WTH - remote access (cloud)

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

There should be two plans: free and premium.

Free plan with limited data transfer. At least for iOS and Android apps.

Premium plan with no transfer limit, backups in cloud, send notifications mails from HA server etc.

2

I don’t really agree with that. We are already getting the worlds most powerful and user tile smart home platform completely for free. I think it’s the rather okay to charge for everything that needs additional server capacities.

Furthermore remote access is one of the key points of nabu casa cloud and it probably makes the most people subscribe. Furthermore we wouldn’t be where we are currently if not for the paid remote access.
Additionally these features are there for free have you put a little bit of effort in it.

I personally would frame it the opposite way: it is great that we are getting all these new features for free, where they probably could have gone for another more expensive option with cloud backups, speech to text, text to speech and so on.

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3

There are ways to do it for free

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4

Don’t take me badly. I respect and appreciate the work of developers and all people who contribute to development.

I also know that there are ways to get remote access for free.

Maybe then a better idea would be a built-in remote connection function, but using other servers such as Tailscale etc.? In the sense that you choose a server, provide login data and that’s it?

5

And that is also possible…

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6

Using Tailscale, to access to Home Assistant remotely, I need to connect to Tailscale VPN first? No option to create just public url for my Home Assistant?

7

check out Tailscale Funnel. It will create a url that you can use to access HA without the VPN.

8

Multiple ways to do this:

cloudflare tunnel
zerotier
duckdns
any other dns service

9

Thank you for your help but this is to complicated for me. I just want a simple way to access HA remotely, without the need to log in to a VPN. In short - to create public url.

10

Your phone handles the vpn, you don’t need to “log into” anything.

11

Public url - accessible for anyone that have link, without installing VPN, login to some special services, etc.

12

Duckdns or cloudflare tunnel or any other dns service

13

With all the requirements you have the simpler is to pay for a service.
Just like everything else in life.
I didn’t know how to replace the alternator on my car so I paid for the service to do so.

14

Tailscale - The device from which you want to view HA must be connected to Tailscale VPN, or you need to create funnel (too complicated for me).

ZeroTier - similar to Tailscale.

DuckDNS - need port forwarding on router. Not all routers have this. And not everybody have access to router settings. In one home I have router from ISP provider and have access only for basic settings and in second home I have very basic router that has no port forwarding.

Cloudflare tunnel - need public domain (paid).

15

A public domain costs $1/year for a .xyz domain.

If HA cloud were to offer a free version with limited data transfer, you’d hit the limits by 05:00:00 with the amount of data transferred back and forth.

I suggest you get something that allows you to get past the ‘hurdles’ you’re listing.

16

It must be impossible to buy a new router that has port forwarding

17

I’m fairly sure they are just making up arguments so people vote for the WTH.

I’ve ran just about every version of free remote access to HA without paying anything. They all work seamlessly with duckdns being the most problematic due to their service being down sporadically.

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18

Isn’t this out of scope for WTH?

19

Yes, sorry, topic is to close.

20

With addition that you get a free ddns domain with some models - asus is one of them - just not a model for 20 bucks…(this is not asus commercial, just an example! It’s just that i have one, i bet there are others, too)