Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home

by coherence73 • 2 years ago

559 329 2 years ago

github.com

kwanbix• 2 years ago

I didn't know what it was, so: https://www.home-assistant.io

rrr_oh_man• 2 years ago

It's the Land Rover of home automation systems.

(Very capable, but also making programmers out of home owners since 2012)

edit: I was referring to a sticker that I’ve seen often on enthusiasts' forum posts 'Land Rover - Proudly turning owners into mechanics since 1948'.

The old school Defender is a very capable off road vehicle, but its need for regular unscheduled maintenance is legendary.

Greetings from a Toyota HZJ80 driver :)

w0m• 2 years ago

Are Land Rovers extra hackable? Will be in need of a new car in a few years and that would help o.0

Someone12343• 2 years ago

What is Land Rover the Land Rover of again? Highest cost per repair? Least likely off-road brand to be taken off-road? No.1 brand owned by rich land-owners? I legit don't get what that reference was going for.

Home Assistant is a free and open source way of cross-connecting smart devices. It is incredibly powerful. It can easily save you money (e.g. garage door/motion sensor + thermostat temp adjustments), or allow you to craft bespoke convenience/security features.

It is the central hub of a smart-home. Very reliable in my experience.

shepherdjerred6• 2 years ago

It's also the largest project on GitHub by number of contributors

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/11/18/event-wrapup-g...

pawelduda2• 2 years ago

I have some xiaomi bulbs that used to work until I needed to re-pair them to a new wifi and (unofficial) integration kept asking me for pairing code - which is nowhere to be found. I probably got rid of the boxes where it's supposed to be located. Wonder if there's a workaround for that.

jsheard• 2 years ago

I think WiFi IoT stuff has a reputation for being janky pretty much across the board, the recommendation is usually to use Zigbee stuff instead wherever possible. That also has the security advantage of keeping the devices on their own little network that can't access your LAN or the internet directly.

shermantanktop• 2 years ago

I've gone with Zwave instead - older house and hoping to keep wifi bands uncongested. It's about $30 per device, with Zooz as a big brand. It's been quite solid and the spousal-acceptance-factor is high.

pawelduda2• 2 years ago

Yeah - I bought them before I got into this, so thought it'd be nice to make use of them

Defaulting to zigbee for anything new

maxglute2• 2 years ago

Not familiar with xiaomi bulbs, do they have QR codes on the base?

A few years ago Xiaomi started enforcing region locks to reduce gray market sales, so a bunch of products stopped pairing when app set to wrong region, without indication why. I had to repair my vacuum, air purifier, security cameras on profile with PRC region, and other stuff on profile with Singapore region. Very annoying.

Havoc7• 2 years ago

There is python code floating around in github somewhere to grab the codes

nevi-me• 2 years ago

Better late than never, I have 3 of their bulbs in the house, and not being able to integrate with HA prevented me from buying more (at least before Matter was announced).

I've been using them with Google Home, so the lights weren't automated with HA. I'll try the integration out.

hereonout2• 2 years ago

I have bulbs from wiz, which already have HA support.

Being new to all this home automation stuff I was quite intrigued how they worked though. They're exposed on the WiFi network over a really simple UDP based protocol which led me down a rabbit hole of writing a little go client to mess about with them, took a few evenings.

Not saying Xiaomi bulbs would be quite as simple to write an integration for, but they might have been. It's kind of fun seeing how people have reverse engineered all these custom protocols.

Havoc7• 2 years ago

They sold bulbs under various brands. I’ve got some very old ones branded yeelight that work entirely offline with HA.

Tried to rebuy got a different brand and they don’t work offline properly. Bit of a crapshoot

These days I try to buy preflashed tasmota gear. Things like athom.tech

Fabricio203• 2 years ago

I got some of those Yeelight ones (gen 1/gray plastic and gen 2/white plastic!) but my experience has been really bad. Even if their app allows you to enable local mode it's laggy and just... stops working after a while, it also seems to break if it can't reach xiaomi servers (pihole). Wondering how you got yours to work, mine are just trash at this point and i've since switched to proper local devices.

mongol• 2 years ago

What is MIoT that is mentioned? I know IoT is internet of things.

H8crilA• 2 years ago

It stands for Mquantum-blockchain-self-driving-social-cloud Internet of Things.

bhaney• 2 years ago

Meaningless mashup of Xiaomi's "Mi" product branding and "IoT" that they use to refer to arbitrary aspects of their IoT products

Havoc7• 2 years ago

Some sort of auto pairing tech with their own routers I believe

Someone12343• 2 years ago

I include this when considering buying something integrated.

For example Philips Hue is overpriced, but their Home Assistant integration is top tier and ultra-reliable. Contrast that with myQ garage door openers (LiftMaster, Chamberlain and Craftsman) recently breaking Home Assistant support on purpose, to essentially replace it with nothing, and they're dead to me.

So Xiaomi adding support, assuming it is reliable, definitely moves them into a better category.

Filligree• 2 years ago

Is there a list I could consult to find such companies?

mankyd• 2 years ago

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/

It's worth clicking through and reading details on each one before you commit. Most of them are quite complete, but some only support a handful of devices or features. You can also get a sense if the control is local (i.e. no internet connection) or cloud based.

michaelmior3• 2 years ago

In case anyone using a myQ opener comes across this, I feel the need to mention ratgdo which many have found to be a great inexpensive upgrade.

https://ratcloud.llc/

dingnuts• 2 years ago

It's inexpensive if you discount the cost of your education learning how to wire in something like that.

There's an order of magnitude difference in project size between setting up the old MyQ integration with home assistant and learning how to use.. whatever that thing is.

Sometimes I think clever and educated people forget what it's like to be less intelligent or educated.

I want a solution I can download :(

pininja• 2 years ago

Can this detect if you’re left your garage door open for a while and notify me?

eddieroger• 2 years ago

I installed a pair of these, and haven't looked back. Yes, there is a little bit of a curve with rewiring your opener, but there is great documentation available, and safety in the fact that if you mess up, your door just won't open. If you snap a picture ahead of time, it's easy to undo. And from there, you can hook it in to Home Assistant or HomeKit and do whatever you want, which is amazing. My Home Assistant notifies me when the door has been open for 5, 10, 30, 60 minutes, as well as if the sensor is obstructed for the same intervals.

progman32• 2 years ago

Second this product. I wanted an Ethernet version so I made my own (it's integrated into esphome and the circuit is documented here https://github.com/Kaldek/rat-ratgdo). Apart from general usage, I use mine to tilt the garage door a small amount if it detects bad air quality in my shop (using an IKEA air quality sensor via home assistant).

grahamj7• 2 years ago

I'm aware but I'm one of the like 5 people that bought the overpriced MyQ-HomeKit adapter and it's still working to provide HA control. If it ever dies I'll be going ratgdo or opengarage for sure

VTimofeenko4• 2 years ago

I am looking to install a garage opener and due to meatspace constraints I will probably have to use jackshaft. Jackshafts are predominantly LiftMaster and Chamberlain => the smarts are myQ, which I don't want anywhere near my network. Genie jackshafts seem fine, but Genie's reputation is bad to the point where garage door companies may refuse to work on them.

These motors also usually come with the ability to hook up a hardwired button. There are a couple of pre-made (konnected, ratgo) solutions or one could jury rig a z-wave relay.

Alternative is Overhead Garage door company that have separate SKUs for the unit, the battery and the smarts so one can pick two and use the same relay (my current plan).

There may be _some_ proprietary shenanigans with LM and Chamberlain hardwired buttons but Overhead's one really seems to just work through bridging two contacts

asveikau3• 2 years ago

Not sure how it works with a jackshaft vs. the more traditional residential opener, but ratgdo can speak the myQ protocol and control it from mqtt or home assistant. I have it working with my Chamberlain opener as do many others.

azinman27• 2 years ago

Why don’t you want myQ anywhere near your network? Last I saw, 3rd party security analysis has actually been shockingly good.

