New Conversion to HA

Configuration
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Greetings, new member here who’s looking for guidance on switching over to HA. Currently, I use a Nest Hub and several Google Home Minis. I am an Android/Google user.

I have an Asus Zenwifi AX XT8 mesh network, Schlage locks, Ring alarm, doorbell and one camera, Hue lights, Lutron Caseta smart switches, Brilliant smart dimmers, MyQ garage door control, Lorex camera system, Orbit B-Hyve irrigation control, Deebot vacuum, and Nest thermostat.

I have one Brilliant Control in my master bedroom, which I thought would be a good solution to tie all my various systems together, but find the integration to be limited and poor, the app to be worthless, and the touchscreen clumsy and difficult to use.

I’m considering an upgrade to HA on a Raspberry Pi 4, with a wall mounted tablet in the master bedroom and in the living room or kitchen. I would like to greatly expand my automation capabilities and prepare for future additions like smart blinds, more lights with more seamless control, etc. I’d also like to migrate as much of my devices off of the internet and keep them locally controlled to increase responsiveness and my digital security.

How does HA function with multiple devices? To clarify, what I would like to do is use the Raspberry Pi as the “brains” of the system and use the monitors as more of a display and UI, but keep the majority of the processing on the Raspberry Pi. My experience with tablets is that they are generally unreliable and I don’t want to risk my functionality by relying on tablets. How would this be set up, both physically and within HA? Are there better solutions than what I’m considering? What tablets would work best to have smooth, responsive control?

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The only better system I can think of is something beefier than a RPi, but a model 4 with an ssd will probably get you a long way into HA.

Android tablets make good front ends. Make sure the version of android is relatively modern, I wouldn’t go under about 7.0.

Go to https://www.home-assistant.io/components/ and search for your individual devices, or search on the forum.

Oh and we don’t always care about the brand name of your devices, the underlying technology is the thing. Zwave, zigbee, wifi etc.

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That is exactly how Home Assistant works. All the processing is done on the pi.

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By “7.0” are you referring to the software version of the Android OS? If so, is there a reason why not to just use the newest version?

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Dang, I replied to the thread instead of you and I’m not certain if you can still see my response. I attempted to ask how the installation on the Pi differs from the installation on the tablets. Does the HA OS go on all devices or do the tablets get some sort of UI application instead?

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The tablets show the UI, the processing is done on the HA server.

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What is the source of the tablets’ UI? Downloadable app?

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You can download the android app, you can use a browser, and there is an app-deamon app.

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I use the Wallpanel app on my tablet android and I am very satisfied.
The ability to activate the screen by face detection or motion detection works great in Wallpanel 0.9.5.6.

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Nothing wrong AFAIK with the latest version, if you have a tablet with the latest version on.

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Is there a recommended hub or bridge to connect all the devices to the Pi?

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What devices? Are they zwave or ztgbee or what?

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A mix of zigbee, zwave and wifi.

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For zigbee I recommend one of this man’s co-ordinators and zigbee2mqtt Tube's ZB Coordinators and Routers (was Zigbee router on steroids?)

For zwave - I am no expert.

For wifi, obviously all you need is a decent wifi infrastructure.