Approaching “empty nester” status soon, my wife and I fulfilled one of our life goals and got our first RV. I knew that I wanted a small HA instance, if for nothing else than remote monitoring while we are away from our home on wheels. I also wanted a local network for file storage, etc, as both of us planned to work from the RV occasionally, and we also have a large music library we wanted take with us. Also, stable, reliable internet was a must, since we dropped DirecTV and the like for streaming years ago.
I decided to run HA on ProxMox, alongside an Ubuntu 22.04 server, on a Beelink Mini S12 Pro, and performance is pretty good. At home, I am running HA on a RPi4 with SSD, but wanted to go a different route on this build, mainly for easier deployment, less space, etc. I’ll probably eventually convert my “sticks and bricks” setup over to ProxMox as well based on my experience here.
For local and external connectivity, I am using a GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 travel router, and internet connection is provided via an Inseego MiFi X Pro 5g on T-Mobile. I considered StarLink, but equipment cost and monthly fees ruled it out, and besides, we will rarely be outside of 5G range until we get a little more adventurous anyway.
My first goal was to be able to monitor temps/humidity, monitor the galley and bathroom areas for moisture, and entry/exit at the doors. For this I used Home Assistant SkyConnect and Aquara Zigbee sensors, all backed up by some automations to generate alerts when certain conditions are met. SkyConnect works very good for this purpose, and exposing it to the HA vm was a piece of cake. Too bad nobody makes Zigbee tank monitors.
I’ve also added the Blink integration, Volumio for local music, Local Calendar, and Shopping List. I tried using HA to play local music, but for some reason, lossless files gave me issues. I already had the Volumio player setup at home, and rarely being used, so I’m using it for now. I’ll ultimately come up with a better solution, but for now it works.
My next projects will be, adding a wall panel, incorporating tank sensor data, coming up with a better camera solution that integrates better with HA (maybe MotionEye), and converting light (and maybe other) switches with Sonoff SV or something similar.
Here’s the current setup, backed up by an Amazon Basics UPS:
It’s off the inverter, so when I remember to smash the “Invert” button, we have Internet and WiFi (and HA) when rolling.