That said they’re rent seeking to use their products, eg $100/yr or thereabouts for Tesla integration.

151553• 2 years ago

Just use a LiftMaster/Chamberlain jackshaft opener, never connect it to any network install the ESP32-based ratgdo device into the wiring harness, be done with this issue.

Nothing else compares due to the digital integration. ratgdo uses the simple serial protocol that the opener button uses, so it has access to a lot of information.

pcl2• 2 years ago

If you’ve got a spare garage remote control, a raspberry pi or Arduino board, a soldering iron, an optocoupler, and a sense of adventure, you can easily integrate your existing garage door opener into Home Assistant or what have you.

In fact, the Arduino starter kit comes with a few optocouplers and instructions for basically exactly this project!

Or you can get a tube of a dozen 4N25 optocouplers for like $8 on amazon.

https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-starter-kit-multi-...

efitz3• 2 years ago

If you’ve got a spare garage remote control, a raspberry pi or Arduino board, a soldering iron, an optocoupler, and a sense of adventure,

You just excluded 99.9% of smart home product customers.

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

MyQ are such scum. I love how on my smartphone I can just press a button in the MyQ app to open my garage door, but if I want to push the button on my Tesla, they want to charge me a subscription fee of $100 a year or something like that

ortusdux2• 2 years ago

I wish FEIT devices were compatible. I've seen their smart bulbs at costco for as low as $2.50/ea.

reaperducer2• 2 years ago

There's a reason Feit is so cheap.

slug2• 2 years ago

Costco Feit WiFi dimmers can be flashed with esphome with some work, have a few dozen running. Haven't tried the bulbs.

echoangle• 2 years ago

Look for Zigbee devices and most stuff just works out of the box. And when you’re not upgrading firmware, there’s no way for the manufacturer to break anything.

bitdivision• 2 years ago

Zigbee is wonderful, especially alongside things like zigbee2mqtt device support [0]. The downside is that its not uncommon to see non-compliant devices, or buggy implementations which is almost more annoying.

I recently installed a zigbee thermostat in my bathroom, which turned out to be flooding the network and causing the rest of my network to become unstable

[0] https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/

mohaine• 2 years ago

I'll just second to avoid myQ at all costs.

1. They want to charge for some integrations. I could see this if they didn't make local only impossible if you want anything beyond the clicker. Why aren't these just bluetooth and or wifi so my car and open when I pull up and close when I leave? Hell, if they just added an 'open if closed' and 'close if open' it would make it way better for the car to controll. IMO they are purposely making the non myQ options suck and stuck in the 80s just so they can upsell to a monthly subscription.

2. Their security is a joke. After moving to new phone their app would refuse to login yet would still show me notifications for door events. The only way to stop the notifications was to uninstall the app.

My newer garage door is lacking wifi just so I can add my own automation without even bothering with theirs.

microtonal3• 2 years ago

For example Philips Hue is overpriced,

I wouldn't call them overpriced (at least not all products), their quality is typically great, you get what you pay for. We have had Hue lights for over 10 years (pretty much every light in our house is Hue) and never had any issues. I think over that period one light broke. And like you said, the integration is great. In our house we have it configured to use both through the Hue hub and SmartThings.

tills132• 2 years ago

Yup. I paid like $40CAD for a single Hue lightbulb in 2017 and it's still going. In that time, I've had countless cheap Canadian Tire brand (NOMA) & Walmart brand LED bulbs burn out and need replacing totaling WAY more than $40.

I just looked and they have gotten like 20% more expensive though... that said, their non-smart bulbs are still pretty affordable comparatively.

drdaeman• 2 years ago

their quality is typically great, you get what you pay for.

