I am also in the process of moving from HS4 to HA. Has been a learning curve for sure. The main reason for moving was the constant need to “buy” plugins for every addition. I know it is a lot of work so not complaining that people charge for their work. I just had too many that ended up going belly up so to sspeak.
Enter HA…
I did redo my whole zwave network but more because I wanted to restart. I ended up getting a z-stick so I could move my items over without killing everything at once (although after reading this thread I am considering the HS integration to keep the z-net). I do miss some of the zwave management tools that are available in HS. I went with Zwave JS which is still coming together. Very manageable, just not as many tools. Probbaly should have gone with MQTT Zwave integration but that would be another project.
I have found that my lights actually work much quicker on the HA side, could be system related but I do notice it.
I also had to get more creative with my multi scene switches. Have them all working but had to do some leg work to get ther.
From the automation side, I have really taken to node red and have much more complex automations than anything I created in HS3/HS4
For the VLAN side, I am in a similar boat. So far the only thing I have done is add a few rules to the firewall to allow the devices on my IOT network to talk to my HA server. Overall it was pretty quick and had no issue so far.
I do really like the HA App compared to the HS app. It is just like jumping in to my browser and easy to work with. Also like how my phone generates every possible sensor I could think of in the system which is nice for incorporating into automations. Like if my alarm is set for 6:30, and I am home and nothing is on, slowly turn on the lights at 6 to 6:30. Makes it a little easier to get up.
I am by no means an expert and there have been some learning curves and late nights but so far I am likening it over HS4
Thanks for the update. I run HA virtualized, so would prefer a non-USB connected device for the Zwave integration. I have a hubitat that has a very good Zwave radio, so may go that route. I have pretty much eliminated zwave except for 5 doors with zwave locks, and a dome valve control that controls BBQ gas feed.
Everything else I moved to zigbee using the HS Jowihue PI, and that uses deconz, which just shows up on HA naturally. To be honest, if I could replace everything Zwave with zigbee, I would rather do that as zigbee just works generally without any drama.
How have you found Google Home integration? That was an area of a lot of challenges in HS4.
I haven’t tried GH but would assume it is pretty strong. I believe it is one of the mainstays on the platform. I just started using Alexa since that is my environment, and so far it is really strong. I have a pretty small sample but so far it is better than HS’s integration.
I changed from HS3 after purchasing an hs4 license. I threw the investment away, said goodbye to HS and the HS forum (Alot of great people but some very disturbing behavior from the moderators) . I did the conversion with both systems running. I have over 90 z-wave devices and I would shut a device off in HS and activate it with HA. I was using OZW but changed to Z-Wave js when it became the default. The only devices I could not get running were the CT-100 Thermostats and Go Control irrigation controller. I converted to ecobee and rainmachine respectively and am happy that I did. The fireplace thermostats were replaced with shelly devices and use virtual thermostats.
This will be my go to system. I have one small gripe with HA and it is a picky one. I wish the developers allowed one time contributions. I have not been able to figure out how to do and I feel like I owe something to the developers for their time and effort. I am not a fan of recurring payments.
I run on a dedicated server with a virtual machine for HA. The upgrades to Z-Wave js have been significant. It also has lightning fast response. Alot faster than HS. The integrations like shelly, MyQ , squeezebox et al are robust and just work. I can interface to my router {edgemax pro} (unifi and the add in in HS never worked for me because I had multiple sub-domains) without problems. The squeezebox interface and coding the GC-100-12 IR to control the rack was tedious but straight forward.
The learning curve is steep and it takes some time to figure out which yaml file you need to work on. It’s worth the effort.
I also should note that I have a USB z-wave dongle and I had no trouble integrating with the virtual machine after enabling the usb ports as required by virtualbox.
Welcome! The learning curve really is something. I coupled it with learning node red on top of it. Not that Node red is really hard just another layer. I do really like the visual of seeing my automation in a flow diagram. I am a BA at heart at work so it fits nicely with my brain and I can see what is happening as things run.
Have to agree, zwave seems way faster in HA. What are you running for A VM? I haven’t had any issues on the dongle passthrough. I am running VMWare on a left over lenovo small form factor that we had left over. So far it has been pretty solid.
I bought a used supermicro 1u rack server with 32gb of ram on craigslist. I run ubuntu 20.04 desktop. I tried server but couldnt get virtualbox to run consistently so I switched to desktop version. I created a virtual machine using virtualbox, down loaded the virtual image and voila - system up. I did increase the disk size to 100gb. I dedicate 3 of the 4 cores available on the machine to the virtualbox. I knew I made the right decision when within a few hours I had my AV equipment integrated, the GC-100-12 programmed for IR, and the automations written to run the whole house audio and video. This is all thanks to the great documentation that the developers have created. I might have to read the documentation multiple times to finally understand but it’s all there.
Have never questioned my decision. I would have had the same amount of drain damage if I had converted to HS4 as I did converting to HA.
Finally upgraded to the latest version of the home assistant HACs integration after using it for several months. Was excited to see support for more devices including virtual Homeseer devices. I have several virtual devices I want to control from HA but when they get created in HA they are “sensor devices” I have tried setting the Device Type string to Z-Wave Switch and Z-Wave Binary Switch, then reinstalled the integration, and the devices still get created as the “sensor” type. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
The library for the integration parses the control data for a virtual device to determine what capabilities it supports. Can you post a screenshot of what the Status Graphics page for the virtual device looks like? You will need to set up control pairs with Control Use On and Off if you want it to be created as a switch in HA, and add a Dim Control Use, you should get a light.
Thanks so much. These are just virtual devices that I am using to hold an on and off state. The Control Use field was undefined. Once I correct this everything works fine. Thanks so much for the help.
Natively in HA, you could use an Input Boolean to simulate what virtual devices were used for in HS - especially for storing on/off states. In some of my automations, I trigger the action by turning on an Input Boolean by voice using an Amazon Echo and turn off the Input Boolean at the end of the script/automation.
By default, the Input Boolean value will be retained i.e. persist after an HA restart. If you want to change this behavior, use the “initial” option in the configuration to set it to what you want it to be after restart.
So in HS4, I used a plug-in called EasyTrigger to have my hot water pump turn on/off at specific times of the day. How is this automation accomplished in HA? I did a search and saw that someone suggested to use the Choose scripting option, but was not clear on the syntax in my situation. Here’s the EastyTrigger schedule that I would want to have the pump come on:
SimpleScheduler looks like exactly what I need. Let me know how it works for you. I’m also interested if you can set times based on certain days in one schedule or will that require two schedules to be created.
Since I run HA Core on Kubernetes, I cannot install SimpleScheduler. Head over to the forum thread on this add-on to discuss your questions. I’m currently fine with using yaml automations using sunset/sunrise and time triggers and conditions to perform my scheduled events.
