Difference between Integration / Add-on

Third party integrations
1

Hi,

I’m a little bit lost :slight_smile:

What is the difference between Integration and the Add-on ?

For example what is the difference between the OpenZWave Add-On and the OpenZWave(Beta) Integration ?

1 Like
2

Hi,
You probably installed Hass.io. If you had installed Home Assistant Core instead, it would be clear for you, as you wouldn’t have add-ons.
But you could have a MQTT integration for instance, provided you install MQTT on your system not through Home Assistant.

3

Thank you for your reply but I don’t understand :thinking:

I’m running Home Assistant (hassIo is the old spelling)

4

Supervisor Add-ons are docker containers which might or might not have a separate application inside. For example; Influx addon installs the Influx DB app inside a container and lets HA work with it. In your case, OpenZWave Addon installs openzwave 1.6 ozw in a container and lets the OpenZWave (beta) integration work with it.

If you install openzwave (beta) integration only, there is no way HA will communicate with the ZWave dongle and will not find anything. The openzwave addon is responsible with the communication with the ZWave dongle. You can either install openzwave 1.6 directly to your server (without addon), and let OZW beta communicate with it, or you can install ozw 1.6 as a supervisor addon; they both will work. But uninstalling ozw 1.6 is super easy if you install it as supervisor addon, since it is a docker container and it will only delete this container and it is gone; simple as that.

Coming to Influx DB example, you can still install Influx as “sudo apt-get install influxdb” and make HA work with it, but the management will be not from within HA, but from the system side and all your system applications can work with Influx easily. But if you install it as a supervisor addon, only HA can work with it, but you can manage it from within HA GUI and it will not affect your system or system files whatsoever.

Integrations cannot install additional apps to your HA.

There might be some mistakes in my explanation, but this is what i understand so far…

5 Likes
5

Thank you for your explanation :slight_smile:
If I can do a shortcut for openzwave it’s like the addon was the “driver” and the integration the software to communicate with Hass ? Right ?

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6

In very broad terms, yes.

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7

Pitp2…Sorry…I know its 2 years later but your response was great! I hope this helps others like it helped me!

8

Good explanation @febalci , Thanks - helps my steep learning curve :slight_smile:

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9

It’s best to refer to the official terminology glossary here, as it avoids assumptions and ambiguity: