Known issues with ‘external’ integrations on Synology? (Docker)

Installation
1

Good day to you all.

I hope you all are fine and can find to find to answer some questions and/or point me in the right direction.

I’ve been working with Home Assistant for 6 months now and so far, I suspect I am missing something. Since I did not have a RPI available I decided to use my Synology instead. I installed Docker on it and used the beta package of Frederike to install hass.io. To be honest, that went very smooth.

Because I did not want to open up my router (yet) or do difficult DNS things I subscribed to Nabu Casa for 5 dollars a month and after that, I first went for some ‘internal’ integrations. I started with some TP-Link devices, my Ubiquity network, the Synology NAS and also Z-wave. They al work like a charm. So at that point I started with some ‘external’ integrations and there’s where I have some serious doubts about my installation. I have integrated Apple iCloud, Siemens Home Connect and SmartThings but none of these seem to work properly. They are not updated, do not respond properly and all kinds of other strange behaviour.

I have used this forum to ask deatiled questions about these integrations but there’s not really a response. Is there anybody out there who could advice me about my installation or a way to get better insight of what is going on? Is it better to buy a RPI and start all over again? Should I check the Synology firewall or other (network)settings or can I do other things to get stuff working?

I am open for any suggestion so please let me know!

Best regards,

Gerard

2

First thing is to check your logs.

What is Frederike - that doesn’t sound standard.

Not sure also how you are distinguishing internal and external?

3

Hi,

Frederike is the guy who created the installation via Docker on Synology. Internal is everything I have on my LAN. External are the ingrations who leave my LAN. So for example the iCloud integration connects to Apple. So could it be Nabu Casa causes issues with these kind of integrations, or could it be the Synology?

4

First thing is to check your logs.

5

Hi Nick,

I forgot to mention I did look at all the logs. But they are not really helping me. I do not really see things that concern me. Let me give you an example. I have integrated Home Connect, so I can monitor my dryer. I use Naba Casa and the Home Connect developer account and the integration went smooth. But when the dryer is on, the status of the dryer is just (very often) not updated. The logs do not show anything strange. Is that caused by Nabu Casa, is the integration broken, does the Docker/Synology setup cause this? And same goes for the other ‘external’ integrations. It’s not reliable. Since I can’t find any answers I am going back to perhaps step one: Is my installation supported/proven technology, etc. Can I use Nabu Casa like this?

6

Logging level can (and in your case should) be turned up.

I don’t see that the Home Connect should be affected by nabu casa. The docs say

Use your internal Home Assistant URL, if you didn’t configure one manually, use your local IP address.

So nothing seems to be going through your external connection.

I don’t think the synology should make a difference, unless it is underpowered or it’s internet connection is flaky.

Home assistant is usually (not always) run through docker, so that is not necessarily a suspect.

The integrations could be broken, but you would expect plenty of posts on here. Do search.

Other than these comments, turning up your logging may help track errors down.

Of course there is also no problem with setting up an alternate install on a pi or something to see if that works better.