An easier way to install and manage Home Assistant on desktop systems! - HASS Manager

[Siytek]

Hello Home Assistant Community!

I’m excited to introduce HASS Manager, a tool that I have been developing to simplify the process of running Home Assistant on full-sized computers.

What is HASS Manager?

HASS Manager is a user-friendly desktop app that streamlines the installation and management of Home Assistant on desktop and laptop computers. Under the hood it runs Home Assistant as a virtual machine, much like VirtualBox. However the user interface is completely unique and is specifically designed to be very easy for beginners to use.

What are the benefits of HASS Manager?

HASS Manager adopts a zero-command line policy, there are no command prompts or walls of white text. Everything can be managed from a clean and simple menu.

Another huge benefit of using a bespoke virtual machine manager for running Home Assistant is that it is possible to bake all sorts of features specific to Home Assistant into the application, which are not found in generic solutions such as Parallels and VirtualBox.

Where is the project at now?

Latest News:

10th December - start on boot is now complete! HASS Manager will now automatically start Home Assistant when restarting your Mac/logging in. USB hot-plugging is proving a little more challenging, so i’ll leave that feature for a later release (although I still believe it is possible to implement). For now USB pass-through works great, just requires a reboot of Home Assistant when you want to add new USB devices.

3rd December 2023 - I have a fully functioning application, sans the start on boot feature that still needs to be added. I also need to add the USB hot-plugging feature, as currently a virtual machine restart is required when adding new USB devices. Lastly, I need to build a small launcher component to launch the application after checking for software updates/system requirements. Hoping to get an early test version available very soon, for those who might be interested in testing it!

Features:

Manages entire HA installation
Easy-to-use settings menu and menubar
Start HA in the background on boot/reboot/login
Change system setting (RAM, CPU, audio)
USB support - connect USB devices to Home Assistant
Port forwarding - connect smart devices over your network (TCP)
Machine management - start/stop/reboot HA from the menu bar
USB hot-plugging
Save/restore snapshots
Remote access (https://your-hass.some-domain)
Your cool feature ideas…!

Can I use HASS Manager on Window, Linux and macOS?

Yes… well, at least that is the future plan. For now I am developing the application for macOS, however I have chosen the programming language specifically to make it easier to port it to Windows and Linux.

If you are a Windows or Linux user, I would love to hear your thoughts too so please don’t hesitate to jump into the conversation below!

Can I use HASS Manager on my older Mac?

Yes! One of the main reasons people want to run Home Assistant on Mac is because they have an older Mac lying around that they want to repurpose. I am all for any solutions that can help save the planet and if I can help people recycle old computers, that would be wonderful!

At this stage it is not clear exactly which version of macOS will be required as a minimum, but it is my goal to make it compatible as far back as possible.

Why have you opted to use the old logo?

The HA team have opted not to release the new logo under the Creative Commons licence, therefore I didn’t want to risk ‘stepping on any toes.’ Most likely i’ll design a custom logo for HASS Manager when I design a shiny new website to host it, which will be implement in the production release.

Why are you doing this?

I noticed a helluva lot of visitors were coming to my blog to read articles about how to install Home Assistant on various desktop operating systems. Not only that but many members of my blog audience contacted me about this topic too! From this I realised that running HASS on desktop computers was not as easy as it should be, and from there HASS Manager was born!

Sounds great! How can I get involved?

Please jump into the conversation below! I am very keen to hear what people have to say and in particular I would love to get some feature requests. I am also looking for some budding testers who might be brave enough to take the early releases for a test drive!

How can I help?

Spreading the word is by far the most helpful thing that you can do! If you know someone who would benefit from HASS Manager, point them to this post! Discussing HASS Manager in other forums, on Discord, Reddit or anywhere that fellow Home Assistant enthusiasts reside is a huge help. Thanks in advance!

[noobey]

This looks amazing, exactly what I need to hopefully resolve my z wave stick disconnecting.
Please sign me up for testing when ready!

[Siytek]

Will do @noobey! HASS Manager already remembers which devices have been selected for attaching to HASS and automatically reconnects them whenever it is started.
I am currently working on the feature that will allow HASS Manager to boot when macOS is rebooted. When this feature is enabled, HASS Manager will open when macOS is rebooted and start HASS, automatically reconnecting any USB devices that are selected on the USB Devices tab.

[kim123]

Yes please.

[Siytek]

10th December - start on boot is now complete! HASS Manager will now automatically start Home Assistant when restarting your Mac/logging in. USB hot-plugging is proving a little more challenging, so i’ll leave that feature for a later release (although I still believe it is possible to implement). For now USB pass-through works great, just requires a reboot of Home Assistant when you want to add new USB devices.

[teuf13 (Christophe F.)]

Could not find a link to the project/source in your post, but it made me curious
Which hypervisor does it use under the hood? I’d guess QEMU? Which language did you pick to write this?

[ljane]

I’m interested in testing. So far I have not been able to get bluetooth to connect through a VM on an Intel Mac.

[Siytek]

@teuf13

Could not find a link to the project/source in your post, but it made me curious
Which hypervisor does it use under the hood? I’d guess QEMU? Which language did you pick to write this?

Hi @teuf13, welcome to the thread! I haven’t opted to publicise the repo yet, will see how much interest it garners from those who might be interested in contributing to the codebase.

Yep its running QEMU under the hood and it is written in Python/VSCode. I actually began the project in Swift/Xcode, but I noticed a fair amount of interest this topic on my blog from those wishing to run HA on Linux (specifically Ubuntu), so I decided to pivot to Python so that I could port it to Linux/Windows at a later date. My goal is to make HA accessible to as many people as possible who would prefer to use/recycle a full-sized computer over using an SBC, so cross-compatibility is an important feature.

