I have hass and appdaemon 4.03 installed side by side in a docker stack. I can see all my entities in the appdaemon admin, and the hello world dashboard works.
I was attempting to get the “Config Check” appdaemon app working. But I’m a bit distracted by the HAdashboards thing, and confused about how Homeassistant and Appdaemon communicate and share files / automations. I could use an ELI5 here.
questions…
Is HAdashboards an alternative for a custom lovelace views on Ha? I noticed each dashboard has its own URL, which I don’t imagine is possible with lovelace views. Is that kind of the point here?
How does creating a dashboard on HAdashboard differ from creating one on Lovelace?
I haveappdaemon’s config dir on a separate volume from ha’s. When I go to HACS, and press ‘install’ on an appdaemon component, what files are going where? Take for example the “Light automation” app. At the bottom of the HACS page, it says
When installed, this will be located in ‘/config/appdaemon/apps/light_automation’, you still need to add it to your ‘apps.yaml’ file.
What is the “this” that is being referred to? And when it says “add it to your apps.yaml file”, that would be the apps.yaml file inside my appdaemon volume, correct?
should I have an appdaemon/apps folder in my homeassistant volume in this case?
I don’t use AppDaemon for HADashboard, but you’ve pretty much nailed it. It is one of several alternate frontend options out there. You can use AppDaemon for just HADashboard, just AppDaemon Python automations, or both.
The files would go inside of your Home Assistant volume, inside of an appdaemon/apps folder under your configuration directory.
“This” is the Python automation file within the repository. You are correct that you’ll need to follow the instructions to add the app configuration to your apps.yaml file inside of your AppDaemon volume.
As I use AppDaemon via the Home Assistant add-on, I can’t give direct guidance for your specific case. But I do use Docker at work, so I can try and give you a couple of options.
Don’t use HACS for your AppDaemon apps. This is not an install style that is well suited to using HACS for AppDaemon. Instead, just copy the necessary .py files out of the repositories you want to use, and place them in your AppDaemon volume manually. The downside here is that you will have to manually track those repositories for updates.
Map the apps folder in your AppDaemon volume to the apps folder in the Home Assistant volume. That way, AppDaemon can see and execute those files. I’ve never personally done this in Docker but I believe it’s possible.
Thanks, this way makes sense to me. Does HA use the apps folder for anything if you aren’t using appdaemon? In other words, is appdaemon the only purpose of the apps folder? I think this is where I lost the instructions, because my appdaemon and Hass containers each have their own apps folder.