If you have deployed OpenHAB, and have no drop offs anymore, let us know.
thanks. I will.
And, I also want to thank the HA-builders & contributors, for the fabolous SW, and support in here!
I have enjoyed the in-depth program, and using the HA-app (that was nearly as featurerich as the browser-version, which happens very seldom).
My hope, which is probably impossible to implement, is that HA would also come in a windows-version.
The OpenHAB decision, to run their SW as a Service, within for-instanced windows, is to me Genious.
I am not saying, that I think OpenHAB is perfect…
Actually I am considering trying running the 2 in parallel…
- and by using 2 dongles - and using 2 frequences (for instance ch.11 and ch.17), I hope to find into, whether both can run “separate”, on the same server-PC.
…
An issue will probably be end-nodes/devices and/or routers, that gets confused, plus things I cannot imagine.
To me, separate channels, could get me some of the way - combined with of-course 2 separate usb-dongles, each with a separate channel (for instanced 11 and 17).
My hope is then, to have HA as the “with nearly all” compatible - plus as a sandbox (which it is, to me) - and to have OpenHAB as the stable but a bit limited main and trusty “Coordinator/Managment-SW”…
.
As I have heard, so far, the sonoff-dongle is very stable - which leads me to thinking, that the problem lies somewhere in the SW-chain … which in my case is longer, than had I used a Pi …
There is the "SW (HA) on top of SW (Virtualbox) - and there is the plugins-etc… and there is TIMING.
I suspect, that more “out-of-sync /not getting a handshake”, can make an end-note decouple or HA / the dongle de-couple…
A situation, most users, probably don’t experience, since they don’t have so many SW-layers and the “virtual” HW-connection! (that VIrtualbox and other server/virtualizer-SW’s do have!
2 dongles will sure help, but that could be done with HA too.
A lot of folks run under VirtualBox without issue.
VB has never been my choice as a hypervisor, but I can’t imagine running in a VM as any sort of problem.
I haven’t run anything other than a desktop on bare metal in over 20 years, hundreds of 24 x 7 x 365 systems.
Passing through a usb a 2.0 device is not a problem.
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Very confirming to hear that 2 usb-dongles (or different HW) is actually possible, and not just a technicians thoughts.
Using both dongles, through HA:
- That is not to any use, in our case.
- Our main reason for using OpenHAB as our primary Manager-SW, is signal/handshake stability (by avoiding the “Virtualization-layer”!).
- our goal is to have a stable smarthome-manager (OpenHAB), within Windows (our server-PC) - and then use HA as an option, to experiment on (a kind of a “testing sandbox”) - plus having HA as our rescue, when/if OpenHAB cannot work with /recognize some special zigbee-etc HW.
Doing it this way, has before proven smart … in other areas …it is always good, to have a backup, and a sandbox!
(and in this case, the sandbox is also quite isolated, so that it shouldn’t crash-etc windows - at most I hope HA will just “kill/hamper” Virtualbox).
well, I can only confirm, that we have problems, and the signal-conditions are “ideal” and well thpught-out.
that’s the thing with HW+SW, that so much can happen.
so, to say “never” or “always” is a reduction of reality
Note that the Zigbee gateway applications will interact with each other in any way at the Zigbee level. It will be just like if you buy two commercial Zigbee gateway/hub/bridge appliances from different manufacturers, other than them maybe interfering a little with each other by transmitting on the same frequency range they should all work fine by themselves in their own sandbox.
So, you can have as many Zigbee Coordinator radio adapters to a single computer as you like, they can just not be connected by the same application. Many people here run ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT in the same operating-system, and even multiple instances of Zigbee2MQTT in the same operating-system.
All applications just need to be connected to their own Zigbee Coordinator radio adapter and those need to be kept away from each other, preferably by using very long USB extension cables to a powered USB 2.0 hub. Again, highly recommoment that you read all of this before taking the next step → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage
+1 Virtualization with layer on top of layer, etc. should not be an issue as long as the computer that you run have the resources. I would however not personally recommend running a virtual machine in Virtualbox on top of Windows client OS on client computer if that VM is supposed to be in “production”.
Check out these statistics from Home Assistant Analytics → https://analytics.home-assistant.io/
I believe that most people who run Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine at home for “production” probably either run it on an always-on NAS that comes with a built-in virtualization hypervisor / virtual machine manager or a dedicated home-built server running a Debian-based Linux OS distribution (to be HAOS supported).
Im also using VirtualBox on top of windows, when I found out how much of a pain it is to get USB passthrough working with windows native Hyper-V.
Its running on a dell micro with a 7th Gen i5 and 8GB RAM, but the VM itself only have the minimum recommended in the installation guide.
I would still recommend tracking one of your problem devices LQI score and seeing if you see drop outs, that would at least give you some evidence that its not network signal thats causing your problems.