You're lucky. I also have almost all lights from Hue, and in almost 6 years I've had 6 or 7 completely dead bulbs (out of ~40). One more lightbulb failed in a weird way - it sort of worked, but in 90% of cases refused to completely turn off and still kept some of the LEDs lit. I haven't bothered to disassemble it to see how that happened. And one more light works normally, but somehow fails to report its status to HomeKit. It can be controlled but always shows up as "updating..." - guess it's a software bug of some sort, since it works in the Hue app.

No Home Assistant here at the moment, just regular Hue+HomeKit setup. I have tried HA a few times, but found no significant additional value over what I already have. It's just as dumb as all other "smart" home solutions, still has very limited diagnostics if something is not working (maybe if one really groks its internals it can be debugged better, but I don't) and requires maintenance. I was thinking about building something with plain simple Zigbee2MQTT and a bunch of DIY scripts to make it a little smart, but haven't yet had time for this.

ashayh• 2 years ago

Try Konnected for garage doors. https://konnected.io/collections/shop-now?filter.p.tag=Smart...

Have 2 of them and work great.

zamalek• 2 years ago

Philips Hue

At the moment you can pair them with any ZigBee controller, which I found to be much simpler. This is one firmware update away from not working (which is why I mostly relied on Z-Wave) so YMMV.

Carrok• 2 years ago

I retrofit my 20 year old garage door opener with a $13 Shelly switch (Shelly 1 Gen3 ). Now my garage door is smart with zero outside dependencies. Blog post I used as reference: https://simplyexplained.com/blog/make-garage-door-opener-sma...

UberFly• 2 years ago

After trying the lesser priced bulbs and sensors I always end up back to Hue. Rock solid quality - pays for itself in the long run.

rsanek2• 2 years ago

Hue is amazing, the reliability of their products is truly impressive. I've had ~40 lights for years and not a single one has died or ever had connectivity issues.

WaitWaitWha4• 2 years ago

In my opinion this is not Xiaomi into Home Assistant (HA). To me, an integration would mean that I need nothing from Xiaomi, all activities are within HA.

from the Github page[0]:

Xiaomi Home Integration and the affiliated cloud interface is provided by Xiaomi officially. You need to use your Xiaomi account to login to get your device list. Xiaomi Home Integration implements OAuth 2.0 login process, which does not keep your account password in the Home Assistant application. However, due to the limitation of the Home Assistant platform, the user information (including device information, certificates, tokens, etc.) of your Xiaomi account will be saved in the Home Assistant configuration file in clear text after successful login. You need to ensure that your Home Assistant configuration file is properly stored. The exposure of your configuration file may result in others logging in with your identity.

[0] https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home?tab=readme-ov-file#...

asveikau3• 2 years ago

This is how a lot of home assistant integrations work. Sure, many HA users (self included) try to avoid dependence on cloud services and opt for local only solutions, such as zwave or ZigBee or products that work with local-only wifi. But the nature of the beast is that some devices out there are built to talk only to a cloud service.

Having a company start an upstream project is probably a better sign than not having that, however sure, they could pull the plug on their access to cloud service, people may have privacy and security concerns, etc.

reaperducer2• 2 years ago

they could pull the plug on their access to cloud service

It's happened to me twice.

The first time was about seven years ago, when Fiet Electric sent out a software update that deliberately bricked all of its home hubs, and consequentially turned all of the connected smart light bulbs into dumb light bulbs. Speculation on IoT forums at the time was that Fiet failed to properly license some piece of code that was critical to its system; but that was all speculation. I seem to recall that Fiet put out an e-mail long after the fact letting people know they could no longer use their "smart" devices.

The second time was earlier this year, when Sylvania ended its cloud service, and turned its smart bulbs into merely clever bulbs. They'll still work with the stand-alone Sylvania app, but new bulbs can no longer be added to Apple HomeKit setups. So you need to use two apps (Home and Sylvania) to control the devices in your home. That is, until the Sylvania app is no longer available in the App Store, or compatible with modern devices.

