I am going to do a HA setup for my parents. I’d like to do a ‘set it and forget it’ installation, so that it would be hassle-free for me after things have been up and running properly.
How would you do such an installation? Any hint/advice/resource would be much appreciated.
Edit: the HA setup is only for monitoring purpose: temperature, humidity, CO2, camera, and some values from the heat pump and photovoltaic controller.
Only use mqtt devices. The mqtt integration has not changed significantly in over 2.5 years.
Depend on what the goal is for installing HA.
I have two prod instances running at my place:
The Odroid C2 is running on 0.102.3 since this version has been out. It is rock solid. Current uptime 182 days and HA not restarted since the reboot.
The VM is regularly updated, the configuration changes rather frequently and from time to time it has some hiccup.
So, keep it simple (eg choose only one kind of sensors - zigbee, zwave, wifi - ). As suggested by Francisp glue this with MQTT.
Select the latest HA release of the month which should be the most reliable and stick with it…
Put the odroid (emmc tend to be more reliable than SD) on UPS/battery to avoid any electrical issue.
You could install zerotier on the same box so that you can connect remotely just in case. If the box is not reachable any more (shit happens), request an on/off to your parents and you should be able to connect to it to check what happened.
And that should do it.
I think that even HA is “alive system”, it can be “set-and-forget” one, too. If i look at my system: i’m constantly “doing something”, altgough my system works perfectly (better than i could imagine, actually). I have quite a few ESPHome modules connected.
But, if i wouldn’t do anything, it would still be running perfectly. If you set system and it works, then you can pretty much forget it, unless some extra changes come, like recent “float” function, which will change (default setting will be a must). For this purpose you set system so that you have remote access to it, so you can “repair” it remotely. However, your parents won’t be sad if you go and visit them every now and then, right?
software ‘set it forget it’ dont exist (sorry if it sounds cynic, not meant like that). Even not updating could run into issues later. Got multiple samples on other softwares which i thought 'its fine like this ’ and then suddenly it just breaks due to dependences or whatever. Maybe look in to google home screens for less maintenance?
What kind/brand of temp/humidity etc devices would it entail?
thank you for your inputs, I find them very helpful.
I should have mentioned that my parents live very far away from me. I visit them about 1x every 2-3 years. That’s why I’d like to eliminate (or at least minimize) the maintenance need.
My setup is similar to this, plus NodeRed integration to pull data from the heat pump.
My first reaction was “don’t use HA.” Look at all the big manufacturers mass-marketing to residential end users. They generally pull everything back to their “cloud” so that they retain control. They have engineering, design and coding teams who work to ensure the devices are as idiot-proof as possible. Don’t re-invent the wheel, buy one of those Cloud Solutions For Dummies.
But I do think if you stick to one protocol (I’m partial to Zigbee using ZHA) and don’t do any automations, voice control, or any other “fancy” customization, HA will be fine for just monitoring. It’s getting very good at allowing remote management. Thinking back, I can’t recall the last time I had to pull my RPi out of the utility closet where it lives, or even touch the hardware. I do almost everything “remotely” even if it’s just from another room in the house.
I can’t even really think of a justification for not updating versions. Just read the release notes, wait for later in the month and make sure you set aside some time just in case.
I’ve talked myself out of my original opposition to the idea of using HA for this. Go for it!
Have you considered nabu casa and then you can have access (easily) to their installation. Or setting up ssh to access? Unfortunately home automation requires maintenance or it breaks. What do you do when a sensor or computer dies and they will? Not against anyone doing anything legal but there will be unintended consequences.
Even better is that your parents learn to use HA too.
It gives them something new to learn and they can help when things go wrong.
Especially necessary if you live that far away.
Any HA install is set and forget. Issues occur if you utilize devices that separately and independently break the integration with HA or when you update HA unnecessarily.
DO NOT USE the major brand devices like nest, ring,or any cloud device. This may update at any point and break integration
DO USE local devices like zwave, zigbee, or the DIY esp and node devices. This do not update unless you update them and will run long time without issue.
For Camera I think any POE like duhua or amcrest will work well but DO NOT use their cloud service. You can do:
…local SD and just manage on device as needed with each camera view in HA
…each camera view in HA with some local service like motioneye or use HA to record camera
…my preference is frigate with each camera view in HA and frigate integration showing detections below camera
Again, the above can be setup and left as is with NO need to update/upgrade or mess with it unless you want to add some feature.
HA only breaks when you mess with it, otherwise it runs without issue. That said, I suggest PC hardware like laptop, server or desktop. ensure storage is sufficient for cams. I would consider providing some method for remote into PC if desired. Maybe a Pi that can be plugged into wall and just connect to wifi and provides ssh backdoor onto network in case of issue.
having read the comments I slowly come to realize that perhaps HA is not the best choice for this scenario. In this thread there was also a comment “HA is not a solution, it’s a hobby” which I find very relevant to my case.
What would you recommend to look at as a low-maintenance alternative to HA?
Don’t be put off HA. If you use the right hardware you won’t have trouble.
Given they won’t need huge processing power an old Intel NUC or similar small form factor PC will be great (ie: no SD card).
As long as you select sensor devices that don’t need any cloud and buy good brands rather than cheap nasty stuff you can’t go wrong. For example my Aeotec ZWave gear is rock solid yet a few cheap zwave devices I bought years ago have failed and needed to be replaced as they kept causing faults.
Once you have HA setup for them using the latest version you can potentially leave it at that version without ever updating it unless there is some new feature that you want to use. I have left my HA running on an old version a few times when the latest release doesn’t have any new things I’m desperate to try. I also catch up in the end but there is nothing to say I have to.
If you don’t change the hardware or HA in any way, it will be low-maintenance.
This may not be the best place to ask that question. I have a relative who is also an IT guy who has gone the other way from me. He uses off-the-shelf stuff, integrated through the vendor’s cloud. He has a few different vendors’ apps on his phone and gets notifications when motion is detected or some temperature is out of range. Sometimes I envy the ease of maintenance he enjoys.
But there are negatives. Multiple vendors give redundancy, but also more things to go wrong and more apps to install. Vendor apps don’t require maintenance, but are nowhere near as customizable as HA’s interface. Cloud services feed Big Data and potentially impact privacy. Most of these systems require a subscription fee.
If you do decide to go that route, my only advice is to try to stick to one vendor. Or at most, one for monitoring/control of devices and a second for cameras. I don’t regret choosing HA for its flexibility, but then again, I’m retired and have the time and inclination to play with this stuff.
HA can be set and forget if you carefully choose all your integrations and devices. You might have to give up on some things though. Chances are you will end up willing to integrate something prone to break eventually though.
Well, OP said that he need only monitoring, temp/hum reading etc… so, i wonder, what could go wrong if you set up a few modules, say, ESPxx with ESPHome FW, install (maybe even unsupervised) Home Assistant on some board (say, Pi4 with external SSD) and that’s it. No updates → no crashes… right? (or wrong?)
DDNS can be easily obtained nowadays. I’ve had no-ip domain quite a while and absolutely no problems. so remote access is always possible, in case of need. Ok, you must confirm address once a month, but that’s just a few clicks once a month.
Best option these days is HA OS, especially for a mum & dad install.