Home Assistant Companion App and custom roms

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Android
1

This would be so awesome! :confetti_ball:

I guess home assistant is used by a lot of tech servi people who like to have control over their devices. And maybe not just for their home automation/server and home network but also for their phones. Right now (afaik) the only practical solution to have a free & open source mobile device would be a android (AOSP) without any google software/dependencies. There is many custom roms out there like Lineages OS, Carbon Roms, Omni Roms and others who serve well for this propose.

Right now it’s not possible to run the Home Assistant Companion App on any of these because (despite the app itself is open source) it relais on non-free/closed services provided by google and their cloud infrastructure.

It looks like to me the N°1 locally controlled open source smart home software doesn’t allow me to use my mobile running open source software only to control my local home assistant server (running only open source software too) but want’s me to make a contract with google and share my data (like my location) with them? :confounded:

2

Sure you can. All you need is a web browser.

3

I do this right now but certain features would need a app. That’s why the app is there I guess :wink:

Also I would hope for a stability boost. On android devices with low ram (1-2GB) the browser get’s hibernated fairly often leads to a offline... reconnecting issue when opening the home assistant ui again in the browser… Sometimes it can establish the connection sometimes not. Quite annoying if you miss the black bar that you are offline and you toggle a light :bulb: wondering why it’s still dark :dark_sunglasses:

4

For what?

You said your instance is local only, right? So you’re not forwarding any ports, making it publicly accessible? What features do you perceive as needing an app for? Have you tried using WallPanel instead of a normal browser?

5

Thinking of notifications for example.

I said it’s local.

Indeed, it’s not public accessible. But I can access it from everywhere using wire guard

Not yet, will give it try soon…

6

Notifications don’t require the app. :wink:

7

This conversation is runnng in circles. The question is whether the app will ever be autonomous from Google services or not. Given the fundamentals of the project, this question sounds pretty natural and consequential to me. I am sorry but “use the browser” sounds more like another tedious workaround rather than an answer.

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8

For the start it looks like the House Automator Comrade App (a fork from @jleeuwes with stripped google dependencies) will do it. However it doesn’t rebuild the features (yet?) which are google cloud exclusively implemented like the push notification and location tracking. The app is on it’s way to be published in F-Droid :rocket:

9

There’s now a mimimal flavor of the official app, which is installable through F-Droid.

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