Avoiding Fiet Electric products was easy. But I thought I'd be safe with a big name like Sylvania.

The "L" in IoT stands for "Longevity."

pkulak• 2 years ago

This is how a lot of home assistant integrations work.

And it how the _current_ integration works. So what are we gaining here? I certainly don't yet have any option for a vacuum that isn't Valetudo.

iamjackg• 2 years ago

"Integration" is just the term the HA project uses for code supporting a specific device/brand/platform. Home Assistant shows a label on each integration clarifying whether it's entirely local or cloud-based.

diggan3• 2 years ago

I think (some correct me) you can group most devices into the following categories:

1. Device requires internet for setup, and for usage

2. Device requires internet for setup, but after that don't need it anymore

3. Device can be fully setup without internet, and used without internet

Personally I aim to be fully within 3 as much as I can, but some devices are really hard to find at a good price point that falls into 3. All my HA devices are within 3, except some real-time cameras which I couldn't find below ~300 EUR if I wanted them in 3, so those are within group 2 and now isolated after the setup.

dietr1ch• 2 years ago

I'm not buying any device that's not 3, everything else turns into a brick as soon as there's some larger change.

I have some older Google Speakers, and while they seemed to be 2, after being powered off for long enough they can't be set up again, not even with internet access since their firmware was also outdated and the app isn't able to set them up again.

parineum• 2 years ago

I'm curious about what you're issue was finding cameras as, to me, that's the easiest thing to find cloud free since they have a long history of being used in closed networks as POE, onvif cameras long before smart homes were really a thing.

jillyboel3• 2 years ago

Everything can fit in group 3, but manufacturers want to steal your data so they try to pretend otherwise.

mrandish6• 2 years ago

I like the taxonomy you've outlined. It would be great if the Home Assistant org were to formalize something like it into levels with logos manufacturers could use in ads and packaging. It would help clarify products for users and, most importantly, provide an incentive for manufacturers toward more local-first interop.

It might be good to invert the order above and name the levels with something like Platinum, Gold, Silver to clearly signal better and best. Manufacturer's marketing people love having external compliance logos, especially manufacturers of commodity hardware.

sneak• 2 years ago

Home Assistant itself falls into category 2, with some integrations/utilities in category 1. The amount of stuff it pulls from the mothership and GitHub is crazy. I wish it were local-only by default.

wkat4242• 2 years ago

That is nice because the xiaomi stuff is all over the place in HA. Some devices (the air cleaner for example) have built in support but many of them need custom not really supported addons from HACS. Like the WiFi fans, weighing scales, rice cooker etc

greatgib• 2 years ago

I agree that it totally sucks. If you use home assistant, it is mostly to not give control of everything in your home to the cloud of a company. Especially to a Chinese one...

And there is no legitimate reason why control can't be local only, especially when home assistant is there to provide the gateway feature and remote access is needed!

So this action of Xiaomi is just a marketing way to be able to print "compatible with home assistant" on their box despite still forcing to use their cloud!

gpi• 2 years ago

Got my hopes up but it's a start. Was hoping to see more local support as opposed to Xiaomi cloud

carlgreene• 2 years ago

Home Assistant is one of the best open source projects I've come across. I've been using it for 5+ years on an older RPi and it's been pretty rock solid. Countless updates and everything just keeps on chugging.

I've landed on a mixture of MQTT and Zigbee communicating devices, the latter being much easier to set up and maintain. There's an integration for just about everything I've wanted, some better than others, but all in all just a great project.

diggan3• 2 years ago

I've landed on a mixture of MQTT and Zigbee communicating devices

Almost everything I use is ZigBee, but at first, I used the built-in Zigbee support for it, not realizing what I was missing out on.

After a move, I setup everything again, but this time via ZigBee2MQTT instead and the compatibility is miles ahead of the built-in integration.

