I am brand new to home automation. I was deciding between openhab, recommended by a coworker, and Home Assistant which I found via youtube videos. I settled on Home Assistant, and promptly orderd a new raspberry pi. I installed Hassio and I am wondering now if I should have went the hasspian route. Most things don’t work the way the youtube videos show that they should and I’m getting frustrated to the point that I am considering scrapping it all and going with another solution. A prime example the mosquitto conf file. I can’t access it because it sits outside of the virtual environment so I’m not really sure what the point was in installing it. I ordered some parts to build some sensors and now I am wondering if maybe I should have installed hasspian or maybe just a base raspian install and added HA. Can anyone give me any insight to this? I really want to like Home Assistant but it’s pretty confusing, especially when tutorials use older versions with capabilities I don’t currently have. Thanks in advance.
What are you trying to configure? There is a mqtt configuration page in HASSIO
I was following a tutorial on from BRUH_Automation and there were lines I was supposed to add to the conf file to make it work, but i didn’t have access to the file. Only the snippet that was available in the configuration page.
You probably don’t need to make those changes. I only needed to fill out the options in the Hass.io menu and add the lines mentioned at the bottom of https://home-assistant.io/addons/mosquitto/ and it just works.
Okay, I’ll give it a shot this weekend. Hopefully I won’t have to start all over from scratch with Hassbian. Thank you for your help. I greatly appreciate it.
I don’t think you made a bad decision going with Hassio. I originally had everything running on a NUC with Ubuntu Server and using Rancher Server to manage my Docker containers. I recently switched to using Hassio and I’ve been able to replicate everything I had before.
For me, the best thing about Hassio is that it requires a lot less maintenance once you figure out how things work. You just install the add-on, fill out the options how you want, and it usually just works.
My only gripe would be that it seems to be just one guy who maintains Hassio itself. So if you have an issue that is specifically with Hassio (not Home Assistant), it can sometimes take a long time before it gets addressed. A specific example is that the Linear HUSBZB-1 stick doesn’t work with Hassio on the NUC even though it works perfectly fine with a manual install of Ubuntu. I eventually had to go out and buy a rpi3 because the issue still hasn’t been fixed since it was reported several months ago. It may just be that the NUC isn’t very well supported compared to the rpi, because I haven’t had any issues running on the rpi yet.
That being said, the fact that I felt compelled to buy the rpi3 (a decent downgrade from the NUC) just to keep using Hassio shows how nice it is.
Thank you. I was starting to get concerned. I originally wanted to start with some acurite sensors since I found a tutorial that could make them work with Home Assistant. The problem is that it requires you to install some extra software to the OS which isn’t possible with Hassio. So I decided to go with a DIY sensor build. So I’m just concerned about future issues. I’m very well versed in linux so I’m not concerned I will break anything. I’m gonna leave it as is and see where it takes me.
I would stick with HASS.IO and always wait for the version xx.1 release (note the ‘1’) before upgrading (not version xx) - other than that I will say that it is a rock solid solution as long as you get your head around how it works, and that can twist/warp your mind - but persist!
I have switched from Domotics and the ever expanding of new features every two weeks is quite amazing.
The community here is also very helpful, and polite, which is quite refreshing
Oh, and did I mention it is free? 
Yeah, for something that requires additional software you’ll either have to wait until someone makes an addon for it or try to make one yourself. On the bright side, making an addon usually isn’t that difficult. It’s mostly just a matter of copying the relevant commands to install the software into the Dockerfile and the commands to run it into a run.sh script.
I am very amazed with how polite and helpful everyone seems to be, which is another reason I really like this platform. I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything, I’m only day 3 into this project so far. I really really really want this to work, so i’m trying to control the frustration. I think once my parts to build the sensors come in on Sunday I’ll actually have something to put into the homescreen and monitor and I’ll be much happier. I tried to add my plex server and that just seemed to be an abysmal failure, and I’m able to make to make owntracks work, however, my phone only shows up on the map. Baby steps though, I’ll get there.
Do not give up, the rock solid performance and stability of HASS.IO in the long run will pay off. Always check your logs, they are pretty comprehensive and is my go-to place for any sort of troubleshooting… and if you need help, just ask, there will always be someone to assist if you need help.
Where are the logs? I saw the “Logbook” but there didn’t seem to be anything useful there.
Click in the “i” on the bottom of the left menu. You will find the log there.
I would also vote for hass.io and not the hassbian version. Unless you have anything that you want to run on your pi that is not supported by an add-on it is way easier to maintain on the long run.
There is actually another set of logs, the one mentioned above is the home assistant logs but if you got to the hass.io panel on the left, click on the three dots on the right top after and select advanced settings you will see another logs section of the supervisor, this will the the log of the hass.io system running under home assistant.
Try discord if you have questions as well, pretty helpful tean there as well.
Thanks! My parts for my DIY sensors should be in tomorrow, so I am going to put those togethers and get them working and maybe I’ll have a better feel for how things should be setup. Thank you again though!
I just got my hass.io installed on raspberry pi.
And I am confused. I’ve been using linux on and off since 1994/1995. I feel very comfortable with raspberry pi and rasbian just because I have the fundamental familiarity with the OS itself.
But Hass.io changed all that. I am not familiar with virtual environments (i went through couple intro video on youtube on docker, that is it). Thus, I feel my hands are tied.
It seems that if I go for the hass.io, I am essentially become completely depend upon someone who already set up the “add-on” or docker containers. If things I want to do doesn’t have a docker container, I am essentially screwed, unless I know how to build a docker container myself. Is this statement more or less correct?
As soon as I got hass.io set up, I encounter issues which I am not sure how to solve.
First, I have this husbzb-1 zwave/zigbee usb stick. the usual lsusb -v doesn’t really give any thing meaningful in this strage ResinOS. After I googled, I managed to find some information on it in this website:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/hassio-or-hasspian/39987/16
So, I dutifully followed the instruction and restart Home Assistant… then… NOTHING. Without any knowledge in ResinOS, I simply don’t know if this usb stick worked or not, how to pair devices, etc. If this is on rasbian, I at least feel i can get something from some command line to tell if the dongle works or not.
Second issue is that I want to be able to use NFS to mount. Yes, I have set up samba, but my laptop is running linux anyway thus it doesn’t seems to make a lot of sense to go use SAMBA. Granted, it’s not a big deal since I mostly just need to have access to configuration file, but still… if i want to do this, i simply don’t know what to do. If this is on rasbian, at least i know i can install nfs-related packages to make it work.
Third issue is more difficult. When I got Home Assistant, I didn’t realize the one thing I used the most, “Smart life” or “Tuya” based wifi power plugs. Because of its price, I got 6 of them and used it in various part of the house. Then, I realized that no one has figured out a way to get tuya iot platform to work with Home Assistant.
How each of these “add-ons” related to home-assistant “components?” for me, this hass.io thing is another layer of confusion which I feel powerless, than having something installed on rasbian directly.
It sounds like you want hassbian.
should I go for hassbian? or should I go for rasbian + aio installer?
the AIO installer has been deprecated.
hassbian is just a raspbian install with home assistant preinstalled.