Wich device and system shall i use for my HA

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1

Hi people,

I am using Xiaomi products for a while now, i have approximately 30 Xiaomi product and i am using “Mi Home” app on IOS to manage my devices. And i am quite happy with the “Mi Home”, except for the the region issues and the fact that i want to use other brands. Thats the reason why i wanna step over to HASS. But i have question that is bothering me.

My expectations

  • I wanna see my vacuumcleaner map
  • I want to see live videoimages from my camera
  • Make my own automation(already saw that was possible)
  • It needs to be work fast
  1. Which device shall i use to manage all my devices (raspberry Pi, Windows Computer, Mac, Linux)?
  2. And which specs do i need on it?

I saw that i can install it on a Raspbery Pi and Windows and Mac. But what do you prefer to use? And which is easy to implement and add devices on it?

My gear:
1x Xiaomi Vacuum 1st Gen
2x Xiaomi Gateway
2x Xiaomi sockets
5x Xiaomi buttons
5x Xiaomi human body sensors
2x Xiafang camera
2x Xiaomi Philip bulbs
2x Xiaomi rgb lamp
2x Xiaomi whit lamp
1x Xiaomi Temp sensor
3x Xiaomi door sensor

I hope you can help me with my question and that my question is clear.

2

A raspberry Pi with Hass.io should be a good starting point.

You’ll need to root your vacuum. I personally haven’t tried it but a few users have and it appears to work well Check this post.

You’ll need to upload a custom firmware on your cameras, see this github.

Should not be any slower than the Mi app, might actually be quicker as some of it will be purely local and will not require internet

I can’t speak for all devices though, make sure you check the components section to see if they are supported.

3

Woww, thank you for the fast answer.

I have zero experience with Rasberry Pi, can i acces the rasberry also external(when i am not on the same wifi network)? and is it difficult to setup?

4

A Raspberry Pi is just another computer on your network.

Have you had a look at the getting started guide?

5

Follow these steps:

Before opening up to the internet/world you need to make sure you’re safe and secured. If you have no experience with a raspberry pi / linux I’d leave this for a bit later…

6

Thanks, the thing is i have tried hass a year ago on a mac my mac laptop. But it was then so hard to install some of the components. İ think because it was on a mac. İ wan to try it a again with advice of the hass community. J have one raspberry and a old mac laptop.
The things what was scaring me, is that i am not familiar with raspberry and with mac and linux i am.

7

Also remember that having homeassistant running will not stop you from being able to also use the Mi Home app.

Unless you root / add custom firmware to devices that stops the Mi Home app from working, yu can use it AND homeassistant!

So, for exaample if yuo really NEED to see your vacuum map … you could always use the Xiaomi app to check it even thought the vacuum was started by homeassistant. (this is what I do)

8

i appreciate the RPI is the recommended starting point; but in my experience and looking at other posts, if you like to tinker and add stuff you will very quickly outgrow the RPI capacity and start having reliability issues.

If you’re familiar with linux/mac take a look at something a bit more robust (perhaps a nuc) and you have many installation options. I would encourage you to look at the docker set up. It’s much easier than it initially appears and you’ll be glad you did it.

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9

A raspberry pi (not running hassio) is just running linux. There is no need to be scared of it, because it’s just a linux system. Hassio (running in hassos) is still Linux, but you just don’t have any access to the base OS.

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10

Thanks for the explanation.