Just a word of advice to others who are using the built-in integration atm, not realizing the big difference between the two :)

3abiton• 2 years ago

I second Zigbee2mqtt. Koen's work is legedenary, I also been fascinated by Zigbee and been using ever since. No need to 3rd part oem vendor lock-in. 99% of the devices I purchased currently nearly 52 on my zigbee network, were paird hassle free.

cassianoleal7• 2 years ago

I experimented a bit with ZHA (native Zigbee integration) but soon realised I needed something better, and Z2M was that something.

It had all been working wonderfully, until I had a problem recently that meant I had to redo the entire Zigbee setup.

I run HAOS on a VM, with the Zigbee radio being passed through from the host. Recently I wanted to play with Thread so I added a radio and passed it through to the VM as well. All was fine, though I wasn't having a lot of time to experiment and the Thread dongle was connected in an awkward position so I decided to yank it out. At this point all hell broke lose. Z2M wouldn't start, throwing cryptic error messages. After a lot of trial and error, I removed both USB passthroughs, rebooted the VM, shut it down again, re-plugged the Zigbee dongle and re-added the passthrough. At this point the hardware side of things was fine but my Zigbee network was gone. To make it worse, a new one couldn't be initialised because it was trying to use the same ID as the previous one. I had to manually change the ID in the config YAML, restart everything, then re-pair all devices.

I really feel like this stuff should be more resilient to failures. Otherwise, it's pretty good!

mavamaarten2• 2 years ago

I've actually done my migration the other way around. I started with zigbee2mqtt, saw that HA now offers ZHA and switched to that. It just works with all devices I own, so the end result is one less moving part I need to update so the choice was easy.

qwertox• 2 years ago

I've been rolling my own stuff, mostly devices posting to custom python servers, storing data into influxdb and mongodb, triggering other servers on events, and lately also integrating Tasmota devices via MQTT, like the microwave, washing machine, computer monitors, small heating fans and the like. I migrated all Hue devices to zigbee2mqtt and am happy with the flexibility.

Initially (7 years ago?) I refused to use HA because I've all too often had the issue that then projects become stale and I need to migrate to something else.

But lately I've gotten the feeling that HA is really here to stay, with a community big enough for this project not to die and maintaining very good hardware support.

What I'm missing out on is an (Android) app, and I think that this would be a good reason to think about moving over to HA.

cassianoleal7• 2 years ago

I think the launch of Open Home Foundation [0] is a very good sign for the future of Home Assistant.

[0] https://www.openhomefoundation.org/

zyberzero• 2 years ago

What I'm missing out on is an (Android) app, and I think that this would be a good reason to think about moving over to HA.

There is! The Home assistant companion - it brings you a lot of functionality in terms of location, notifications, sensors and what not into the HA world.

https://companion.home-assistant.io/

holoduke2• 2 years ago

There is an app that is basically a wrapper arround the mobile version of HA. But it works quite well. The dashboards of HA are responsive and there is no need for a native version.

zapatos• 2 years ago

Same story here. Everything goes through MQTT, and a single python script has my automation logic. All redeployable via Docker Compose. I never need to worry about updates breaking things, and there’s much less context for me to try to remember.

Home Assistant never “clicked” with me. It makes some hard things easy, but some easy things hard. I just don’t love YAML enough to write logic in config files…

I also hate that HA pushes you to run their whole OS. The docs usually assume you’re running HAOS.

int_19h2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately the UI is very convoluted, with all the advanced concepts exposed upfront.

MostlyStable• 2 years ago

I mean....I guess this is better than not having it, but I'm not personally interested in cloud-only smart integrations. Cloud option? Fantastic! Cloud-only? No thank you.

_flux2• 2 years ago

I don't believe it's completely cloud only, "local control" https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home#:~:text=Home%20Inte... sounds quite a bit like non-cloud control?

Could still be behind cloud authentication, though.

KAMSPioneer• 2 years ago

Read a little further down:

Xiaomi central hub gateway is only available in mainland China. In other regions, it is not available.

