doesn’t mean that you connect Zwave and “presto”, all Zwave shows up, you still need to sync the hardware (stick/hub to each device), as will be the case with most hardware gateways, while ESPHome will detect only if you have already updated the ESP devices to ESPHome and it’s broadcasting - meaning a new ESP device won’t just show up, you need to do some footwork first.

2 Likes
5

I think what @NathanCu is saying is that having a wall of questions means a lot of folks will just glaze over and skip your post, while others won’t want to take the time to answer every single bullet point - whereas a single question is much more likely to get responses. Also consider that someone may see some portion they can’t answer and not answer anything, at least with multiple posts people can chime in on what they know.

Ok got it, I will not make the mistake again in the future thanks for the tips guys.

For the second part you talk about Zigbee and Zwave but about other protocols, do I need a gateway for each protocol (except ESP you also talked about) ?

you still need to sync the hardware

How do we usually sync the hardware ? Is it specific for each gateway/protcol ?

while ESPHome will detect only if you have already updated the ESP devices to ESPHome and it’s broadcasting - meaning a new ESP device won’t just show up, you need to do some footwork first.

What kind of footwork are you talking about (sorry I’m not a native english speaker I don’t understand the whole meaning of footwork. How do we update ESPdevices to ESPHome and broadcast ?

edit : for the last one, I found that Getting Started with ESPHome and Home Assistant — ESPHome so if I understand correctly, I have to install an addon to flash the ESP device I will use and then I can add it to the home assistant intergration right ?

6

Yes, and for ZWave and Zigbee they each need thier own gateway AND placement of that gateway in your mesh matters. So the optimal place for your Pi or whatever you want to run HA on may be meters away from where you want your user interface to be. Dont force either or neither will work the way you want them to. For instance one of the best places for an interface tablet in my home is near my garage entry. Putting my Pi running my HA instabce there would cost me an extra 100$ in repeaters to make sure everything works correctly…

So… Are you still married to the screen?

7

I’ll skip the wall-mount piece as others have covered it.

Protocols

Depends on the protocol - if that’s a radio protocol (like Zigbee and Z-Wave) then you need something with that radio in it. For those two that’s a suitable USB stick - something CC2652 based for Zigbee and something with a 700 series chip for Z-Wave. There are active Zigbee and Z-Wave channels on the Discord server that can cover those in depth.

Generally speaking though I’d recommend against a hub/gateway device. Those nearly always come with painful vendor lock-in.

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So… Are you still married to the screen?

According to your comment yes and even more than before as the RPI will be right in the center of the living room (due to ethernet position, free space, and other personnal stuff/preferences) where i want the screen to sit. My living room is small enough so that the RPI will be 2/3 meters away from each equipment maximum.

Generally speaking though I’d recommend against a hub/gateway device. Those nearly always come with painful vendor lock-in.

I am not sure to understand, you recommend not using a hub/gateway then how can I connect stuff to the RPI with HA ? Or maybe the usb stick your are talking about is not a “gateway/hub” which means that I should stick with radio protocols like zigbee and z-wave and the radio usb stick ? Which also means that I should find stuff that is compatible with either zigbee or z-wave (or some other radio protocol that is compatible with HA) ?

For future answers, I would like to avoid sticking to those 2 protocols as I am not aware of everything and I don’t want to limit myself to those 2 protocols (except if for some reasons those are the 2 best).

9

No, it’s not - those are effectively little radio devices, like a WiFi adapter, for Zigbee or Z-Wave.

You use those either with HA directly, or with some other software that HA works with, to provide a full Zigbee or Z-Wave stack. You’ll find that the documentation for those explains what’s supported.

Using them doesn’t preclude you from using other things. I run a mixed stack with Zigbee, Z-Wave, local network protocols, and cloud services.

10

The usb sticks essentially make the rpi the hub, it enables it to comuncitate with zigbee/zwave devices.

I would highly recommend using zigbee in your smart home setup since you get devices easily and cheaply. For example, the ikea smart home stuff, lidl and hue all use zigbee. In addition you can buy a lot of stuff directly from China (aliexpress). You save a lot of money in doing so (or spend a lot lol).

If you use a stick for your pi, obviously it might make wall mounting the thing more difficult as you may not or even can’t fit an additional usb stick.

Other smart home manufacturers use different protocols, a lot also use WiFi which then usually works directly without any additional hub with home assistant. Mind you that WiFi powered devices usually consume more power, hence battery powered devices are more rare, bigger, or simply deplete faster.