I am new to home assistant but I am very overwhelmed at how much information there is. What really does not help me, is that I have a slight handicap which makes surfing for information more complicated. Therefore i hope that someone will help me.
I have a heatpump boiler and a heat pump to warm the house. As far as I know now, to read out that latter will need, besides HA, also a device to read out the different data (the heater pump is from Nefit). But our heat pump boiler is from LG and I understand that there is a possiblilty to get HA to read out the stame data as the Thinq app does so i do not need some extra device to read out the boiler data.
Is it possible to set up home assistant om my desktop (has to be under windows, I am familiar to Linux but due to my handicap a desktop with Linux is not a possibility any more)? and if so, what do I nead? And do I have to leave the desktop running at night or is the desktop just necesserry to monitor the results that HA has read out and logged during the night out on its own? As far as I have seen now, i have trhee choises: HA green, Ha for raspberry pi and HA yellow. Would HA Green be fgood enough for my initial purpose, that is: reading out the heater pump boiler day and night ant just monitor these data during the day when the desktop is running?
At the moment I am especially interested in reading out the apparatus, not controlling it via HA
Hi, welcome. Before you buy anything, it is wise to check if your heatpump and heatpump boiler are supported by Home Assistant Integrations. If they are, and the values you want to monitor are present, then it can work.
That can be as you say with some intermediary device for reading out the data. You will need to provide information about which model devices you have if you want to hear from people here what is possible.
Home Assistant is meant to run 24/7 so if you install it on a desktop computer, the desktop computer would need to be on 24/7 too. Desktops are power hungry, so that would be a waste. That is why that is not a supported installation method.
Buying a Raspberry PI, Home Assistant Green or yellow would solve that. Those are minicomputers that can run 24/7 without requiring too much power. If you do not intend to do very much with Home Assistant, the cheapest will do. For convenience, a Home Assistant Green would be a fine choice. A pi may seem cheaper but you’ll need to buy additional things with it. You won’t need to interact with the device directly, unless there are connection problems.
You can then use Home Assistant using the browser of your desktop computer. You can access all the information that was gathered from the integration. Windows is fine, you do not need anything besides the browser. All the magic happens in Home Assistant, it will gather the information 24/7 for you to look at later.
thanks! That sounds exacly what I want; access to the data via my desktop but using my desktop just for that: the access. The gathering of the data would then be done by the HA green.
I saw that the HA green is a stand alone so that will do I guess? I think I saw that it supports the Thinq app (the heat pump bouler is grom LG (wh20s) so if I buy that one I have all I need?
I have no experience with the devices you want to integrate, so I won’t comment on that. But the HA green is a fine choice. It can do way more than you describe here.
Just chiming in.
Since HA (Home Assistant) is capable of doing almost everything, it’s open character which makes it possible to connect almost everything, it can be overwhelming when you start with it.
Many of us have been at the point where you are - I have for sure.
Just go slow, try to read/understand the relevant info and if you get stuck, ask around here and you will be helped.
Devices can be used in HA through integrations.
The HA Green can be a good starting point and be aware that it’s not the device itself that has the ability to use/control appliances but it’s HA.
If you enter LG in the search, you get some results integrations for LG
Maybe your pump is supported by that, maybe there is a custom integration.
As @Edwin_D is saying: if, in the future, you plan to buy devices, check if they are supported.
A tip: I don’t know about your handicap but it might be interesting to invest some time reading about voice control.
Voice control will not solve my problem. i checked into that. But thanks for thinking along!
Ik will check the integration to be sure it (HA green) supports the LG boiler and I will go ahead and buy it. And if I run into more problems, I will be sure to ask for some help here! Thanks again
thanks everybody for helping
I am old enough to remember the meaning of that term as it originally was conceived. Minicomputers could occupy square meters of space on a false floor that needed to support tons of weight
If your only goal is the monitoring of the heat pumps, I wouldn’t go for Home Assistant. Home Assistant is interesting if you want to do a lot of home automation and integrate that in one system. If you want to make home automation a hobby, go for Home Assistant. If not, don’t.
what should be an alternative if I only want to do monitoring? And perhaps in the futere I will connect more appliances so if home Assistant green would be capable of doing more than moitoring I think that will be fine: I have some experience with programming and I am quite convinced that I will manage that part, but I don’t know anything about hardware.
Alternatives are apps made available by the vendor. Such as the Thinq app. In the case of a limited number of devices, it is possible to work with that. The strength of Home Assistant is its ability to integrate managing a large number of devices from different vendors within one dashboard.
If managing the Nefit boiler is a must, then first find out if that is possible. I would check with the supplier if some way of remote management is at all a possibility.
By the way: a bit of programming experience is definitely an advantage when you get going with home assistant.
I do have the Thinq app bur for real monitoring that does not cut it. You have to actively consult the app at the specific times. So if I would like to monitor its behavior in the night I have to be awake. Hence Home Assistant.
