Migrating from Hass.io to Hassbian

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

I’m still relatively new to Home Assistant. All I have ever used is Hass.io instead of using Hassbian. For the most part, it has worked fine. However recently I’ve had things break (USPS and Fedex), where the workaround seems to be adding dependencies or using fixes that don’t seem possible with Hass.io. I am discovering that Hass.io has some limitations that Hassbian does not.

I’m thinking or redoing my Home Assistant to Hassbian. First, I’m wondering if that is worthwhile. I’m also wondering if I would have to start over or if I could copy over my yaml files after the initial setup. If going this route, I had planned to clone my SD card first of course to restore Hass.io if I needed. Any advice would be appreciated. I want to make this decision now before I make Home Assistant more fleshed out than its current state.

Once add-on that I am interested in doing is the Floorplan, At this point I haven’t looked much into it so not sure if its even possible to do with Hass.io.

2

Just copy your config files over to the new install and it will work like normal

3

That’s good to know. I went and looked at the different methods and it looks like you can do Hassbian as a presetup image or I can do Rasbian and install Home Assistant in a virtual environment. Not sure which is the best?

4

hassbian is the quickest way. they both end up with the same thing

5

Ok, thanks. I just wanted to make sure one didn’t have a benefit over the other.

6

Several days I’m in constant migration between Hass.io and Hassbian on Raspbery Pi 2. Both are working almost fine with exceptions no perfect solution :-(. HA configuration is exactly the same except add-ons.

Hass.io, as you know is limited, but easy to start and configure, the only problem I have is it hangs almost every day, changed microsd cards - no change. I have nothing special on it, standard Hass.io with Samba, Mosquitto and SSH add-ons. And no success with install on 16 GB (checked on both) microsd card.

On Hassbian can’t install properly MQTT - embedded, or Mosquitto, doesn’t matter. Mosquito can’t start properly (I think because of embedded is working, and taking ports), even instalation of Mosquito on fresh Hassbian requires some tricks - the best tutorial, almost perfect IMHO is here http://jakemakes.eu/installing-mqtt-brokermosquitto-on-raspberry-pi/ . Make sure you use the solution in comments at the bottom (libwebsockets).

7

Here is the general procedure I used to install MQTT on my hassbian install several months ago and I haven’t needed to change it since:

%%%%%

Install mosquito:

$ sudo apt-get install mosquitto
$ sudo apt-get install mosquitto-clients

Edit the config file:

$ sudo nano /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf

Add the following:

allow_anonymous false
password_file /etc/mosquitto/pwfile
listener 1883

comment out the existing line:

include_dir /etc/mosquitto/conf.d

Create a username:

$ sudo mosquitto_passwd -c /etc/mosquitto/pwfile

It will then ask for a password

To test:

Open two instances of putty
In one instance put in the following:

$ mosquitto_sub -d -u -P -t “dev/test”

This will subscribe to the topic “dev/test” and listen until you stop it witch ctrl-c

In the other put in:

mosquitto_pub -d -u -P -t “dev/test” -m “Hello world”

this will publish the words “hello worldf to the topic “dev/test”

you should see those words appear in the listener

you can test it in HA by opening the services area, select mqtt, select publich then fill in the desired phrase:

{
“topic”: “dev/test”,
“payload”: “hello world”
}

Then click call service

You’ll see those words pop up again in the listener

To access the MQTT server from outside your network set up your router to open port 1883

%%%%%

Here is my configuration.yaml entry:

  mqtt:
    broker: 192.168.1.125
    port: 1883
    client_id: home-assistant-1
    username: !secret MQTT_user  
    password: !secret MQTT_password
8

This will be either the power supply or most likely the SD-Cards quality. I used to have similar but changing SD-Card to Samsung eco plus 32gb and not a single lockup since. Interestingly I thought the preloaded noobs card I was using was good quality and it even passed the hwtest thing but change the card and all’s well.

9

Hi all, I hope you can help. I am very new to Raspberry Pi and Home assistance, actually only got setup last night. I setup my Pi with hassbian, adding Samba so far. I can connect to Home Assistance on my ip address via browser but I noticed that I don’t have the Hassio tab! I managed to get that far with the help of you tube videos and a bit of online research. Is there a way of getting the Hassio tab on my Home Assistant page? I hope you can help as I am out of my depth here. Thanks in advance.

10

You installed hassbian, you did not install hassio. You will not have the hassio tab because you didn’t install hassio…

Yes. Install hassio.

11

Thanks for that, kinda obvious when it’s spelt out to you. I need to read more into Home Assistant and figure it out myself.

12

Power supply is good, no problems so far. I have to change microsd cards - 2-3 years and many raspberry experiments, so yes, it is time to get solid, brand new.