Exposing HomeAssistant (VirtualBox) to multiple subnets

I’ve been bashing my head against this one for a few days now, and have given up. Hoping this group’s wise counsel can figure this out.

I’m attempting to have my VB hosted HA be exposed to 2 subnets in my local network. This is to allow Frigate to access my PoE rtsp cameras. My HA windows running VB is native to 192.168.1.x, all my cameras are 10.1.1.x.

My setup is as folliwng:

  • Main router supporting a 192.168.1.x setbnet
  • NVR hosting a 10.1.1.x subnet
  • All cameras are connected to a PoE switch
  • Switch is attached to the NVR and the router
  • NVR network card is configured to support both subnets
  • Computer hosting my VB-HA has a network card configured to the 192.168.1.x subnet and an added 10.1.1.x address.
  • VirtualBox has an added virtualBox Host Only network adapter that is set as 10.1.1.x, and is added to the HA box’s settings.

Running pings all around and all devices are fast and visible. Connections are clean and well configured.

Running Frigate:

  • Assigning 2 test cameras: one with a manual 192x address and one with a 10x address.
  • Configuring the frigate.yaml file to both cameras
  • The 192.168.1.x camera is working flawlessly, including the Coral tpu
  • The 10.1.1.x camera is green
    ERROR : [tcp @ 0x56067d8eae80] Connection to tcp://10.1.1.x:xxx?timeout=5000000 failed: Connection timed out

I’m sure I’m missing something with bridging the 10.1.1.x address into the vBox instance. Or exposing it in the HA configuration.

Any ideas?

Found the solution. Ended up being simpler than I expected.

  • A virtual ip address for a 2nd subnet on the same NIC does not seem to work
  • Install a 2nd NIC, configure to 2nd subnet
  • Add the new NIC to the VM
  • HA can now see both cards under the network settings
  • (if needed) configure the IP addresses to the new HA network entities

All is now working well.