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Home Automation

 MSP
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I have it working now, after re-installing the app on my phone. That's a few hours wasted thinking it was something I had done.


 
Posted : 21/01/2025 12:43 pm
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You can use backticks to paste code, I think it preserves spacing.

Testing:


data:
  push:
    interruption-level: critical

 
Posted : 21/01/2025 1:08 pm
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... yes it does, but in dark mode it pastes in light grey on a light grey background. You need to highlight the text to read it (or switch to light mode I guess).


 
Posted : 21/01/2025 1:11 pm
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I've been running on HA Green for about 2 years and am thinking of moving to some higher spec hardware. I'm not really hammering the Green that much but things like predbat can take a while to run, and I'm aware that the storage has a finite lifetime so want to jump before I start seeing issues. Any suggestions of a suitable alternative to run HA on?


 
Posted : 07/12/2025 12:49 pm
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I can't answer your question but this

Posted by: thepurist

I'm aware that the storage has a finite lifetime

is ancient "established wisdom" and almost certainly wildly overstated on modern hardware.

Is there any particular advantage in using the HAG over say a Pi?


 
Posted : 07/12/2025 6:37 pm
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HAG uses eMMC which I'm led to believe is slower and less reliable than stuff like an SSD. HAG scores as an out of the box platform for HA so there's no faff to get up and running as a newbie, but now I'm more comfortable with the whole environment I'd be happy to do some of the config work. I'm hacking python these days too so a platform that can support a separate dev instance might be useful.


 
Posted : 07/12/2025 11:25 pm
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I’ve just moved my HA from the iSG display max to one of these - https://amzn.eu/d/deDfTP6

probably overkill but it should use less power over its life than a 2nd hand office mini pc for similar money. 


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 12:02 am
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Thanks @petrieboy - was the move just a case of restoring a backup once you had HA set up on the new machine?


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 8:50 am
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Posted by: thepurist

HAG uses eMMC which I'm led to believe is slower and less reliable than stuff like an SSD. HAG scores as an out of the box platform for HA so there's no faff to get up and running as a newbie, but now I'm more comfortable with the whole environment I'd be happy to do some of the config work. I'm hacking python these days too so a platform that can support a separate dev instance might be useful.

Useful, ta.  About what I thought, but I wondered if there was something 'special' about it.


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 11:06 am
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I tried setting up HA on an old laptop. tbh i then went and purchased home assistant green. its been faultless so far. 


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 11:13 am
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Posted by: andybrad

i then went and purchased home assistant green

Why?  What was the issue with the laptop?

The reason I'm asking is that for some time now I've been resisting the urge to somewhat inevitably go down the HA path.  It's going on a Pi of some description, probably a 3 series, unless there's any compelling reason not to.

I should probably start my own thread about this TBH.


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 11:21 am
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I have a version on a Pi5 with SSD using the online video tutorial. It's quite sparkly but we ran into a networking problem which means it has been ignored for a couple of months. The amount of data and tweaking is well into "thief of time" territory. I added it into the Cloudfare Tunnel domain and can access all the data anywhere (unless Cloudfare are having a 'technical moment').


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 11:27 am
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Posted by: Sandwich

I have a version on a Pi5 with SSD using the online video tutorial.

With the disclaimer that my net experience to date with Home Assistant is Paul Hibbert videos, I would have assumed that the only difference between "configuring an application on an official HA box" and "configuring an application on a Raspberry Pi" would be "initially installing the application."  Is that an optimistic assumption?


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 12:06 pm
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Only difference is moving the start-up to the SSD and using the HA version of the OS on Pi Imager. There was a bit of GUI based set-up followed by an SSH session then using the phone/computer app to add in all the necessary appliances and data logging. Best part of a day while herself was out of the house, there's host of by the hand tutorials for adding in things requiring HACS (which was fun).


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 1:31 pm
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Posted by: Cougar

Posted by: andybrad

i then went and purchased home assistant green

Why?  What was the issue with the laptop?

