How to get HA to see wifi device (Lifx) on different network?

Hardware
1

This has to be a common question but I apparently don’t know the correct lingo to find with search. I have a wired network (IP aaa.bbb.ccc.xxx) with an attached Google Nest WiFi (IP aaa.bbb.ddd.xxx). I have wireless devices (Lifx, Kasa) attached, configured, and working through the Google Nest router. Home Assistant, currently running in VirtualBox on a PC on the wired network, cannot see devices on the wireless network. Is there a way to configure this to work, locally?

Pace 5268AC DSL Modem (DMZ+) → Mikrotic hEX S → Mikrotik CRS112-8G-4S-IN → Google Nest Wifi

2

Have you tried manually adding the integrations on the integration page.

3

I went to Configuration → Integrations → Add Integration → (Lifx // Kasa) but did not see any option to manually configure the devices. They both show no devices found. I’m still new to HA, so maybe I’m missing something?

4

I assume that the HA instance has access to other devices on the network? If so get the device local ip and add to configuration.yaml and restart.

tplink:
  discovery: false
  light:
    - host: 192.168.200.1
    - host: 192.168.200.2
  switch:
    - host: 192.168.200.3
    - host: 192.168.200.4
  dimmer:
    - host: 192.168.200.5
    - host: 192.168.200.6
  strip:
    - host: 192.168.200.7
    - host: 192.168.200.8

lifx:
  light:
    - server: IP_ADDRESS
      port: 56700
      broadcast: IP_ADDRESS
5

That’s useful to know, but the devices on the other network are not visible. I don’t know how to make two separate networks communicate. Is that possible with my hardware?

Another alternative, I guess, would be to enable the wifi card in my pc/virtualbox, but when I enable it, HA connects to the wrong network and I can no longer access it from my pc. It changed to the wireless network. How do I force it back to the wired network and then tell it to scan both networks for devices?

6

You have to add a route to your HA server. aaa.bbb.ddd.0 /24 gateway (nest wifi IP on wired network)
or you can simplify your life and put your google nest wifi into bridged mode so it shares the same subnet as your wired network.

By default a network device knows two things. Devices on it’s network and where to go (default gateway) to get to stuff not on it’s network. So it is going to send everything you want to go to your wifi, to your main router by default.

7

Bridged mode is probably the best solution (as wuench suggests).
Another option it to set your subnet mask on either the nest wifi, the wired network, or both to 255.255.0.0 which will essentially allow the network with this setting to see the other as part of it’s own subnet.

8

I’m afraid I’m terribly ignorant about networking and don’t understand most of that. I spent most of 2 days just trying to figure out port forwarding on my hEX S. I’m learning but I still know next to nothing about networking.

I do know from researching that Google Nest WiFi has no bridge mode or at least it doesn’t work if you are using additional APs with it which I am. It also doesn’t have the ability to set up static routes. It provides excellent coverage but near zero configuration flexibility. I regret buying it and wish I’d picked up one that allowed bridged operation.

What about the WiFi card in my pic. Is there a way to enable it so that HA doesn’t switch over that network but can still see devices on it? How do I configure networking in HA running on my PC in virtualbox? For someone who knows nothing.

9

The usual setup for a virtual box machine is to run the networking in “bridged mode”, which means your VM can see anything the NIC can see on the host machine.
That means you could try setting the subnet mask on the host machine to 255,255,0,0. How to do that varies depending on what the host OS is.
The other possibility is if the host PC can see both networks. It obviously has the wired connection. Does it also have the WiFi connection? If so, you can “bridge” the two adapters and the two networks will be able to talk to each other as long as the host pc is on. Again, how to do that varies on the host PC OS.

10

And how are these networks connected to your router??
It sound a bit like the google nest is a wifi router behind your internet router :thinking:

Easiest would be to setup your google nest as access point, so you would have one network instead of a network within a network…

11

I think this is the problem. Before I picked up the MikroTik gear, I had: Modem → Google Nest → Dumb Switch, which worked great. I picked up the MikroTik because I wanted to use more advanced routing features and that left me trying to shoehorn the Google Nest in to the new configuration which isn’t working because the Google Nest wants to be a router also, and I don’t need a another router: I need an AP without routing. I think I’ll reluctantly retire the Google Nest and replace it with an AP. It seems that’s the only way I’m going to get this working the way I want. I just didn’t want to spend the money if there were some other way.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I did try them all to the best of my ability but couldn’t get anything working properly.

12

You could check if one of the routers supports OpenWRT or ddWRT…
They both support AP mode,
I have an old linksys with dd-wrt where i re-use the originally dedicated wan port, so now
i can use it as 5 port switch with AP :yum:

And on my tp-link i run openwrt (as the original firmware was quite unstable)
I recently changed to glassfibre, and the tp-link router wasn’t fast enough, so replaced the tp-link with a [ status value device tracker Ubiquiti Edge X router, fast and cheap, but no wifi, so changed the tp-link to AP also :yum:

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