Hello everyone, nice to meet you all, thank you for all your work, cooperation and support, that’s simply beautiful.
My name is Nicola, i’m currently working for a company which produces IoT devices and i’d like to understand how our devices can provide Home Assistant compatibility and allow our customers to integrate and interact with HA using our devices.
I tried to find some documentation, probably not very well(RTFM), but it’s not totally clear to me how to proceed. Our devices are already sending data using MQTT protocol towards a cloud architecture (apologies i’m a bit worried to provide confidential information) and they are already providing compatibility with other systems e.g. Alexa. Could you please point me to the right place where i can find the proper documentation to understand what i need to do to produce our devices with a built-in HA integration capabilities?
Hi, welcome. Maybe some devs can give you a more exact answer. I’m just an unaffiliated enthousiast. But I can at least try to point you in the right direction.
As you probably found out, HA can integrate trough MQTT. So if your devices can publish and subscribe to the same MQTT broker that HA is on (or HA can connect to yours), then your devices can already integrate, albeit not very user friendly. Users would need to define sensors themselves using your documentation about available topics.
For it to be a more seamless experience, you’d have to publish Home Assistant autodiscovery messages to tell Home Assistant what is on offer in a way that it understands. Basically it tells HA what the before mentioned devices and sensors should look like. That way they can be created automatically.
Another, even more user friendly way, would be to write (and maintain) an integration for HA. Then you are in full control on how HA communicates with your devices. Users would not need to set up, or connect to an MQTT broker themselves. This integration could use MQTT under the hood, or it could use any other API you might provide.
And if you want to go all the way, you could also consider joining the Works with Home Assistant program:
And, without knowing anything about the devices you’re offering, use ESPHome as firmware for seamless HA integration. The devices can still function standalone.
Hi, thank you for your replies, the fact i mentioned MQTT protocol led you to think i’m more expert than i really am. I’m completely a newbie referring to the whole HA ecosystem. Starting from the installation process i can see there are several alternatives, from beginners to expert procedures. The MQTT interaction, as it is implemented in our tech stack, is made by our firmware which retrieves values from the electronic component installed in PCB and send data to the AWS cloud using AWS IoT service. What i can see is that, as first, i have to install an HA instance somewhere as a web based application? Kind of “http://homeassistant.local:8123”? Is this a mandatory step? This should be the first suggested way " Plug and play with Home Assistant Green". I cannot understand what kind on installation type i should choose given the current architecture we are running on. Shall i have to flash my current firmware writing the Raspberry image or it’s just a matter of setting the already implemented MQTT interaction publishing in some “specific” topics where HA is able to find them? This, in my poor understanding, would justify the need to have the HA instance installed otherwise i cannot get where to configure HA to retrieve data or is there a specific “already-agreed-predefined” location in which HA is configured to retrieve data from? I believe the confusion of my message will let you properly understand how noob i am.
As first i’ll try to study the documentation you kindly suiggested
So this is great, but we are all volunteers and we are not going to write this for you from scratch…
Maybe hire someone, or do a ton of more reading then get back with specific questions.
If you are looking do develop something that is possible commercial or similar, try in discord the developers category …
After that if you have a question go to
1: id:customize
2: Customize
and select
3: I want to contribute
and it will give you places to ask such questions…
Home Assistant green is a device that is built to host Home Assistant. Installing Home Assistant on your own infrastructure is an entirely different matter. It is also a different matter to establish an integration for Home Assistant with your companies IOT devices. Not meaning any offense, but is it a possibility to have one of the tech team that knows your devices and infrastructure (which we don’t) to have a look at what Home Assistant has to offer? They might not need very long to get an idea of what is posssible.
Hi Sir,
i really appreciate your suggestion and i completely agree with you, i don’t want you to write this for me - although I would not wish to limit the interpretation of volunteer to all the people in this forum.
My specific question, even if i know in the end it’s a generic one as you highlighted, was about the best installation procedure given i can change my firmware logic as we are the owner of our devices. We are already producing commercial products and i’d really like to provide built-in HA integration for our devices and wanted to understand the right way to start. It’s a huge world and i thought could be quicker to ask for some preliminary support. The idea of speeding up the process is to give our customers this new capability asap.
I also really appreciate the point of hiring people, well, this could be a good exercise to demonstrate to meet our company expectations, 'cause yes we’re already hiring but it’s not a full remote position
Follow the lead of Apollo, LG, Tuya, Sonoff, and others. Create ESPHome firmware, custom integrations (middle 2), add-ons, (in the same order as listed above) that is specific to your device(s) and I passed you the place where to learn more about these already, namely the developer docs.
So specific answer is it depends on your devices, and
Thanks Edwin,
sure i know but it’s the first section of the website that’s why i started from there
I think the point as you said is “…to establish an integration for Home Assistant with your companies IOT devices”. That’s what we need, allow our customers to control our device using HA or to use our data to control other devices with HA.
So instead of reading the whole “world” i was thinking about just focusing on the only way which represents our needs. I think the shared doc is enough to start getting a proper understanding… we’ve many other priorities so i prefer to study instead of bothering our fw eng or cloud architect, but thanks, you’re completely right
I’ll also follow your suggestion about coordinating with the Home Assistant ecosystem
If your device must connect to the Amazon IoT endpoint, have your developers create an API allowing for external communication. Then create a HA integration. Note that many HA users will not want a 3rd party between their device and HA because it ultimately means they do not control their device.
Or, have your developers add a local API to your device and then create a HA integration to control it.
Or, have your developers add the ability to connect to a local MQTT server and publish HA autodiscovery information.
People for some reason keep suggesting ESPHome but have no idea if your device even uses a compatible MCU.
the presumption was OP doesnt know either (doesnt sound very technical) and will just relay info back to someone for them to research. Or maybe not know about it at all and this may teach them new interesting device that may be useful in next product design unrelated to current.
Details were requested and denied so we provide info based on our dreams. Basically throwing the kitchen sink and hoping to get a house out of it. This is a pretty lazy post. “Hey, we make products. Tell us how to make our product work with HA” but no research. There is literally an easy to find developer page available on HA homepage that should be first stop for a product developer before ask any question. This was admitted and truly this post may get them better answer so we provide many responses that fit various scenerio and maybe that gets them in ballpark to where they need to go from there.
