My main house is smart and is controlled by HA through duckdns. Now, I am planning to make my second house (in a neighboring country) also smart.
Can I connect/control both houses to my HA? Is this reliable, and how should I do this? Thanks!
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Hi, welcome to the forum.
Yes, it can be done with a VPN connection between both places BUT, if the internet connections are not reliable on both places, consider a 2nd HA.
Thanks Nick. Setting up a VPN between the houses is indeed not my favorite. For me, it is fine that the two houses can remain âindependentâ.
How can I setup a 2nd HA? For sure, each house will be equipped its RPi running HA. But can the HA app support two houses (controlled independently)?
There is a HACS package called remote_homeassistant which allows selected entities from one instance to be visible (and controllable) in another instance.
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But you wanted to control/connect both places to âyour HAâ, meaning that is 1 server.
How did you think to achieve this in the first place since the internet is the only connection between them?
Yes, the companion app can do that: Getting Started | Home Assistant Companion Docs
@jchh: is this a solution for 2 HA instances, not connected to each other in any way?
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Yes. I use it so I can see and (control) some of mumâs HA entities from my dashboard (she lives 20 miles away). You can prefIx* the remote instance so they are easily identifiable.
edit: Typo*
@Nick4 , indeed, I expressed myself wrongly. I am aiming for 2 HA servers (each house has its server) but to be able to control them in the most convenient way as possible, ideally with a common dashboard in my HA app. Now I have 2 suggestions: the Remote HA from @jchh and the HA Companion from @Nick4. Which is the best avenue for a successful and reliable outcome?
⌠and as you may notice, my expertise on HA is still in a growing phase 
The companion app is the easiest way but you will only be able to see either yours or theirs at any given time. Basically, you app can log into both your local instance and your remote instance and you can swap between them.
This does require that the remote instance has something like the Nabu Casa remote access activated.
Sounds very acceptable for what I need. Does it also work with 2 duckdns instances (one of each house)? I have no experience with Nabu Casa (as âthe internetâ suggested me to use duckdns).
I am impressed by this community, waauw.
OK, am getteing the picture - as I was not fully familiar with the different terms. I understand now that the HA app can support multiple HA servers through the Companion App settings. As each of my houses will be equipped with a HA server, they will be visible in my HA app. But I might have to swich from server/dashboard to the other. I will thry this and see how it works. Thanks.
Sorry, no clue - I use Nabu Casa. Nabu Casa is - by far - the easiest way to get remote access and you are also supporting the devs of HA.
Yes, you only need to log into each server once from your app, and then you can simply switch between them.
is there any way to use it in automation or a button to change servers? or only by 3 finger swipe?
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I donât believe so, no.
If you want to see sensors from both at the same time, youâll need to use remote_homeassistant.
Hi community
It seems I have the same ambition
Having 2 independent houses controlled each by an HA
Is there a way to have two (or more) houses I the HA app ?
Selecting the one we want to manage ?
Thanks
Xavier
yes; you can add multiple instances and swap between them.
FYI: this can be done very easy by using multiple fingers (thought +2, if your device supports it) to swipe
That would be great but in the iOS app, I donât find where to initiate/associate my second instance ??
In HA app go to settings in the side bar then choose companion app. There you get to add another server.
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If I would want to control 8 houses, which all have their own Zigbee controller, since HA does not allow for more than 2-ish controllers, would it be feasible to have a proxmox run 8 instances of HA?
And would these HA installations somehow be able to connect with each other?