Home Assistant beginners

Martynt74 said:
Haha for sure!

One thing i'm just going to ask now. I've seen a few things suggesting a separate wifi network should be used for all the IOT devices, bulbs etc. However how does that work for controlling them with your phone if they're on another wireless network?
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This is a question of setting up the second network to only allow certain traffic usually. Either just local traffic if none of your smart stuff needs internet access (my goal), or you could allow specific traffic through to the internet. Typically this would be set up in your router and either all WiFi networks hosted from one access point/mesh, or sometimes a separate AP for smart stuff (kinda unnecessary).

Basically this is a network config thing, not an entire separate WiFi ecosystem.
 
Martynt74 said:
Haha for sure!

One thing i'm just going to ask now. I've seen a few things suggesting a separate wifi network should be used for all the IOT devices, bulbs etc. However how does that work for controlling them with your phone if they're on another wireless network?
Click to expand...

I have a separate IoT VLAN that can’t talk to my main network. I put as many IoT devices as I can on there without breaking things. It’s unintuitive but cloud devices are easier to separate out. Local devices that need to talk directly to Home Assistant mean they need to be on the same network or at least require specific firewall rules setting up to allow only the minimum required amount of communication.

It’s good cybersecurity practice to do so but it’s not absolutely essential and I wouldn’t worry about it at first. Just be sensible about what kind of devices you are buying (some I trust more than others) and you can put other controls in place if you are concerned. For example, I block any form of WAN access to local devices that don’t require it, especially if I don’t 100% trust them!

Another option you could explore is putting HA and all your devices on a separate VLAN and then subscribe to home assistants nabu casa which provides secure remote access via WAN. That would (I think) remove the problem of not having your main devices (e.g. phone, PC) being on the same network as HA. There’s a subscription fee but it isn’t much and it directly supports the open source project that is HA. I don’t use it as I have a VPN running allowing me to connect to my home network whilst out of the house.
 
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Thanks both, i can see the benefits are once you start adding lots of switches/bulbs and other devices then you can quickly start causing issues i imagine. However i think my goal/hope is that any important devices (tv/laptops etc) use a wired connection so maybe interference is less of an issue.
 
Disagree. Home Assistant allows you to pull together disparate IoT devices that communicate using varied methods into a single point. Automations are simple to set up but can be as complex as required. Whilst you may have to trouble shoot on occasion, it’s rarely an extra layer as you’re working within the HA ecosystem
 
Having configured a gazillion VPNs and been forced to use a Mac on occasions (enables WLAN tagging out of the box), I respectfully disagree.
 
Previously had home assistant installed as a container. Now have a new home, new setup, and hopefully many more integrations...

So far picked up a used optiplex off ebay. Which tbf is probably overkill, so I'm thinking of installing Proxmox and running HA OS alongside a few other bits and pieces like PiHole and Bitwarden.

Any suggestions/recommendations?
 
Proxmox is a good platform. I use it myself with HAOS installed as a VM. I have Adguard installed as a container and would have Zigbee2MQTT installed too if I didn’t use ZHA in HA
 
Proxmox it is. Also what made you go for ZHA over Zigbee2MQTT?

I'm cosidering getting this as the controller so I can put it somewhere in the middle of the house with the POE. Are there any alternatives that I should be strongly looking at it?
 
When I first started using HA, I found Zigbee2MQTT overly complex. ZHA just worked and was easy to work with. I don't use any complex Zigbeee devices (mainly temp sensors with a few smart plugs) which work well with with ZHA. If I was starting out again, I'd use Zigbee2MQTT simply because it can be run in a container separate from HA providing an element of robustness.
 
Scarfacé said:
I have a separate IoT VLAN that can’t talk to my main network. I put as many IoT devices as I can on there without breaking things. It’s unintuitive but cloud devices are easier to separate out. Local devices that need to talk directly to Home Assistant mean they need to be on the same network or at least require specific firewall rules setting up to allow only the minimum required amount of communication.

It’s good cybersecurity practice to do so but it’s not absolutely essential and I wouldn’t worry about it at first. Just be sensible about what kind of devices you are buying (some I trust more than others) and you can put other controls in place if you are concerned. For example, I block any form of WAN access to local devices that don’t require it, especially if I don’t 100% trust them!

