I want to run HA OS on a RasPi3b with a Aoetec Z-Stick and the Home Assistant Community Add-on: Z-Wave JS to MQTT. (Instance A)
The Z-Wave devices / entities shall be used on a different HA OS host using Web Sockets and the new Z-Wave JS integration, NOT MQTT. (Instance B)
The documentation for the Add-on states for that:
Go to the Configuration panel and click “Integrations”.
In the bottom left, click “+ Add Integration”.
Select the “Z-Wave JS” integration from the list.
A dialog box will show, asking to use the add-on:
UNCHECK that box, it will install the officia add-on.
Again, the official add-on is recommended, so…
In the next dialog it will ask for the server. Enter: ws://a0d7b954-zwavejs2mqtt:3000
Confirm and done!
Two questions:
What do I need to do on Instance A so that the Z-WAVE JS to MQTT add-on / container can be reached from the network and not only from the same host?
What would be the correcht URL to target Instance A on Instance B?
Background
I am aware that running Z-Wave JS directly on the RasPI als docker image would be the right way to do it. Unfortunately I know next to nothing about running docker on a RasPi and really like the way HA OS packages that to make it easy. I would suspect that the overhead is not important for an instance that just manages 80-100 Z-Wave devices.
Let me know if this is nonsense… Thanks very much!
This guide makes it VERY easy to set up a stand alone instance on a Raspberry PI.
I set up a PI4 with the smallest (PI OS Lite) image using that guide and it worked great.
I’m a complete Linux illiterate and I find docker to be very confusing at best (mainly because I hardly ever use it). Updating the release was a bit of a PITA at first since I didn’t know how, but it’s fairly straight forward now. I can post the steps I use in a bit (which I’m sure is not the easiest way of doing it, but hey, it works…)
Thanks for the link. I actually wouldn’t call that VERY easy… I can follow the guide and probably get it up and running, but I wouldn’t really understand how it works. For something that is controlling 80-100 nodes in my house that is somehow uncomfortable for me.
For example, I wouldn’t even now how to maintain and update it, check logs, …
If this somehow breaks down I don’t really know how to troubleshoot as I am not fluent in Linux and Docker. I also don’t know how I can backup and recover it. With HA I can use the built-in services to just pull a snapshot every night and recover from there. I am sure there are solutions for that which I again would have to learn.
Also I would really prefer to use the Web Socket approach with the Z-Wave JS HA integration and not MQTT. That is surely possible, but the above items still stand.
The answer might be that in this case this might not be something I should do, but I feel HA is doing a great job of bridging the gap for people having a sound understanding of the technologies at hand, but do not feel they should be running everthing from scratch.
If I understand this video correctly I can just connect to the Z-Wave JS 2 MQTT add-on on a different host by using the remote IP address and port 3000:
Waiting for my test setup to arrive on Monday and see if that will work…
Just if anyone new to ZWaveJS2MQTT (like me) and finds this topic:
The way described in the video works. You have to make sure the add-on listens on port 3000 by putting the port in the config:
Then you just point the Z-Wave JS integration to ws://ip:3000 and it connects just fine.
I can follow the guide and probably get it up and running, but I wouldn’t really understand how it works. For something that is controlling 80-100 nodes in my house that is somehow uncomfortable for me.
