macOS Installation/Configuration

Installation
1

I followed the instructions to set up on macOS and the next bit. But when I try to connect to http://localhost:8123/ I can’t connect to the server.

I’m sure this is a pilot error problem. What might I check to resolve this?

2

Does http://127.0.0.1:8123/ work instead? For reasons I’ve never understood, hostnames sometimes don’t work and ip addresses do.

3

No that doesn’t work either. I also tried the LAN IP address and that didn’t work either. By the way, the macOS firewall is OFF.

4

Sorry mate, that’s the limit of my helpfulness on the subject - ip solved it for me, so your issue must be different

1 Like
5

Take a look at my MacOS setup guide and see if you get some help there:

1 Like
6

Thanks @fmon. Really good write up that obviously represents a lot of time and effort. Thanks for sharing! I may give this another go when I have some time. I have to say, HA is not for the faint of heart. Here are my impressions so far:

I’ve tried:

  • Synology I did get it running, but the Synology distribution is crippled so I don’t get the store and stuff. Also, it didn’t seem to play well with HomeKit which is the one thing that I must have or it isn’t worth it to me. I think this is because I don’t have the store and so I can’t easily add more modules. I’m new to docker so maybe I just haven’t figured this out yet.
  • Raspberrypi is a 3B and right now I only have a 16Gb card. Not convinced enough to get another card to give this a go and certainly not convinced that a new Raspberry Pi is worth the investment.
  • macOS had a lot of trouble getting it to run at all. I’m guessing your suggestions might get me past that. But I’d really like to run it in Docker even if I have to do it on my mac as this wouldn’t be a single use machine, but just another task for my desktop.

HA is a monster. It is a very big distribution which I can sort of understand as it does a lot. But it would be great if it were more modular and it was easy to to add what you wanted (and all dependences were just magically resolved).

For me, from what I have learned so far this is what is really exciting about HA:

  1. Code Red. Being able to automate with this looks really cool.
  2. Some addons:
    1. Chromecast > Airplay (This would be VERY nice to have).
    2. Brother printer is cool but not such a big deal
    3. Nest and Rachio (already integrated via homebridge so not so important)
  3. Lastly, I seemed to have problems when installing HA with existing homebridge. This may be because of HomeKit isn’t robust and lacks backup solutions so if something corrupts your dataase you have to start over. I don’t have as many devices as some and I can’t tell you how painful it is just to get things back the way I want them when I have to start over or how many times I have had to do just that while playing around with this stuff. PAINFUL.

I love the HA manifesto that I read somewhere. It is well thought through and I like the philosophy. However, it seems to fall short on the ease of use side of things. It is a swiss army knife and has all the complexity that comes with that kind of power.

HOOBS is cool but I don’t see it as that much better than homebridge really unless you want to buy a box preinstalled, ready to go.

Anyway, I have learned a bunch as I only recently gave in to trying to see if HomeKit would do anything useful. Someday I hope Apple will really do it right by adding things like:

  • Server based automation with much more power.
  • Real backup capability.
  • More notifications when something goes wrong or a service goes down.
  • Integrations with things like IFTTT

The first company that figures out how to deliver robust IoT with LAS will do very well for themselves.

7

I haven’t tried CodeRed yet, but it looks interesting. Nest is DOA after Google shut down the API… I replaced mine with an Ecobee and will never touch another Google product. I had to rebuild my Homekit one time also, and as painful as that was, the system seems to have matured and strikes me as very stable lately. With a little work you can take pretty much any switch or script in HA and have it show up in your Home app (so that Siri also recognizes it).

As for your Airplay aspirations, you inspired me to write a followup to my first post… I struggled with this and finally figured it out. See here for some inspiration… I hear your frustration but stick with it and you’ll be glad that you did!

8

I am a noob with HA so I may not even be asking a sensible question. Nevertheless, I’ll plow ahead:

I have installed HA on my Mac Mini and it runs as a service. I can get into it at http://localhost:8123 as advertised. But the fun stops here.

I only have access to half a dozen integrations. I can manually add an integration to the configuration.yaml file and see it as an ‘entity’ on the dashboard, but that’s it.

How do I get the full library of integrations to select from?

How do I get a UI that leads to Supervisor mode and the HA store?

Any ideas?