Thus far I have been using Raspbian with the Home Assistant All-In-One installer.
I recently switched to Hass.IO, but I might go back for a few reasons.
I haven’t heard of ResinOS or Docker myself. Though I’m not exactly a Linux expert, either. It just seems like it doesn’t take much obscurity in a linux distro before basically everything crumbles from lack of support, lack of software, lack of updates, and lack of manpower behind the OS.
With regards to #1, Raspbian/Debian are swamped with all kinds of software, including software I use such as Moonlight and PiHole. My Pi is also used as a DNS and I used to use it to stream games.
I can’t get SSH to work yet, though I do have some more configuring to do. But I’m led to believe that you do not have root access through SSH, which for me is the whole reason I use SSH. sudo reboot. sudo apt-get. and of course my python script for turning on the cooling fan via GPIO.
I know it is very early on, but it basically locks up every day at least once, more often twice. The GUI locks up, SSH is unavailable, so all my automation is unavailable until I physically unplug and plug in my raspberry pi.
Things I like:
One of the things I was most interested was the ability to self-update. I haven’t seen it in action yet, but the ability to update itself all the time in the background is very nice compared to switching to a virtual environment and running some misc commands. For it to do the same with the OS itself is even better.
We finally have some sort of control over the theming
Addons are certainly easier to deal with than packages. Though there isn’t a single iota of a percent of the flexibility of debian. I mean, you basically get 6 choices, compared to the endless vast expanse of programs you can find for Debian and Raspbian. But yes, a GUI is really nice for handling things.
Speaking of which, I love the push for the full GUI interface. I’m not much a fan of yaml and probably would have preferred something better equipped to deal with variables in place rather than the dozens of lines it takes to create templates.
Hass.IO was undoubtedly the easiest thing I have ever installed on linux.
So now I’m trying to decide if I should hold on to Hass.IO and wait for the improvements to my areas of concern, or if I chould go back to Debian+AIO. I would also like to know more about how Haspbian compares to either of these.
If you want to take a rPI or a NUC and turn it into a HA box HASS.IO is about as easy as it gets.
If you want to setup a box to do the above and run some other things probably Raspbian and AIO are best for the points you make.
I for one believe that my HA is important enough to justify a dedicated box and for playing around with other things I have a ‘sandbox’ I use. Sandbox runs Raspbian so I get the big ecosystem.
I tried Hass.IO too, then went back to Hassbian. Hass.IO is nice, easy to setup. SMB, MQTT and SSH modules are working fine. But I couldn’t get HomeBridge working at all.
Went back to Hassbian, enabled Mosquitto which is already installed, installed HomeBridge myself, then it is all working fine. You get all the root access, SSH, apt-get, etc, etc. I don’t use SMB much as I get full root SSH.
I would say so. I would think on a NUC you would do the Raspbian + AIO setup. Either that or you would use it to control the automation for the better part of the empire state building. lol.
Yeah, in my time since posting this I went back and already like the flexibility more. I would imagine HASS.IO would be better for someone who doesn’t want to mess around with the backend much. In that case, I would basically recommend people stick with Hassbian or the AIO installer until more of the front end is developed, unless you want to go ahead and develop plugins for the platform. I suppose that is the purpose of alpha/beta versions, anyway.
If you start to get a big system with a lot going on a rPI can get bogged down. With 80 zwave devices and a big busy house the rPI often feels pokey and hits 100% CPU use for a few moments at a time.
A NUC is overkill but unfortunately nothing in between…Unless you do a OrangePi or something but they are not well supported.
Perhaps an Intel Compute Stick? Plugged into a touchscreen monitor it could also be a central kiosk running HousePlan or something… or just hide it away somewhere to do its thing
Honestly I think a NUC would be fine, I’m just giving them a hard time. I do think it would be one of those things where you would also use it for NAS and surveillance or something.
Don’t forget that hass.io only supports built-in bluetooth (RPi3). So it’s not suitable for RPi2 (I can’t imagine that someone would want to sacrifice presence-based automation).
I’m currently a Domoticz user but I have red so much positive about HA, so I decided to try it out. A few days ago, I ordered a new MicroSD card to play around with, but I cannot get a complete grip about which installation option I should choose. I’m using RFXtrx433e for 433 MHz and RaZberry2 for Z-Wave. As I understand, both these should work with HA as well.
As I have red, the Hass.io still has some issues but a lot of advantages as well. Domoticz is installed on top of Raspbian, so this installation method is not completely new for me. However, to learn the system from the beginning, which option would you recommend me to use? Raspbian + Manual installation or Raspbian + AIO? Anything else I need to take in count?
Im running rasbian + AIO with influx, grafana, mariadb, nginx and more. To make it more flexible Im going to try ubuntu with docker and Rancher on intel NUC. Rancher as an alternative to HASS.io
To learn the system from the beginning, it is best to install manually, from a virtualenv
If you have some experience with the unix command line, it is actually quite straightforward.
If you have a brand new SD card to play with, and want a slightly easier path, try the hassbian install method, as it most things in place, rather you having to download them.
If you want an easier method with an SD card that already has things on that you want to keep, use the AIO method.
HASS.IO is more for people who just want a system up and running and who don’t care how it works. It actually stops them from messing around too much.
Thanks a lot for the good summery. I just red the virtual environment documentation and it seems straightforward. I have been working with containers before so didn’t need to learn that.
I’m actually just now installing AIO. I’m excited to learn about HA. Let’s see how hard it can be.
