How to connect a remote USB device over ethernet connection

1

I guess it is an old question but i’m hoping that there is a working solution by now.

HAOS is running in the basement on a VMWARE server. If i connect a USB device to the hardware it’s signal would be blocked by the construction so i would like the zwave stick, rfxcom box, old plugwise stick to be placed on the second level of the buidling.

My guess would be to use something like ser2net or virtualhere to accomplish this but i can’t find a working solution.

Can i stop searching because HA simply does not support this scenario ( i’m trying to avoid installing the supervised version)?

2

I don’t have any experience with

but Zwavejs UI can be run on any machine where it can be installed and the you just access it via the IP of the machine it’s installed on.

Getting it installed on a separate machine is a bit technical since you either need to install it directly on the machine OS or if you know a bit about Docker then that’s the easiest and is the way I would go.

Then in the setup of zwavejs in HA you just configure the integration to point to the IP of the remote machine and the port where zwavejs-ui is running on that machine.

As far as RFXCom did you look at the RFXCom integrations docs? There are instructions in the there that cover Ser2Net:

Again I have no experience with it so I can’t help any further than that.

3

Thnx but the main challenge is that haos does not allow to install the ser2net or virtualhere or usbip client. The only route I discovered is to install the ser2net or virtualhere or usbip client on the VMware host and then connect the virtual port through to haos so haos thinks it is a locally attached device.
I was hoping for a more straightforward solution in haos itself.

4

The more straightforward answer is - it depends. No you cannot get direct command line root access to install new of those tools. But in lost cases you don’t have to.

Bluetooth - Esp32 Bluetooth proxy.
Zigbee - Zigbee2MQTT on an eternal host or network coordinator.
ZWave - ZWaveJS_ui on an external host or network coordinator.
Matter - any TBR will do.

For just about any situation there’s a solution mso what device are you specifically interested in?

5

Zigbee2MQTT does support ser2net, but not on all devices.

6

Nice find. I did not know that I could use an ip address in the serial connection in conjuncturele with mqtt

7

@NathanCru. Mist your post.
Well, i’m trying to use some older stuff like plugwise stick, Visonic powermax pro, klikaanklikuit etc. Most of them have a working solution via rs232/tcpip but that requeres some sort of interface like ser2net/virtualhere/usbip. In my opnion support for this would open up HA for a whole lot other devices in case of running HAOS virtual.

8

Would it be possible to start virtualhere in console mode on HAOS? Would that be a working solution? It only needs usbip drivers and i read somewhere that these are compiled into HAOS. Btw, not a clue how to proceed since i’m a real linux newbee despite 25+ IT career :slight_smile: so any help would be appreciated.
https://www.virtualhere.com/usb_client_software

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9

The plugwise_usb-beta custom_component does support this scenario.

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10

That would be nice. I the mean time I’m researching the supervised ha route. Pretty sure that will work but also requires keeping Debian up-to-date. So extra maintenance.

11

Hey, any update on this journey? Just started exploring this avenue for my setup, I already have zigbee and soon zwave on network controller, im trying to get my skyconnect “network-erized” (for matter and potentially zigbee).

12

Not really. I’m now lokking into the solution of using a kind of long active usb cable that does not need drivers.

13

There’s driverless usb over ethernet adapters you can get pretty cheap which might do the trick if you already have ethernet cables in place.

I’d give those a shot first & return them if they don’t work.

14

I have one for test but need time.
Aten also has a version that runs over ethernet tcp/ip so can be used via a switch. This version is pretty expensive in the range of 400~500 euro’s

15

For a fraction of that money I’d just set up a smaller server somewhere more central and plug my dongles to them!

1 Like
16

Then you still need to install drivers on haos and that’s the challenge I’m trying to avoid

17

Not if you run HAOS directly on the small server, which is the point I was trying to make.

18

I know but I want to avoid to keep another os layer up-to-date

19

Sorry, there a lot more devices, like USB300 for the EnOcean ecosystem …

20

Same problem, how to install driver on HAOS