Install type on Synology NAS

Installation
1

Hi,

I used to have HA installed on a Raspberry Pi. However, a week before I moved to a new house, my Raspberry Pi stopped working. I was already thinking of consolidating and running HA on my Synology NAS. So I think this is the opportunity to start with a fresh install in my new house, running on my Synology NAS.

However, this sounds a lot easier than it is, apparently… I was planning on using HA as Docker image. I found out that my Zigbee USB stick (The SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 dongle plus P) did not work. Turns out Synology doesn’t support most USB devices. And if the host OS doesn’t support a device, a Docker image can’t use it either. I followed this guide, but that didn’t help.

There is also a Home Assistant package available in the “community store” that runs “native” on DSM. But I suspect that that will have the same problem. And the installer starts with disclaimers about not all modules being available, which doesn’t make me feel comfortable.

An alternative might be running HA as a Virtual Machine. However, Synology’s Virtual Machine manager requires my storage to be of a specific type (BTRFS), but I have another type of storage. It doesn’t seem possible to change that. Does anyone have any experience with other virtualization solutions on Synology for running HA? Or any other recommendations? I’m already thinking of using dedicated hardware, because this all seems just too complicated…

Best,
Bart

2

I have this same dongle although I am not using a synology Nas.
Here is my docker compose file for reference.
The important things for me are
Privileged and the USB path.

# 2023-05-07
version: '3.3'
services:
    home-assistant:
        restart: always
        container_name: home-assistant
        privileged: true
        devices:
      # your usb device forwarding to the docker image
          - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0
        volumes:
            - /home/pcwii/homeassistant:/config
            - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
            - /run/dbus:/run/dbus:ro

        environment:
            - TZ=america/toronto      
            - PUID=1000
            - PGID=1000
            - UMASK=007
        network_mode: host
        ports:
          - 8123:8123
        image: homeassistant/home-assistant:stable
3

Thanks, @pcwii ! I did not have a devices section yet, so I’ve added it. However, that didn’t help, HA still doesn’t discover my Zigbee stick…

4

I think I had to add the zha integration manually and it listed my port there.
It has been a while since I did this.