Looking to hire: Home Assistant (HAOS) setup + UniFi VLAN config — Metro Detroit preferred, remote considered

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I’m setting up Home Assistant for the first time on a new UniFi network and I’d rather pay someone who has done this before than learn it the hard way. Happy to pay properly, and I’d prefer an ongoing relationship over a one-off.

The job, in two parts:

  1. Install HAOS bare metal on a Beelink mini PC (____________), get it onboarded and pinned to its own VLAN.
  2. Integrate the house — the part I actually want help with. Getting devices in, building dashboards my family will use, and writing automations that hold up.

The network: UniFi — UCG-Max gateway, USW-Pro-24-PoE switch, 7 APs, roughly 35 drops, freshly installed. Six VLANs (management, trusted, IoT, cameras, guest, and one for Home Assistant), Zone-Based Firewall. Home Assistant needs to reach devices across VLAN boundaries, so mDNS/discovery across zones is part of the job — I expect a reflector is needed. There are ~140 devices on the network today.

What’s on it: Lutron Caseta Smart Bridge Pro, ecobee thermostats, a large Sonos install (~18 zones), Rachio irrigation, Rinnai Control-R, MyQ, a Kohler standby generator with OnCue Plus, Leviton load-center energy monitoring, patio heaters, and snow-melt control. Plus a camera and alarm layer — Eufy PoE with NVR, Ring, and an Alarm.com Qolsys panel.

Things I already know are hard, so you don’t have to discover them:

  • The Eufy cameras expose no RTSP stream, so Frigate is off the table. I’m not looking for someone to relitigate that — I’m looking for the best available answer given it.
  • Alarm.com will need the community/HACS integration.
  • Cross-VLAN discovery for Sonos, AirPrint and the cameras is a known multicast problem on this design, not a surprise.

What I’m looking for:

  • Real Home Assistant experience, not general smart-home experience. I’ve already found that most local AV integrators sell Control4 or Savant and don’t touch HA. If that’s your pitch, we’re not a fit — I’ve made the platform decision.
  • Local to Metro Detroit / Oakland County is preferred, mainly for the physical side and because I’d like someone I can call. But the configuration work is remote-friendly and I’m open to a remote admin if the person is right.
  • Available for ongoing work, not just the build.

If you’re interested, tell me:

  1. Roughly how many entities are on your own HA instance, and how long you’ve run it.
  2. Have you integrated Alarm.com into HA? How did you handle it?
  3. Have you run HA on a segmented VLAN network — what did you use for cross-VLAN discovery?
  4. How do you handle backups and recovery for a client instance?
  5. Your rate, and whether you take retainers.

Happy to go into specifics over DM. Thanks.

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Before you start.

HA is designed for a flat network. Many things need very boutique config to vlan. The HA dev team does not test segmented networks and some technology HA supports flat out doesn’t support it. (Matter, also requires Ipv6, btw)

Won’t say it’s not going to work but it’s difficult at best and needs constant care and feeding.

If you don’t know how to do the care and feeding YOURSELF, you WILL pay a FORTUNE in someone constantly dinking with your network and will likely have ongoing weirdness that’s only explained when looking at traces.

Just consider that before you put a segmented vlan network in your plan.

(also I’m a 30 yr it vet and have unifi and do not vlan because I like my sanity and have other mitigation in place… But you do what works for you.)

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I sense a job for life.

You’ve made a very hard job for somebody, possibly unnecessarily.

I’m not going to ask you to justify your design choices and parameters, but go back and carefully re-examine them one by one, and explore if alternatives may be more efficient or cost effective when time and support are realistically factored in over a few years, not just installation time.

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