Hello everyone. I am brand new, I just got my home assistant to set up last night. I installed it directly on the SSD of my late 2014 Mac Mini. Upon a little bit of tinkering I see that I have a lot to learn, but I have one question before I proceed too far with this hardware because I see that there is very little information about Mac minis out there running HA directly. I’ve got a bunch of acurite 433 MHz sensors. Can I get a dongle that will plug into the Mac and run on this hardware or am I chasing something that won’t exist? I appreciate any info you can give me and I look forward to starting down this fun path.
There are SDR dongles that can be plugged in directly for use with one of the RF integrations or the RTL_433 Addon. I assume they would work with the Mac, but it’s not something I’ve ever seen done…
Instead of having a dongle connected to my server, I use a LilyGo LoRa32 receiver running the OMG LilyGo rtl_433 firmware. This is a WiFi device, so you can place it anywhere in your home. I can confirm that it picks up Acurite devices and it has great range, so it will likely pick up your neighbor’s sensors as well.
Alternatively, there is a custom component that can be added to ESPHome and used on that same LilyGo device. This may be a better option if you don’t want to use MQTT, you need both to receive and transmit, or just prefer ESPHome. However, I don’t have any direct experience with the custom component so I can’t confirm that it will pick up Acurite sensors.
There’s so much of this that I don’t understand yet lol. But I appreciate the reply and I will research. That little device is cheap enough at least. I’ll see if I can figure it all out 
There are plenty of “opportunities to learn” when it comes to home automation… 
There are some other devices you might want to look into like the Sonoff RF Bridge, Broadlink RM Pro, or Bond RF bridge which are a little less DIY. I have one of the older Sonoff RF Bridges, but even with custom firmware (and some light hardware hacking) it still wouldn’t pick up Acurite devices, so I can’t recommend it for your case. I don’t have any experience with the other 2.
Do you happen to know if there is any hack or any way to make the My AcurIte Wi-Fi hub work with HA? I have one of those but I can’t find any information on making it work.
I can’t think of any off-hand, but I never had one it’s not something I’ve looked into with any depth.
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