Best way to run HA in the cloud?

I realize HA is locally-focused by design however I have a need to run it in the cloud or from another location. I manage multiple AirBNB vacation rental homes and I don’t want to place a Raspberry Pi in the home because of theft/support problems. Most of what I use it for uses cloud-based APIs to integrate, i.e. ecobee smart thermostats & Nest security cameras, so those are already cloud and not "local. But I also want Zigbee/Zwave devices (water leak sensors, light switches, etc)

So the question is, is there a zigbee/zwave device that would act as a bridge between the local zigbee/zwave devices at the home and HA running in the cloud (such as a cloud VM, or something similar)

Alternatively, should I be looking at a cloud-based automation system rather than HA?

Wouldn’t this bridge device also be subject to the same risk of theft as the RPi? Or is the thinking that the RPi is a more enticing target?

It’s less about theft and more about support. Example, I put HA on a RPi in a locked closet a month ago. Worked fine at first. Then I changed from one ISP to another (keeping the same WiFi network name and password) but the Pi never came back online despite rebooting. I had to pay someone to go there and mail the Pi back to me so I could fix it. I need something more reliable. I am considering the HA “Yellow” as possibly being more reliable.

I’ve got RPi’s at 3 different properties. I’ve found them more reliable than my previous solution (SmartThings). In fact, I just finished my final SmartThings → RPi / HA conversion last week. A little bit of work and making sure you’ve got a properly DDNS configured along with a firewall that allows the appropriate traffic (or VPN configured, there is a Tailscale Addon that you could use that as long as the device can get internet should work).

But if you really, really don’t want to run an RPi HA in the house, then you can look at one of the other smart hub systems and use the integration that likely exists for it in HA, just stay away from SmartThings, Samsung has been killing off features that may be needed for said integration (I don’t know if they did, I finally killed all my ST setups!)

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You’ll find connectivity between your cloud and the local IoT Bridge device(s) to be your problem (weird unexplainable issues probably but not prove able as latency and loss round tripping to the cloud) and because you’re in fringe territory you won’t find others who’ve been there done that who can help.

Put the Pi onsite.

I agree with you all. But I need it to be more reliable. Last time, after changing the WiFi router and rebooting it, HA would not load, and neither would the SSH Terminal add-on so I could not SSH into it remotely, even though I had forwarded port 22 on the router. I was stuck with a console error message: “Home Assistant CLI not starting! Jump into emergency console…” HA was powered off uncleanly by someone else, so that also could have caused the problem. But again, I need something that can survive power outages.

You’re trying to solve the wrong problem. A remote zigbee to IP or Zwave to IP bridge connecting over a tunnel to a cloud operated version of HA is fragile at BEST. It wont end well.

You instead need to understand why THIS happened and plan around it. Because THIS:

Is a good way to get yourself pwnd…

Put it in a box, with a UPS.

You’re trying to solve the wrong problem. A remote zigbee to IP or Zwave to IP bridge connecting over a tunnel to a cloud operated version of HA is fragile at BEST. It wont end well.

Good point. Plus, a remote bridge will still have support challenges

even though I had forwarded port 22 on the router.
Is a good way to get yourself pwnd…

There are lots of ways to make it safe. SSH keys, client certificates, a really long complex password on a non-standard port other than 22, or encapsulated in a VPN. The simple port forward was a temporary thing while trying to troubleshoot.

Put it in a box, with a UPS.

Perhaps. But that seems like overkill.

I’m thinking of installing standard RaspbianOS then HA core on top of that instead of the pre-packaged HAOS. I think that would give me greater freedom to install a VPN, and I’d be using the standard ssh daemon which would not be dependent on HA starting. Plus anything else I want. The fact that HA’s failure caused a loss of SSH access is just intolerable to me. There are also several cloud-based port forwarding services out there where the RPi connects outbound to the cloud service and eliminates the need for port forwarding.