It might be worth trying to migrate the VM to another virtualization platform. My limited experiences with Virtualbox over the years left me feeling that it was good as a tinkering platform, but not for use as a production server host…
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I’m looking into Hyper-V right now? That recommendation seems to come up fairly frequently since it’s native to Windows as it might offer more stability?
I believe there are problems using hyperv and USB pass thru for zwave and/or zigbee sticks - you’ll want this eventually.
I’ve been running in Docker on a Synology NAS for multiple houses for multiple years. It runs for months
If I was starting over, I’d likely get an Intel NUC (or equivalent), put proxmox on it and run docker - as that woks be a pro level system. Simpler would be the same setup using the HASS VM.
Just keep in mind Hyper-V doesn’t support any form of USB pass-through, so no USB device support like Z-wave or Zigbee dongles, etc.
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Ugh…That…stings a little…obviously there must be a way to integrate those two? I’m looking, not depending on you to provide how…just thanks for that heads up!
What version of Virtualbox are you running the VM on? I’m running 2 different HASS VMs (Prod and Development) on 2 Windows machine with Virtualbox and have had no issues for nearly 2 years. I’m running version 6.1.44 r156814 which I believe is the most recent update of 6.1. Never felt the need to update to 7.x and have seen some posts about it not yet being that stable. 6.1 is supported through the end of this year.
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There are some posts on this forum of options and workarounds; using an IP to USB device is a simple fix. A Raspberry PI running ser2net works fine.
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I’m currently running 7.0 but I do recall updating that maybe 2 months or so ago? So I was likely on a version of 6.x prior and was still doing the Stop/Start thing. Man, this is so odd! It’s my biggest pet peeve for obvious reasons and there’s really not much online about it so it has to be isolated
Yeah, I’m reading about it now, having ChatGPT doing some dumbing down for me, lol
I just realized that the Philips Hue bridge can act as a Zigbee gateway. I guess I missed that since I’ve had the USB for so long. That helps half the issue. Any secret Zwave gateways out there?
Not really. The Hue bring supports a specific version of ZigBee so not all devices work with it. The list of supported non-Hue devices is very short.
Before going down the rabbit hole too deep, I would try installing a fresh version of HA (can even run it alongside the current one). Don’t add anything to it, just do the install and initial setup and see if it exhibits the same issues.
Aside from that, going with VMware will probably be less of a headache than trying to get Hypver-V setup and external USB to network bridges.
The first post in this thread has general guidelines and my post has some additional info for setting up persistent USB passthrough.
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Ok, thanks for that info as well! Well…lol…might go open a beer and not be surprised if it’s empty!
See my edit above.
Awesome! Thanks so much! Sincerely appreciate it
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Just stop trying to run ha in a windows vm. Buy a cheap computer and run haos, or proxmox plus haos, or linux plus docker. Basically anything but windows.
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I get it, I do. Being that this is all brand new to me, this was basically a trial run to see how foreign it would all be and how helpful the YT videos, community boards, etc. would be as to how far I’d dive in. No doubt it’s addictive and a lot of fun. Like anything it has frustrations as well. So, just feeling things out, looking at devices, automations, etc. in a passive manner prior to any other expenditures, that’s all. But, I get it.
Homeseer sells what they call a Z-net which is a z-wave Pi HAT installed on a Pi 3b. They work well. You can build your own version with a favorite USB dongle on a Pi 3b running ser2net. Works plug and play with Z-wave-js UI using the TCP/IP port. You can add a USB Zigbee controller to the same Pi and run both at once.
I’ve been running a Z-net with a 5 series z-wave controller since I moved to HASS. The newer units have 7 or 8 series controllers but are otherwise the same.
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Or run zigbee2mqtt on it, presumably there is a zwave2mqtt too.
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Which Windows are you using (10/11 or Server)? For Server, I’ve had good luck with DDA:
HA on Hyper-V with Z-Wave and Zigbee - It Works! - Configuration - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io)
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I moved back to VM on Windows bc I just wasn’t getting it for some reason…I have Win 11 Pro edition
Apologies for the delay
I did figure out that the settings in the videos for installing a vm on windows, for me at least, where what was causing me to have to reset every day. I increased the gb from 2 to 3 and the cpu’s the same and I haven’t touched it since. The minimum got the install done, but the work to keep it up needed more