First Order of Business

I was excited to get Home Assistant ("HA") up and running. A co-worker told me about HA as we were talking about an idea I had about weather alerts (and I'll cover that in a later post).

"What's this? You mean there's something out there that will actually allow smart devices from different manufacturers talk to each other and <gasp!> work together?" I was stunned.

My first decision was figuring out where I was actually going to run HA. It's not a Windows app. Probably everyone and their grandmother knows how to run a Windows app. HA, though, is a different beast.

Home Assistant Server Hardware

Probably the easiest thing you can do is get a Raspberry Pi and load HA on that. (If you can actually find them; they're difficult to find at the time of this article.) There are some things you need to keep in mind if you go that route, so make sure you research what's on the web for ways to make that work with optimum performance. The first thing I recall seeing is to use an SSD and not an SD card. The amount of traffic going to and from the SD card will eventually destroy it. SSD is the way to go, so I hear.

If you are a wee bit more technically minded, and you want to run HA in a Windows environment (kinda), get some Virtual Machine ("VM") software and run HA in it's own VM. Personally, I use Oracle VM VirtualBox. It's free and it does the job. The problem there, though, is you're assigning resources on a PC that you might be using for something else to running HA. And, if you want to really get the benefit of HA, like any server, it needs to be on 24/7. So in this case, it almost seems like you need a PC that you're not using for a lot of other things and that you're not going to mind having it running 24/7.

If you have a NAS, like a QNAP box, you can use that as a host for the server. But again, make sure you have the horsepower for the added traffic and disk I/O. My QNAP box is older, and there's no way I could get away with running HA on there.

One more thing I'd like to mention here is micro PCs. You've probably seen them in places like doctor's offices. Tiny little PCs that don't take up a lot of room but still have some horsepower. Those can be had on eBay for $200 or less - and they're usually a complete package. You could end up spending that much on a Pi, the case, the SSD, etc... so the question is, what makes more sense for you? My HA VM is running on the PC that I use for my ham radio activities and scanner programming, so it's not a big deal. But I might still think about the micro PC route some day.

Home Assistant Software

Once you've figured out your hardware platform, grab the software you need and follow the instructions carefully to get it installed. It's not like a Windows app where you just download and click the executable. There are going to be steps involved, and you're going to need to follow them closely.

Remember also that if you go the VM route, you're not going to find a lot of tutorials on the HA site about installing and configuring your VM. That's not what HA does. Yes, it's possible that you might be able to find someone on the forums to help you out. But HA assumes that you have a working knowledge of the hardware decision that you've made. If you're going into it with zero knowledge, you're going to be frustrated.

Installation Complete

At this point, you're probably thinking you're ready to fire the afterburners and head into combat.

Slow down, cowpoke.

Take the time to explore a little bit. I made the mistake of seeing this package, liking it, and installing it. Then seeing that package, liking it, and installing it. One after the other. Without taking the time to explore a little bit first. I got overwhelmed and tried to do too many things at once. I didn't break anything, but I ended up having several views and dashboards incomplete as I'd find another shiny object to try before I finished playing with the last toy I got out of the box.

Have an idea of what you want HA to do; what mission you want it to accomplish for you. I'm not saying that you need to have your plan 100% perfect, because guess what? Your plan in HA will NEVER be 100% perfect. It's a tinkerer's playground. But as you go along, at least have an idea of what you're looking for. It'll make things easier for you as you progress.

Until the next post...  rock on.