I am looking to domo a building of aprox. 25 rental apartments. Currently there is only one internet connection on the building for all the appartments, having a switch and Access Points distributed and managed by an Omada controller from TP Link. It means that today all clients are in the same LAN.
The intention is to offer some specific services and controls on each apartment:
Switch on and off lights
Manage thermostat and air conditioning
.Manage remote control of TV…
Each apartment should have a QR that will allow guest to manage the devices from his phone of his apartment.
As you can imagine, it should be done in a way to make impossible to switch on/off the lights from other apartments…
How can it be done with Home Assistant?
Do we need to have one hardware dedicated to each apartment?
I guess do not have sense having a PC with 25 virtual machines…
If possible seperate each appartment into its in vlan.
If all smart devices are wifi/lan then you may run HA on a single server. Each apartment could have its own HA instance running in docker container or VM.
if zwave/zigbee is used, you could install the hub (raspi with zwavejsui in docker container for example) in apartment and still connect those back to central server
QR code could simply point to local http address of HA. They could enter login credentials. This part is complicated since this works great for short stay (<7day) but 1yr lease local only access would be too little and app is better. Instead of QR code to local you could provide WAN address. This could work long term but is not safe against temporary lose if internet. Usually that is not issue as in city area internet loss is usually caused by electricity loss making HA completely inoperable.
Thank you very much for your quick and detailed answer!
Do you think is feasible to run 25 VM in a server? I guess it will request having high RAM capacity… any experience on that? As HA recommends to define 2GB RAM for each, do we need 50 (what should be 64GB)???
I use docker and not good with VM. I recommend docker mostly due to less resources and easier in some regards. 25 docker is no problem with hardware i recommend. I think VM is OK as well.
HA uses few resources. If you add cameras this can add some overhead but you want be rumning this on Raspberry Pi or synology. Get a decent desktop(i recommend rack server) and this is never an issue. 1GB ram is likely mote than enough but i dont recommend cheaping out based on the use case. Size appropriately, it doesnt add much to cost.
I buy a lot off used supermicro and dell 4-8 bay rack servers. I would recommend a robust “commercial” server if you can do it. Really a decent desktop can pull it off but a 4 bay provide ability to run NVR for camera, redundant power supply and some other minor benefit. Used or refurb i usually get for $250USD and they usually come with 32GB ram. another 64GB may run under $80USD. Ive gotten these servers from school/college actions for $25USD. 12yr old but theyll still run 10-20yrs. Cpu Power use is the big issue but we talking 2022 cpu 80watt vs 2012 cpu 95watt so no huge gains. I use frigate for NVR so newer cpu gains are lost since processing offloaded to Coral TPU device.
