Hass.io OVA Hyper-V Zwave USB pass-through

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

On a lot of topics information about using zwave on hassio is available. And also hassio (hassos) on hyperv. In my case I do run hassio on hyperv (the ova). I want to use a USB zwave stick in Windows and present it to the hassio hassos vm. I know usb passthrough is not supported on hyperv this way. And I know of all kinds of network (ip) and software products avalailable and lots of people have it working (on windows host hyperv and ubuntu hassio). But I can’t get it working on hassos (ova) running on hyperv.

I would very much appreciatie a stable and viable solution to fill my needs. And I would also very much appreciate if someone was willing to take me by the hand (mostly what to do on the cassio hassos part) to get this working…

Thanks in advance.

2

After having tried hyperv usb passthrough, I recommend going to a supported solution like I did, VMware Workstation (free if you know where to look or have a vmware certification, hit me up if you need further direction than that).

A few important lessons learned for making hassio work well with VMware workstation (using publicly available vmdk):

  1. OS type shouldn’t matter too much, I’ve had success with Ubuntu 64bit and VMware 4.x+ 64bit
  2. UEFI boot (VM properties, Options, Advanced, Firmware Type UEFI)
  3. Run as a Shared VM. VMware Workstation SERVER runs as a service, allowing for VMs to auto start on host boot (Preferences, Shared VMs, Enable Sharing)
  4. Add this line (adjust your vendor and product ID’s) into the bottom of the machine’s .vmx (edit with notepad++ to avoid encoding issues): usb.autoConnect.device2 = “vid:0658 pid:0200” (It’s important to realize the VMware workstation GUI is NO longer going to show the usb device as ‘connected’, this is because the vmware workstation SERVER service is doing the passthrough instead of the client application.
  5. Look at the vm’s .log file for troubleshooting passthrough
1 Like
3

Hi Chris, thank you for taking the time to respond. I am aware of esxi and the “freeness”. But… I have reasons to use hyperv. Having a NUC running multiple VMs including cassio gives me also the opportunity to use the host as media centre (windows kodi). Therefore I use the extra power of the nuc for hass…

4

Very welcome, :slight_smile: . I’m talking about VMware workstation, not ESXi.

5

Thanks, I would like to ask the community to get back on topic and help with a feasible solution running hassio in hyperv and to have a USB zwave stick connected.

6

Hi @Chris_B

I am having problems recognising my conbee and z wave sticks. Where do i find vendor and product ID you refer to so I can try this suggestion?

Many Thanks

It’s ok I worked it out. Thanks

7

This is not something that “the community” can resolve, it is an issue with Hyper-V lacking common industry standard options such as USB passthrough. Hyper-V sucks IMO but I was using it because my work uses it, I switched to VMWare Workstation to get access to my USB networking devices (BT,ZWave,Zigbee etc). You can run “virtualhereusb” networked sharing of USB’s w/ Hyper-V is you only/best option.

8

4 months later reply, better late than never :-).

I was not asking to overcome the Hyper-V issue at that time. Just to stick on topic (Hyper-V usb passthrough).

Yes, I ended up using esxi.

9

Hey all,

Know this is an old topic, but where can I get workstation?

You can use them both at the same time these days right?

Thanks