I’ve noticed some components need OS level packages installed. When I login via ssh apt command are not available.
How is this accomplished please?
you’re limited to using add-ons provided in official and unofficial repos.
Ummm… I’m confused. The compontems I’m looking at are listed on the web site… FireTV for one. Bluetooth for another. Are those not official?
The pip etc instructions for firetv seem to be run ON the fire TV itself, not hassio. In HA you just add the platform.
Generally you can configure and use components in Hassio with no issues but you can’t use apt commands via ssh.
it’s not possible to run python “stuff” on android devices like the fire tv. ADB commands can be executed to transfer files, reboot etc… but the shell is even more limited than hass.io
You can try just setting up the platform in Hass.io but you might need to use Hassbian instead of Hassio if you can’t get it working.
Someone else may post who uses this… Perhaps change the thread name to reflect you need help with fire-tv…
FireTV is only one example aspect of this. As I mentioned Bluetooth is also something I’m looking at.
While I’ve been doing this, I’ve been poking around and it seem these type of functions really need haspbian. The container system for hass.io seem to cut this type of function off completely… At least for now.
a lot of them will work on hassio and don’t need any dependencies installed like you would do on hassbian - hence I said to try them out. They might work.
Yeah, I poked at a number of them. The components that are suitable for my needs all require OS level work. I’m thinking Hass.io is a bit too restricted to be useful for my needs. time to fall back to a “real” Linux installation.
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I have to declare hassio a swing and a miss. Good idea, but not ready for primetime. It’s Home Assistant lite.
I totally disagree. It is where the future is. Hassio is appliance like and many people love it (including me). I suspect you can use those devices you want to use with hassio. I’m not aware of any components you can’t use.
However, many people love hassbian… so it’s really up to you which way you go.
Regarding Fire TV, use my custom component. (I’ve got a Home Assistant pull request that’s waiting for updated packages to be published on pypi.) Instructions can be found in the README.
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I have to disagree also. It’s just a case of not understanding the underlying system of it; docker.
@JeffLIrion I’ve been meaning to get around to setting up your component myself the last few weeks. Looking forward to trying it out.
I’m very conversant with Docker and other container systems.
The use of container limit the range of what Home Assistant CAN do making it, in my opinion, Home Assistant lite.
In general, that the IS the intent of container systems… To limit change and lock down capabilities.
That’s a pretty narrow view.
More correctly, you pretty much need an add-on (which is a separate container) to add other functionality but Hass.io is functionally the same as any other version of Home Assistant. You just can’t install other stuff when you are using HassOS (The underlying Operating System for Hass.io). If you install Hass.io via a generic linux installation you get the best of all worlds… full OS access and control as well as Hass.io and the add-ons written for it.
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Sorry you feel that way about it David and yeah, it is, sort of narrow… But only as narrow as “out of the box” Hass io.
As you pointed out, additional container(s) have to be added to add some stock functions from the Home Assistant library. I didn’t find documentation saying how to do that… And I DID spend some time looking, wondering why I was so stupid I couldn’t find the right documents.
Nor did I see a library of containers to add on to add functions from the Home Assistant library of community components or discussion of the need for that.
I DID eventually find the Hass io DEV docs (no discussion there on adding containers there either) AFTER being told “you can’t do that with Hass io”. I then realized then that Hass.io, under the HassOS distro (and it IS a distro), IS radically different from a stock Linux install… Which I then fell back to, to get the functionality I wanted and Hass io didn’t directly provide.
I really didn’t want to take the time to reverse engineer HassOS to figure out how to add containers to an install when there wasn’t even rudimentary documentation on the topic. I do THAT all week long to pay the bills.
I also realized that, for whatever reason, the differences I noted seemed to be be glossed over in the discussion and documentation. That is kind of troubling for me as that kind of lack of clarity can indicate a lot of different things… Almost none of them particularly good.
There are a heap of addon repositories… core official ones and community ones. They are not too hard to find.
If you want granular control then don’t use hassio or use a regular Linux distro and do a generic Linux installation of hass.io. There’s endless ways you can install and use Home Assistant.
the other main and often forgotten strength of hass.io is reliability. Since I switched to hass.io , it has been rock solid. For a home automation system this is paramount. I switched from hassbian , and previously domoticz for that single reason. Same hardware, same PI not a single issue. Sacrifice flexibility for reliability and keep the wife happy , nobrainer 