Hi there,
This is my first post in this community, so saying hi everyone
Recently I’ve read about Home Assistant and after checking a few things - I’m delighted with this software.
I own a very simple smart home system, which is quite a limited solution and so I’d like to extend its capabilities and make it working with Home Assistant.
The system is composed of small “bricks” that control typical devices like roller blinders, on/off devices for lights and anything else and of course a controller that manages everything and is a gate between an app and the components. It’s a radio-based system working on ISM band 868 MHz.
It’s possible to control it via a mobile app which connects to the controller via TCP and sends simple JSON-based commands. I’ve analysed the communication, so I’m already able to “talk” to the controller via TCP.
Thus I think it is enough to start integrating this with Home Assistant )but correct me if I’m wrong
One important thing: the system is nto able to report its status changes. They are only known in the current app when the app is about to display a list of controllers with their statuses on screen. I hope this doesn’t complicate things dramatically. And I hope there is a way to do it in a similar wat in Home Assistand - e.g. to refresh states manually or before displaying controls or poll their statuses periodically. Moreover device statuses can change due to their local control via wall switches or remote radio controls assigned to them. The system does not report remote status change to the controller. The status is read right before displaying a device in app.
Now - I am totally new to the development for Home Assistant so I’d really appreciate you guys to answer the following questions:
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How to start? How would you recommend to approach this integration development? Is there already an existing component that I could use as a basis for my work or should I start from scratch?
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Is it possible to install Home Assistant in Docker (I own a Synology NAS with Docker support) AND put my new development in it?
I’d really appreciate your input. I’m really hoping this task is doable and I’d love to have my system integrated with HA.
Thanks in advance,
Greg