Best practices for multiple HAs on the same network

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

I live on an multi-acre property with multiple buildings. I have HA setup in the main house and now I want to setup HA in our stable and our shop. I typically have z-wave devices setup in the buildings. I had multiple SmartThings hubs setup but I have been transitioning away and now I’m ready to transition the second building. Is there any best practice document somewhere that might detail how to set this up OR any gotchas that I should be aware of. Most of the articles I found about this on this forum are a year or two old. Any help is greatly appreciated.

1 Like
2

why not just use the one HA and different control panels?
My daughter has only access to her room , son his room , my wife the house and I have everything including my cave.

3

I think it’s much easier if you use multiple Raspberry Pi as standalone zwave2mqtt in each building then relay data back to the main house where HA via Ethernet wiring or long-range wifi bridge.

EDIT: If you’re curious, just install docker on Raspberry Pi then follow this guide https://selfhostedhome.com/migrating-to-zwave2mqtt-for-home-assistant/

1 Like
4

Check this, maybe it suits your needs:

3 Likes
5

If you are wanting to co-ordinate 2 or more instances https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/mqtt_eventstream/

1 Like
6

Thanks everyone for the information. Looks like I have some work to do!

7

Personally, I use HA to manage my home, as well as at our office. I have a SmartThings hub setup at each and utilize multiple SmartThings integrations into a single HA instance (that’s installed at Home). The nice thing is this makes it really simple to only use one HA instance, but realize it does have its drawbacks.

image

Realize this requires the cloud (though Alarm.com and Honeywell at office require it as well…), but is another option, fwiw.

8

I have a very similar situation to the OP. Wondering what you finished up deciding to do, and whether you would do it the same way again now?

9

Each building has its own Z-Wave USB stick using zwavejs2mqtt. It works great. zwavejs2mqtt is a lightweight app so I just have it on a raspberry pi in our stable. In my shop I have it running on my Unraid server. HASSIO Is also running on the Uraid server and manages all the Z-wave devices for all 3 buildings. The house I have zwavejs2mqtt running in a Proxmox VM on an old dell that works great. I have one Nortek Zwave stick and 2 Zooz Z-Wave Plus S2 USB Stick ZST10s. I have all 3 buildings connected to the same network via Ethernet cabling and point to point Wireless using 2 Ubiquiti Nanobeam 5ACs. This is how HA can communicate will all 3 zwavejas2mqtt instances.

Hope this makes sense. If you haven’t used zwavejs2mqtt yet, one thing I would do is label everything the way you want it in zwavejass2mqtt (i.e. device name and location), backup that data, and then add it to Home Assistant. It just seems cleaner to me.

For me, zwavejs2mqtt is the best app this community has built in the past year. Cheers to the Devs!

2 Likes
10

Thanks, I will take a look for similar Zigbee approaches. I have mostly zigbee gear, but some zwave, and multiple SmartThings boxes at the moment, but they are spread too thin for good coverage now. Not sure why, but my zigbee network that used to be strong has deteriorated somewhat. Could be all sorts of reasons though. I was initially thinking of converting to individual HA devices in each building and integrating them somehow. May still do this since I dont have cable between buildings only a WiFi mesh network (though that is pretty good).

Thanks for your help :slight_smile:

11

Zigbee2mqtt

1 Like