The reason I'm asking is that for some time now I've been resisting the urge to somewhat inevitably go down the HA path.  It's going on a Pi of some description, probably a 3 series, unless there's any compelling reason not to.

I should probably start my own thread about this TBH.

Because i was messing around with lunix distros and all sorts of rubbish when i just wanted to setup and get going. IMO as someone who moved from google home and wrote all the automatons in yamil i didnt find HA as easy as i thought. the shear vastness of it (ive got about 100 things in my house and 20+ automatons) im still playing about with it all months down the line. The HA green was easy and thats what i needed at the time.

 


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 1:36 pm
 Alex
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My HA instance is about five years old. First three it ran on a PI (3 I think). The SD card failed (apparently not that rare due to the amount of R/W compared to say being used in an action cam). I took the opportunity to move it to my Syntology NAS which is the 920 so a decent spec. I did need to upgrade the memory tho once I'd fired up a couple of VMs (one for HA, one for PI-Hole). It works really well, the distro is freely available and just loads up with no extra config. Mgt on the NAS is pretty good as well. Restored off my backup (not backed up onto the PI obviously!) with a few little issues, but took about half a day from fresh install to fully working

I've just (well a year ago but life got in the way) set up a brand new instance I'm going to build from scratch. There is so much old config/dead devices/odd bits of YAML I wrote that now I've no idea what it does etc, it's going to be easier to start fresh. But wow it's so much more featured than when I built the first install. Agree it's hard to know where to start.

I have around 12 smart plugs, 10 lights, including some with Shelly controls, a bunch of IOT stuff and some legacy BT stuff that I might not move across. Plus all the electricity mgt stuff for Octopus and the EV charger. I also have around 40 automations and loads of scripts. Saturday was a fun day going through each one in a snog/marry/avoid kind of way.

TDLR- did look at the HAG when my SD card died, but decided I had a stonking great NAS not doing much so used that instead.


 
Posted : 08/12/2025 2:57 pm
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Posted by: thepurist

Thanks @petrieboy - was the move just a case of restoring a backup once you had HA set up on the new machine?

It would have been, but as my HA instance was a bit of a mess as I’d learnt things over the time I had the iSG, I took the opportunity to start fresh. 


 
Posted : 09/12/2025 12:23 am
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The reason I'm asking is that for some time now I've been resisting the urge to somewhat inevitably go down the HA path.  It's going on a Pi of some description, probably a 3 series, unless there's any compelling reason not to.

I wouldn't unless it's because you have a Pi 3 kicking about doing nowt, in which case you can try it out for no cost. It'll be slow to boot, and you might have to reboot HA quite often when setting it up so this could be frustrating! 

IMO no Pi is the right tool for this job, as by the time you've added SSD storage you've probably spent the same as some kind of cheap mini-PC. Most of the hardware failures are down to SD cards with the constant writing I think. I bought a 2nd-hand Lenovo Thinkcentre (their equivalent of a NUC) off eBay. Lots of people go for those cheap Beelink mini-PCs.

Do you want/need something powerful? Maybe. Depends how deep down the rabbit hole you go 😂. I actually use mine as a server - HA add-ons are just Docker containers (although you can't manage them directly) and pretty much everything I'd want to run is available as an add-on: Plex server, software NVR (Frigate, which needs reasonable CPU if you have multiple cameras, as it also provides real-time object classification so can turn even the cheapest camera into an "AI" camera with object/facial recognition etc), handles all Torrent/Usenet downloading using Radarr/Sonarr etc, I've been toying around with Immich (self hosted photo storage) and Paperless-NGX (document storage) too.

There's a lot of AI/ML stuff you can play around with, even your own locally hosted voice assistant à la Alexa which obviously needs a bit of compute power. Although you could run all this stuff on a traditional server, I tried that for a bit and found I had no interest in being a Sys Admin and it's way simpler to just let HA handle keeping everything up-to-date, secure etc!


 
Posted : 09/12/2025 2:30 pm
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