Exactly what I tried to do in my case. Get all devices and controls in HA. And, feed that back (or in a couple of cases, visa versa) to a simple, HK setup that my wife is comfortable with.
I essentially had this set up in HA and, almost perfected to my needs. HA was rather challenging because I’m not a techie and especially, I struggle with networking. Which is where it was really challenging to me.
It was running well until a trip in April. HA went offline. Completely. For the first time. I couldn’t gain access. Figured I’d wait until I got home and just reset it.
But, when I came home, I found the HA server running, (Linux w/HAOS in Docker) but the instance could not be found. I could ping the server so, it was on my network. I’ve been screwing around with it for a month and have gotten nowhere. Other than figuring out this is some wierd hardware problem. As it’s stuck in Linux rescue shell and I can’t get any respons for that server using the wired keyboard or mouse anyway, even when I can get it to boot into setup.
This is the weakness I see in HA. Capabilities are fantastic. Particularly being able to get all kinds of devices to play together as your full, home automation system. But, it’s just too technical and time consuming and frustrating for most of us. You end up tinkering constantly but are in way over your head most of the time.
Just check any of the HA forums. The techies talk tech there that rest of the world has no understanding of. Nor should have to. User friendly really is an important concept. HA is NOT!
Well, I do have to admit that, Aqara is the one that broke me of my resistance to hubs and, my adamant desire to stay away from Zigbee because I considered it obsolete and about to drop off the face of the earth like my long ago X-10 system and devices.
I have two homes and one I’m running from a distance on almost all Aqara and Zigbee. It’s been more reliable than any other system/device/communication protocol than any other I’ve used. And, it solved my connected number of device limitation (15) from my ISP for the modem/router they provided without my having to set up my own router behind their modem, tricking it into "seeing’ only one device connected. And, I’ve now experienced that Zigbee is much better than wifi for reliable communications in the HA world.
There’s certainly a reason why Home Assistant OS is the recommended installation method. While running HA on Linux in Docker is great, HA OS takes a lot of the work off your hands and just keeps running. However, HA cannot do anything about hardware faults. I’ve got it running on a NAS and haven’t had any problems with it at all so far. And I think you’ll probably be happier with Home Assistant Green (plug-and-play) than with a DIY PC or a Raspberry Pi or whatever.
Actually, I’ve moved all my Aqara lighting automations over to Home Assistant because it’s more reliable and allows me to set up much more complex scenarios with just a single automation. This would never be possible in Aqara Home or Apple Home. I am completely convinced by HA.
I hear you. But, I chose the setup I used because I had an old Win 10 PC, with very low power draw that I couldn’t upgrade to Win 11 anyway.
I had been warned away from HA Green from other experienced users because I had some 75 home automation devices in my current home and was told it would be inadequate for what I was doing.
Also, I was originally under the impression that what I would be doing was installing HAOS as the OS on that computer. My misunderstanding. I did not realize it would be a Docker situation on a Linux OS until I took the time to read the startup messages flashing by on the screen each time I reset it.
I’m not absolutely sure it’s a hardware issue. But that’s the best I can come up with as I can’t get the machine to accept keyboard input in any state, other than using the escape key to get into the bios on startup. After that, keyboard or mouse input is dead. Can’t even move around in the startup menu to work on settings. And, I’ve tried several different keyboards.
My first HA setup was on an old Dell Workstation. That I had already set up as a home server. Running HA (as a VM), a NAS (sort of - as a backup system for all the computers in the household) and mostly as a Plex server. That system was great until I put a watt meter on it and found out that it idled above 50 watts and could run up to 250 watts at load. For a 24/7 home system, that’s a bit excessive. My PG&E electric bill for this house can easily run $150 or more a month already. $0.52/kWh at peak hours of 16:00 to 21:00 daily!