I have spent thousands of $$$$ and thousands of hours learning all this with no background…learned YAML, etc… and am grateful for the knowledge and experience…BUT…
I am done. I am constantly fixing issues , Z Wave is a mess and most of my system is Z Wave. Some devices show up but then I have about 10 devices that sometines appear and others times are just not there. I tried the Z Wave JS and the ful MQTT version, same issues. And now the RPi disconnects everyday from the ethernet connection and needs to be re booted.
I have searched forums and there never seems to be an answer…at a loss…
Moving to SmartThings I guess, dont want to but man, this is like a full time job, lately it seems they have a huge step backwards. Very frustrating. 3 years of frustration.
I mean, good luck and all.
But be aware - there are plenty of us using ZWave with no issues. But only because we have a very stable ZWave network, because there is a TON of mains powered devices.
I run ZWaveJSMQTT on a dedicated Pi, and connect to it from Home Assistant via a websocket.
I have 30 devices, all working perfectly. And the load on the Pi:
Ok, so you ran in to some problems. But the reason you give to leaving HA is a new one. You had a faulty SD card, you had problems with your Nest and you had some trouble installing zwavejs2mqtt. But I see no post about z-wave having trouble with devices falling of the mesh. Can we help you there? Can you elaborate on it? Smart things isn’t going to make you more happy I believe. But if you really think that is the answer, go for it.
It’s not an easy path. Especially if you have no background. But other tools (SmartThings, Hubitat, Wink [discontinued], etc) have their own pain points. You might get lucky and find a system that doesn’t have as many issues with your specific devices. But, more than likely, that’s not going to be the case.
Throwing money at the problem DOES help. Home Assistant allows MANY devices from many manufacturers, but not all devices are created equally. Raspberry Pi, while amazing, has many drawbacks compared to a “regular computer” that you have to be aware of for more complex applications like Home Assistant.
If you want “easy” and “fewer features” go with a well known product line, and use only devices from that same manufacturer (i.e buy Phillips Hue for your lights and use only that ecosystem for lights, buy ecobee for your thermostat and use only that ecosystem for HVAC needs).
I’ve been using Home Assistant for 6+ years. My bin of “garbage devices” is bigger than the devices I have installed in my home and I have A LOT of devices installed. That’s just the nature this maturing marketplace.
If you want “easy” and “lots of features”, get out your wallet and pay for a hardwired, contractor installed system. But, even then, there are some features that aren’t as good as what you can get from Home Assistant.
Or, wait 5 more years and see if things have come together better then.
I normally don’t add to generalized rant postings, and I think Daniel’s answer is well put. But I would like to make one positive point.
I’m running what I consider a moderately complex HA implementation on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. I never hit more than 15-18% CPU and 55% memory utilization. I do have an exposure because I still use an SD card, but I bought a good one rated for this sort of use. Of course I could make this risk go away with an SSD,
I don’t do audio or video. Obviously everyone’s needs are different, but I didn’t want anyone reading this to come away with the impression that running HA on a RPi is always the wrong decision.
thanks D, good answer, after seeing how smartthings handled my Schlage Z wave+ lock I decided against that route, and I was invested in Wink too before…I have decided to remove all 70 z wave devices, reset the stick, then add them back 1 by 1 very slowly. Hard wired switches first, then battery powered devices. I think my disconnecting from the ethernet connection might be Samba, I turned it off and went a whole 24 hours without losing coonection or it might have been the latest OS update?
Good to hear that you are trying again. It’s a hassle, but in my experience there is not really a better thing then HA. Only things with more limits that might have a more intuitive way of working, but the limits always irritate me more.
About an old topic of yours, did you take measurements to prevent SD card corruption again? I want to make sure before you run into that again.
Thanks for your time, no I did not take SD card considerations, I had looked into a ssd hard drive but found the execution instructions difficult. Just looking into the Samba configuration, the log states:
‘‘21-12-04 12:48:49 WARNING (MainThread) [supervisor.addons.options] Option ‘interface’ does not exist in the schema for Samba share (core_samba)’’
mine is: interface: ‘’
should it be deleted or replaced with:
interface: eth0
I had not made any changes to it so not sure why its now an issue but it is.
It will probably listen on all interfaces if one isn’t defined - it’s a warning to prevent you accidentally exposing the samba server to other networks that you might not want to have access to it. It doesn’t really matter though.
As for Samba being the possible reason for the OS to lose ethernet connection, it’s extremely unlikely (I won’t say impossible, because glitches happen), What is running in a docker container, is by default isolated from the resources of the host OS, even if the docker container suddenly consumes massive amounts of RAM or crashes, it should have no bearing on the OS - in the first case, the OS would simply kill the container, freeing up the RAM. And in the second - absolutely nothing should happen to the OS.
I had hell with the Z-wave mesh when I ran under HomeSeer. Not bashing HomeSeer. My mesh did not become stable until I added a USB extension cable to get the dongle away from the computer. I run a supermicro 1/2 depth rack server (in a rack under the stairs to basement) and it just wouldn’t communicate effectively until I got it out of the back.
The other thing that I did to quit killing Z-wave devices was add surge protection at the panels. There is no accounting for the amount of havoc a bad z-wave device can inflict on your system.
I use Enbrighten from GE/Jasco for most of my switches. First and second Gen kinda sucked but third Gen is more reliable. I have some HS switches/dimmers but they tend to be more expensive and quality is no better than GE.
no I have not on these issues, in my experience its really hit and miss, can get super technical guys that perhaps dont appreciate not everyone has theiur skill set, on most queries I have made I have usually sorted out my own answer, there arte great peopel on here and some are very helpful but as I say, its hit and miss IMHO
Most rage-quits on this forum are exactly that: frustrated people seeking attention by venting.
Several posts into the thread they compose themselves and become receptive to assistance, but on the rare occasion they’re true to their word and quit.
Frankly, Home Assistant isn’t for everyone and I encourage people, who find it requires too much of their time and effort, to explore other products. For example, if I was just starting with home automation and wanted a well supported product offering good value, I’d be looking at Hubitat’s Elevation hub.
Since this topic is becoming a helpful and meaningful thing to get you up and going again. Maybe you can change the topic to something less dramatic. I understand it might not feel less dramatic yet, but people tend to be more helpful with a meaningful topic for others to learn from too. Something like: all things got lost, how do I start again?
Or something, it’s your topic.
About the SD card. It’s all about the history and logbook. They use databases to log everything and database files tend to wear out SD cards. So if you have any other server in the house to use as a influxdb and mariadb/MySQL server that could do the job. Or you could install the add-ons in the supervisor and use the datafiles from those databases to a SSD or conventional hard drive.
This is not a solution. You are only postponing a catastrophic update where you have so many breaking changes you won’t know which way is up. And you will have to update at some stage, be it for an important security release or incompatibility with the supervisor (that you can’t prevent from updating).
One breaking change or so per month is not that onerous.
Depending on how your smart device ecosystem looks like, this can be an approach (no cloud integrations with changing APIs). The problem is with security updates. You’d really want to install those. But since HA lacks any kind of long term support channel, a simple security patch will come with a ton of unrelated and unwelcome breaking changes.
Another possibility is to dramatically reduce the number of integrations you use and connect everything over MQTT instead. That’s the way I went. The only three integrations I still use are MQTT, hikvision and the weather one. Plus two customs (pyscript and Alarmo). That’s it. And I’m currently transitioning the hik one to MQTT too. If you don’t run something then it can’t break. Makes updates much less stressful. It also makes your system much less dependent on HA. So if the day comes where you want to leave HA behind (who knows, might happen), then this will be rather straightforward.