Another option you could explore is putting HA and all your devices on a separate VLAN and then subscribe to home assistants nabu casa which provides secure remote access via WAN. That would (I think) remove the problem of not having your main devices (e.g. phone, PC) being on the same network as HA. There’s a subscription fee but it isn’t much and it directly supports the open source project that is HA. I don’t use it as I have a VPN running allowing me to connect to my home network whilst out of the house.
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An interesting conundrum as it depends what you're trying to protect. It could be argued that you'd want Home Assistant either on your main network, or away from untrusted IoT devices, because if that network is compromised and someone has access to HA - then playing havoc with your house wouldn't be fun :cry: (I know this can be negated by having 2FA enabled).
 
Semple said:
An interesting conundrum as it depends what you're trying to protect. It could be argued that you'd want Home Assistant either on your main network, or away from untrusted IoT devices, because if that network is compromised and someone has access to HA - then playing havoc with your house wouldn't be fun :cry: (I know this can be negated by having 2FA enabled).
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Haha, yep totally agree, there’s always trade offs when it comes to security. Getting the functionality you want in a secure way is sometimes a tricky balance! I wouldn’t be worried about people turning things on and off but if they gained access to HA they would have access to the terminal and could pivot on the network. Strong password and 2FA for sure if exposing it externally.

I personally don’t like having any services exposed externally, other than a Wireguard VPN server (which uses both public/private key and PSK), that allows me to access everything whilst away from home.

A recommendation for Proxmox for virtualisation here as well. Proxmox backups of the VM give me extra peace of mind as losing years worth of tinkering in HA would make me cry. Like the above poster I have considered running things like Zigbee2MQTT, InfluxDB as separate containers but for now they are running nicely as HA addons, so I don’t want to break things.

I think for anyone starting out with home assistant I recommend just sticking everything on your main network as first. Get everything setup and working how you want it and then you can look at different network layouts later. It’s already quite a learning curve, be ready for many hours lost tinkering with YAML as it can be quite addictive!

Has anyone else had issues with HA causing premature SSD failure? I think because of the continuous writes to the database it hammers them, I had quite frequent failures when running on an RPi4 but haven’t had any since switching to a Proxmox VM on a HP Mini PC, so fingers crossed…
 
Scarfacé said:
Has anyone else had issues with HA causing premature SSD failure? I think because of the continuous writes to the database it hammers them, I had quite frequent failures when running on an RPi4 but haven’t had any since switching to a Proxmox VM on a HP Mini PC, so fingers crossed…
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I've never had this myself, indeed ran off an SD card for three years without any issues which again is meant to be a weak point - very heavy usage also (masses of devices and data gathering).

Might be lucky, but I generally just a) ensure I've got a decent regular backup so I can restore quickly if required and b) use HA as my 'heaven' for SSDs (ie when the boys in the hardware forum entice me to upgrade one of my pcs, I'll 'retire' the older SSD to one of these uses... so I'll always have a steady supply....
 
Can someone help me with something please.

Is there a way I can create an automation that when activated will monitor the current temperature of one of my smart thermostats so if the temp drops below a certain value the heating is set to boost for an hour?

I've had a go at doing this by creating a toggle helper. When this is toggled to on, HA checks a condition (the current temp of the TRV) and if it's below the temp I want, it has the action to boost the TRV.

However, this will only check the condition the moment I toggle the helper. Is there anyway I can toggle the helped and have HA continue to monitor the TRV until I toggle the helper to off?

Basically I want to use it so I can switch the toggle on when I have visitors so HA will monitor the temperature in the downstairs toilet (which is usually super chilly), and make sure it's comfortably warm and more pleasant to use! lol.
 
I could just use the normal functionality of the TRV but I'd have to remember to turn it up when people are coming round and back down when I don't want the additional warmth, I'd like to be able to just flick a virtual switch to turn this on and off easily... Not really necessary but that's kind of what I like about HA, the ability to makes things more complicated than necessary just because I want to... lol
 
This is pretty straight forward to do. In a new Automation, check if the state of the thermostat is below whatever figure you want. The Action section will instruct the thermostat to change to the new boosted temperature. As a Condition, say that the helper toggle must be on
 
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