Aeotec Z-Stick in HASS.IO running on an Ubuntu VM via HyperV in Windows 10 - possible?

Configuration Z-Wave
1

The title basically says what I want to do - I have a HASS.IO instance running on Ubuntu, installed in HyperV on a Windows 10 machine.

If I buy an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5, is there any way to “forward” it to my virtual machine and thus have it available as a z-wave controller in HASS.IO?

If this is not possible, would installing HASS.IO on an RPi+Z-Stick only for z-wave purposes and then connecting to it from my main, PC-based, HASS.IO installation do the trick?

Thanks in advance for any help!

2

Over on Reddit I saw someone mentioning VirtualHere as being able, on a Windows host, to do the USB2IP thing it seems I would need…so in theory I could just install VirtualHere on my Windows host, configure my Ubuntu installation to use the device via usbipd and things would work.

Is anyone using a Z-Stick via usbipd?

3

I’m not a fan of doing this on a desktop environment for something that should always be up and running. This why I run HA on a pi.

Having said that, it looks like you can configure usb pass-through on HyperV. Take a look at this :==> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/learn-more/use-local-resources-on-hyper-v-virtual-machine-with-vmconnect

Edit : I have done similar things with usb pass-thru on VMWare fusion and it works fine.

4

Thanks a lot for the info, but it appears that one of VM Connect’s requirements is that: “The virtual machine must have Remote Desktop Services enabled, and run Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2012 R2 as the guest operating system.” :frowning: I’m running an Ubuntu VM…

And yeah, you’re right about the desktop environment thing, I’ve managed to keep things running decently on my PC but would like to have a dedicated machine for HA…as always, though, it’s a question of money :slight_smile: I’ve tried to divert all smart home cash towards things my computer definitely can’t do, like sensors, switches, etc. and use it for whatever it can do (like run HA & Blue Iris).

5

A pi3 with a really good SD card and power supply is pretty cheap. Mine has been really stable for over a year with ~20 zwave devices plus some odds&ends. If you are doing zwave, make sure you have some powered zwave devices around to act as repeaters.

6

I have plenty of repeaters (z-wave smart plugs) and an overall network of 40ish z-wave devices.

I’ve been running my Vera Plus controller as a z-wave hub so far with HA, but just discovered an issue with it, namely the fact that it sometimes misses z-wave state changes, which means I get notifications for my front door opening about 90% of the time, a totally unacceptable rate.

I just figured that since HA is on my PC anyway I might as well use the Z-Stick with it, since if my PC (and thus HA & Blue Iris) is down it wouldn’t matter much that my z-wave network is up :slight_smile:

Plus, as I scale things up (got my eye on face recognition & other such awesome, CPU-intensive things people have been doing around here), the Pi will surely choke at some point.