Can you install an add-on on a different machine than the one running HA?
Or is it the add-on is install on the same HA machine, but the add-on’s backend is wherever it’s programmed to be?
Asking for a friend 
@kalfa I have Node-Red, Grafana, and InfluxDB installed as Docker containers on my Synology, and then I just made a custom menu item to point to their URLs. I haven’t used them much, so not sure how practical it is to do that vs. installing the add-ons on the computer running Home Assistant, but it should be possible (although more complicated).
do you have any pointer on how to do it?
not sure what you mean with “custom menu items”, it seems like you have them reachable from the HA UI, but not integrated as an add-on?
Home Assistant Add-ons - Home Assistant - Are you talking about those?
In practice an HA App, so there is a specific interface they need to comply with, so that HA is aware of them and them aware of HA.
And since they are docker containers, and HA create an internal docker-network to communicate with them - all plain and standard ideas - the question I have is:
- how do I install an add-on (defined as above) on a different machine such that HA knows about it as full add-on and can interact with it bidirectionally
in practice, one way to tackle the problem is extending the docker-network across multiple nodes, that’s to say having two dockerd meshed. is it that you are talking about?
not sure if there are simpler or better solutions.
I simply don’t want to re-invent the wheel or even a different wheel if there is one that is standard/being standardized. I just want to deliver some projects on distributed add-ons, however it is done
Bearded Tinker has several videos on how to setup docker containers to work with HA, such as this one.
1 Like