So I think I need to install HACS so that the one-click install button will work, but…
One of the warnings before installing HACS tells me to agree that I understand several things. The wording though on one of them bothers me.
“I know that there are no add-ons in HACS” - are all my pre existing integrations going to go away if I install this? Is an “integration” different than an “add-on” - they seem like synonyms to me.
What does “I know that there are no add-ons in HACS” mean?
Hi, add-ons and integrations are different things.
That warning is just to inform you that HACS does not come with integrations included, you have to add them.
If you are running HA Core there are no add-ons, only integrations.
The integrations you already have installed are safe when installing HACS.
Oh and for any folks that see my question about Weather Station and Ecowitt - this does not solve the problem of adding a proxy. If I find a solution I’ll update my question with the solution I found.
There is a diffewrent way to get the raw data from your weather station as I explain later in this thread, but how come you aren’t using the ambientweather weather station integration?
I have a Raspberry PI 4 (hostname “kruse-pi”) running Home Assistant Supervised on Debian. It is also using the ambientweather integration (not sure if that also uses the cloud but I did not think so). I thought that integration connects directly to the console (note the “aioambient” process shown below), because here is an example of the data it is getting every 16 seconds to feed into Home Assistant (the below snippet is from the syslog on the RPI host):
Jul 18 21:46:52 kruse-pi homeassistant[1494]: #033[32m2024-07-18 21:46:52.912 INFO (MainThread) [aioambient] Received packet MESSAGE data 2["data",{"dateutc":1721353560000,"tempinf":77.9,"humidityin":40,"baromrelin":30.003,"baromabsin":29.944,"tempf":75.4,"battout":1,"humidity":60,"winddir":259,"windspeedmph":0.7,"windgustmph":1.1,"maxdailygust":11.4,"hourlyrainin":0,"eventrainin":1.138,"dailyrainin":0.008,"weeklyrainin":1.138,"monthlyrainin":2.539,"totalrainin":30.378,"solarradiation":0,"uv":0,"temp1f":78.1,"humidity1":44,"batt1":1,"batt_co2":1,"feelsLike":75.46,"dewPoint":60.53,"feelsLike1":77.7,"dewPoint1":54.4,"feelsLikein":77.3,"dewPointin":51.6,"lastRain":"2024-07-18T07:46:00.000Z","tz":"America/New_York","date":"2024-07-19T01:46:00.000Z","macAddress":"##:##:##:##:##:##"}]#033[0m
If you are not using the ambientweather weather station integration because it uses the cloud, there is another way! Look at the AWNET app on your mobile phone (you should use it anyway to update your AmbientWeather setup to the latest firmware) - it has these 4 things you to which you can connect your console:
Ambientweather dot net
Wunderground
Weathercloud
Customized
I know you don’t want to use the cloud, so don’t bother with the first three of those options above - but “Customized” is your way to get the data (screenshot of the awnet app on my phone below):
You can with a little programming set up a socket connnection to that. It will send enriched data from the console (and I believe that is what the ambientweather integrations is doing under the covers as shown above). I have the WS-29092C which sends data every 16 seconds (more expensive models send the data more often).
On the same Raspberry PI 4, on the actual host outside of Home Assistant, I have installed WEEWX and I have WEEWX subscribing to that connection and then sending the data to many weather websites all over the world - for example here is a web site in germany displaying my data (pretty goofy to show data from a weather statrion in Ridgewood, NJ on a german website)… https://www.awekas.at/en/instrument.php?id=21459
(Weewx saves the data in a database which stores all of the data for me so I never bother going to the AmbientWeather web site to have to retrieve anything either - by the way they only keep 1 year of your data…) - The weewx app even has it’s own little apache web site to show your data in graphical form etc. WEEWX rocks!
I hope that helps. If you don’t want to use the ambientweather weather station integration for whatever reason, or don’t even want to use WEEWX, doesn’t matter, set up a connection to “Customized” (AWNET screen shot above) to get all the data and do whatever you want with it, to hell with the cloud!
To answer the question you’ve somewhat asked - what is an add-on (and why won’t those buttons work to add them to Core)?
An add-on is basically a docker container. Home Assistant OS (HAOS) comes with docker and an environment where those buttons basically download the container image and run it alongside HA itself. Then HA knows the container is running and can work with it.
If you’re running Core, you can possibly install docker as well and set up containers yourself, but it’s more advanced since add-on repos aren’t straight up containers I don’t think (not sure - haven’t tried to spin up an add-on as a container using compose or something). Personally, I’ve found regular containers on GitHub and Docker Hub that do everything I’ve needed so far (no weather stuff, so can’t help you there).
Integrations are the plug-in things you can more easily install, and that’s what HACS helps you install (when using Core). That warning basically is telling you that you can’t run add-ons (but you can run integrations) since they require HAOS (and that’s the only environment they’ll work in).
It’s saying that you can’t download any add-ons via HACS.
HACS only has integrations (and frontend plugins but those aren’t in the scope of this thread) and all of the HACS integrations are custom integrations since they aren’t built-in to HA core. And as noted add-ons and integrations are completely different things.
That was added into HACS because users kept trying to figure out why they couldn’t get add-ons thru HACS. So it was made very explicit that add-ons aren’t in HACS.
correct. Add-ons are modified versions of regular docker containers that require a Supervisor to run and configure them.
Again, not to be pedantic about it but that’s not what HACS is trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter if you run HAOS, HA Supervised, HA Container or HA Core. HACS will give you that exact same notice. Because HACS doesn’t care about add-ons…at all…since it doesn’t provide them.
Close but add-ons will also run in HA Supervised for those brave enough to run that install type.
I don’t want any cloud connection and that one requires cloud access.
You can also update the firmware from the device’s own setup page. It tells me that I have the current version and that is
Current version:V5.1.5
( My ambient Weather station is model WS-2902D )
This is the one I am trying now - I’m stuck at installing ( hassio-addons/awnet at master · tlskinneriv/hassio-addons · GitHub ) though because the instructions for installation do not cover Core and I’m not sure if I can just download the code and stuff it in a directory or not. I’m trying to install that because the “Ambient Weather Station - Local” integration doesn’t seem to receive data directly but instead requires something to listen for the data from the device.
I will check out WeeWX too. That website has a cool looking dashboard. I have a Pi that I had used for Home Assistant and some other things, mostly using it with my software defined radio (SDR) these days as I was invited to join a local “Geek Lunch” group of HAM radio guys.
Your understanding about the “Ambient - Local” integration is correct. It works in tandem with an Add-On that, “presents a webserver that will accept the polling” from the weather station, and then interfaces with the integration.
It works very well, reliably, and in the background, but it does require an HA installation method that supports Add-Ons.
You could make your own web server to receive that data… but that’s largely what WeeWX is.
I’m handy with several programming languages although I detest Python, heck I’ve even wrangled bash scripts to act as a restful service, so I might try a translation layer once I see what HA wants.
Why do the different versions of HA even exist with such different feature sets?
Things like supervised, container, core offer more flexibility in configuration or more customizability at the expense of usability / required skill. Haos is by far the easiest to use and manage but you lose the ability to do certain things at the OS level.
The Add On in question is a proxy between the weather station and the HA installation. I’ve communicated with the author and he’s shown me a way to launch the python script behind the scenes as a service on Ubuntu and also suggested using NGINX as a proxy.
I have Apache already on this system for other microservices and web pages and have set up a proxy there and the HA logs now tell me that HA is not configured to use a proxy.
My weather station is 192.168.0.150 and my HA install runs on 192.168.0.206 (as does the Apache instance)
Of course, mixed up add-ons and integrations myself… 