[Siytek]

@ljane

I’m interested in testing. So far I have not been able to get bluetooth to connect through a VM on an Intel Mac.

Welcome to the thread @ljane! This is a very interesting comment as I had not yet considered Bluetooth support.

Do you mean the Bluetooth built into your Mac? Or are you using an external USB->Bluetooth adapter?

I believe supporting the Mac’s built-in Bluetooth functionality would be very challenging as it is tied to macOS at a low level. I think the hardware also varies between models, adding further complexity. If it were possible and I managed to make it work on my own system, it might not work for others using different models of Mac.

However external USB->Bluetooth adapters should already work out of the box with the USB support already built into HASS Manager. I haven’t tested this yet but now that you mentioned it, i’ll almost certainly get hold of a Bluetooth adapter and test it.

[ljane]

@Siytek Thanks for your response. I will admit that I am a complete n00b when it comes to HA and home automation in general. And while I am perhaps more savvy than the average tech consumer, I not a dev, so I spend a lot of time lost in the world of tech!

That said, your comment about the built-in Mac bluetooth makes sense. I think I finally tracked the problem to an issue with more recent versions of Linux (starting in 2023 maybe???) that do not play well with Mac Bluetooth adapters, but it sounds like this is also an issue with Macs. I’d be totally up for buying an external BT adapter.

FWIW, right now I’m living mainly in the Switch-bot universe. My next leap will probably be a couple Shelly switches to control my lights. I have an off-grid DC system, and DC smart switches that look like “regular” switches basically don’t exist; Shelly is the only alternative.

[Siytek]

I’d be totally up for buying an external BT adapter.

I’ll provide an update about this when I get chance to test it. I am travelling at the moment but when I return home for Xmas, ill order one and give it a try.

Are you running Linux ‘bare metal’ on your (Intel) Mac? If so then presumably you are running Debian + HA. In this case I imagine you should also be able to find a USB-BT adapter that plays well with the Debian drivers. I have an old Mac running HA directly on Linux, but I have never needed to use BT, so have not tried it myself.

FWIW, right now I’m living mainly in the Switch-bot universe. My next leap will probably be a couple Shelly switches to control my lights.

Sounds good! Personally I like Sonoff products, worth considering too. You can see my reviews here, there are affiliate links there but I ended up a Sonoff affiliate because I was already using/liking their products. I didn’t start using their products because they made me an affiliate first, if that makes sense

I have an off-grid DC system, and DC smart switches that look like “regular” switches basically don’t exist; Shelly is the only alternative.

You could theoretically use any “regular” smart switch to control a relay, via Home Assistant, for switching the DC side of your setup. There are many ways you could go about it, but its probably a topic for a new thread

[Mediacj]

Would love to test it on my Mac Mini M1.

I also have a external bluetooth adapter and zigbee module and Rfxcom.

[parallelsys (Fernando Fuentes)]

Sign me up for Linux testing RPM or DEB

[Smeagster86]

This looks really great how do I sign up to try it? I have an M2 Mac mini

[ljane]

Sorry for the delayed reply. I finally got a BT dongle AND got HA to recognize it. I’m running HA through VirtualBox, and the only way I could get it to work was to open the VM app as root. That doesn’t seem like the safest thing, but it’s where I am now.

The dongle I got is the HIDEEZ BT0015-02, which is the newer model of the -01 listed on Bluetooth - Home Assistant.

Sounds good! Personally I like Sonoff products, worth considering too. You can see my reviews here, there are affiliate links there but I ended up a Sonoff affiliate because I was already using/liking their products. I didn’t start using their products because they made me an affiliate first, if that makes sense

Thanks for that suggestion. It looks like some could work for me.

I have an off-grid DC system, and DC smart switches that look like “regular” switches basically don’t exist; Shelly is the only alternative.

You could theoretically use any “regular” smart switch to control a relay, via Home Assistant, for switching the DC side of your setup. There are many ways you could go about it, but its probably a topic for a new thread

Yes, possibly, but I’m not sure how long the switches would last. I’m 99% sure my switches are on the 12VDC system, and AC switches are known to wear out pretty quickly when wired into a DC system.

So I have 12VDC wiring → switch → DC device rather than 110VAC wiring → switch → DC device.

Unless I’m missing something. I’m really at the edges of my knowledge in these rooms!

[NXT3 (Nate)]

This looks fantastic! I’ll give this a try at some point.

[Siytek]

Hi all, thanks so much to everyone who has shown interest so far and hope you all had a great new year! The last few weeks have been very busy for me due to the holidays, however this week I will be getting things moving again with a view to get a beta test version ready for those interested in giving it a try!

I did however managed to squeeze a bit of work in between visiting family and friends I have added the download agent, which grabs the latest version of Home Assistant and installs it, upon first running HASS Manager:

[col16 (Cameron Oliver)]

@Siytek

os

This it a fantastic idea! I’d be keen to beta-test

Will it be compatible with the Add-on store?

[Siytek]

@col16 thanks! Progress has stalled a little this last month due to some other work commitments, but I am keen to get things moving again and really not a lot to complete now before a beta test version.

Regarding the Add-on store, absolutely! The initial release will run HAOS in the background, which fully supports the add-ons store.

I could theoretically add the ability to run custom images too, should anyone have the need to run their own variant of the installation. However I don’t think such a feature is necessary yet, as I think HAOS should meet the needs of mostly everyone who might choose to use HASS Manager.

[Siytek]

@Smeagster86 awesome! I would be very interested to see how to goes on M2, as I only have M1 myself to test I will post an update here once I get the development past the final hurdles and ready for beta.