Any advice on getting Home assistant up and runing for my setup (coming from openhab and advice on mySensors)

Installation
1

Hi all,

I apologise now but this might be a long post , I really could do with some advice, in particular which installation method i should use .
I currently use openhab but long story short , even though they consider themselves a stable platform I havent found this to be the case.

Anyway I have about 10 sonoff T1’s flashed with tasmota and I have currently a MySensors serial gateway on a raspberry pi on which openhab currently runs, the gateway receives temp sensors messages from 3 temp sensors, this is then sent via mqtt to 2 connected thermostats I built here and I have a simple presence detection that receives mqtt messages from the router when a device is present .

I did try and install Hass.io yesterday and successfully installed the duckdns addon and opened port 8123 to the device all encrypted with let’s encrypt for obvious security. A ssh addon and the mqtt mosquitto addon , I then updated all my sonoff’s to version 6.4.1 as recommended in the tasmota wiki here ( which has some connection issues but that is related to the sonoff firmware I think https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/issues/5335 )
I automatically discovered the sonoffs and assigned them space on the Lovelace UI, before I stopped to think that because Hass.io runs on hassOS the mySensors serial gateway might not work on the pi anymore .

I need advice on whats best , I do like the frontend elements of hass.io and the ease of use but is it possible to setup a mySensors gateway ? does it work with a serial gateway if plugged into the USB instead of on the Gpio’s?
On the other side of the coin would Hassbian be better as its similar to how openhabian worked with a Linux distro and home assistant running on the distro. I’m sure keeping the gateway plugged into the Gpio’s would work then but I would lose a lot of the ease of use and the frontend elements which is nice but obviously not a necessity.

I know that there are scripts with Hassbian to install some of the elements I’ve mentioned (mosquitto and duckdns) and I know I can add the front end configurator editor to Hassbian also .

also on the subject of mqtt is there a guide on how to send and receive messages, in openhab I use to
have this do this :

Switch Landing_Light "Landing Light" <light> (gMyLights) { mqtt=">[mosquitto:cmnd/landing/POWER:command:*:default], <[mosquitto:stat/landing/POWER:state:default]" }

I take it is done in the Yaml file?

apart from that iI would be grateful for any advice given for the transition from openhab to homeassistant .

Thanks in advance

2

That might be true. But “ease of use” is a subjective thing.

Not at all.

Every installation method of HA all ultimately end up running the same frontend.

the commands for MQTT are built in to the device you create or automatically gets created if using discovery.

for example here is a configuration for a switch that is flashed with Tasmota:

light
  - platform: mqtt
    name: "Basement Workshop Lights"
    state_topic: "stat/ws/POWER"
    command_topic: "cmnd/ws/POWER"
    availability_topic: "tele/ws/LWT"
    qos: 1
    payload_on: "ON"
    payload_off: "OFF"
    payload_available: "Online"
    payload_not_available: "Offline"
    retain: false

you can also publish MQTT topics from the service console or in automations and scripts.

also here for more information:

but just as a word of advice don’t use the embedded broker. But since you already have experience with mqtt then you like;y already have a broker so that won’t be an issue.

If you have any other more specific questions then feel free to ask.

welcome to the club.

3

Thanks for the reply ,

Since doing a bit more research I think Hassbian might be the option for me especially as it’s more familiar(openhabian) although I will have to find a good backup option similar to hass.io snapshots.

This is good to know. This makes the scales tip more in hassbian’s favour

Thanks for the example

This helps me understand it’s format

Yeah I read that some where, fortunately I prefer mosquitto as my broker which works well and I’ve had no problems with it .

Can you explain upgrading Hassbian a bit , I know the scripts provided update hassbian, does this update home assistant and Hassbian leaving me to update the Host Os or does it just update hassbian ? Or all 3?

Does the duckdns script work in a similar way to how the add-on works for hass.io ? Does it take care of the let’s encrypt part as well ?

I just need to get the MySensors part and the presence detection setup sorted and I’ll be back on track

I’m quite excited to get my home automation started on home assistant , just needs a native Android app and I’m set :sunglasses:

4

Home assistant runs on hassbian in this case. Hassbian is the OS

5

There are currently two Android apps being actively developed. I’ve only tried one of them and, for my purposes, it’s still in beta (correctly renders about 80% of my Lovelace UI and 2% of the predecessor to Lovelace). Nevertheless, it’s evolving rapidly and it may suits your needs.

6

the naming causes some unfortunate confusion especially since there is another standalone OS way of installing Home Assistant (commonly shortened to “HA”).

Hassbian is nothing more than a Raspbian OS with the script to install HA in a python virtual environment at initial boot.

Once it installs HA then it’s literally exactly like any other Linux distro based on Debian.

The update script just makes it “easier” to update your HA. I personally never used any of the scripts available in HA. I honestly don’t even know what most of them are. I just used the CLI over SSH since it was just four commands. And the update only updates the files in the virtual environment. The base OS isn’t touched.

As far as backups are concerned… While it’s not as convenient as the automated backup of a hassio snapshot I never felt that the way I did it was unduly burdensome.

My backup regimen was before every major update to HA or if my configuration changed significantly I would shut down my RPi HA server and pop the SD card into my PC and make a full image. In between as I made minor changes I would just make a backup (using WinSCP) of all the files in my configuration folder. In HA on a RPi that folder is located at /home/homeassistant/.homeassistant/.

There are ways to set up your RPi for automatic backups but the way I did it worked so I never felt the need to do anything differently.

And lastly, there doesn’t really NEED to be a native Android app. The common way to use it on android is to navigate to your IP/Port in chrome and then just make that as a standalone page on your home screen. Works great.

7

I’ve never used any of those scripts but from looking at the docs on github it doesn’t look like SSL is included in the script.

8

You can also install Raspbian and on top install Hassio

I followed this guide (I know it’s in Italian, my language, but you can use Google Translate) and it’s very easy.

Hassio will be installed in a Docker container and you can use Raspbian to install other stuff.

9

Thanks everyone for your advice, I think your right the naming causes a confusion with regards to what is home assistant and what is hassbian …etc .

Having a native app will be awesome when it is stable .

I currently have this set up through firefox it is good but it leaves the page open in my browser, which isn’t a huge inconvenience but it is nice to close the app and it’s done .

I’ve seen that home assistant can be installed in docker and that a lot of people like this setup . I’ve not had much experience with docker maybe this is an option for the future once I’m up and running and understand home assistant better .

Out of interest how do most of you incorporate notifications to your phone

10

Use chrome and when it prompts you, “Add to home screen”

11

Must admit, I’m not sure why a native android apps is needed. I have it as a web app and it works fine.

12

I use pushbullet.

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13

Telegram and pushover

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