Nonstarter for many, myself included.

ETA: Yes it does say "partial" local control can be done without the gateway software, but is not recommended and does not work unless you are on the same local network. Better than nothing, but still a nonstarter.

tetris112• 2 years ago

Just use ZigBee or Z-wave devices and then use a bridge to connect to HA.

Anything else is just WiFi and vendor lockdown

cassianoleal7• 2 years ago

The WiFi and BLU Shelly devices are pretty rock solid, and couldn't be more compatible with HA.

mgrandl• 2 years ago

Some of the best home automation stuff is cloud-less wifi. For example Shelly switches with Tasmota are awesome and I much prefer those over zigbee bulbs.

Fabricio203• 2 years ago

Personal anecdote but at least for me WiFi devices are significantly more reliable and there exists good brands that don't have any vendor lockdown, such as Shelly or Sonoff. Others can do Tasmota. So you shouldn't go around discarding it just because it's wifi. I live in a concrete and metal house. My WiFi coverage is spotless with several APs around the house.

Can't really do that with ZigBee. Almost all of my zigbee devices just fail to connect every other day. Z-wave offers that mesh network promise but man is it out of reach in the price range.

WiFi is everywhere/in every house, I seriously think more vendors should offer devices that just integrate into it instead of trying to build this bespoke network on the same band. Specially since 2.4GHz is going into disuse more and more as people switch to 5GHz for phones/pcs/etc..

tetris112• 2 years ago

I'm just worried about OTA updates. Shelly and Sonoff are playing nice now. They might not always.

Plus, unless you fence off your wifi device from the router, it might be phoning home on you. At least a module without a WiFi stack can't do that

darknavi• 2 years ago

I'll be the one to plug Valetudo in this thread I guess. Primitively, it replaces the cloud functionality on-device for robot vacuums (see supported models) and replaces it with local services that run offline and can connect to Home Assistant easily.

I will never buy another robot vacuum without Valetudo support as long as that project lives. It's great.

https://valetudo.cloud/

cassianoleal7• 2 years ago

I've been eyeing Valetudo for a while. I think it's a shame that it doesn't and (according to the author) never will support multiple maps. I don't want to have to buy a separate robot for each floor when I can easily carry it to the next floor when it's done.

morsch• 2 years ago

Some robots support restoring map snapshots. I wonder what's stopping people from using this as a multi floor implementation?

nsbk2• 2 years ago

Yeah the author is very set on his ways. I was thinking about contributing but he doesn't want any help. I read CONTRIBUTING.md and I kind of get it. Respect.

052• 2 years ago

Yeah I almost installed it, ripped apart my vacuum, just to realize there are many different roborock S7 versions with different SoCs, and my variant wasn't supported. Also roborock doesn't even support scheduled cleaning without cloud :(

mrandish6• 2 years ago

Yeah, I have a Roborock S7 MaxV I bought about two years ago and was hoping I could put open source firmware on it but after some searching I learned that Roborock makes a lot of similar but different flavors within a generation like S7 and they can be quite different. Unfortunately, it appears my MaxV flavor of the S7 isn't rootable.

For those interested: This Reddit post had more info https://www.reddit.com/r/Roborock/comments/vlvep2/roborock_s... and a sub-post there linked to this Defcon presentation on rooting Roborock vacs https://dontvacuum.me/talks/DEFCON29/DEFCON29-vacuum-robots.....

nsbk2• 2 years ago

This morning I ran out of coffee at home. While walking to the coffee shop I was thinking about building something like this for my Roborock. Now that I know it already exists, it is a less appealing idea. Video games and books in the holidays it is then!

XorNot5• 2 years ago

Are preflashed Valetudo vacuums a thing? It would absolutely be worth it to me to buy setup and working units.

euroderf3• 2 years ago

If it can be done quickly enough that ya only need to charge 20 or 30 bucks, it might be a business model to reflash gizmos like this ?

whalesalad• 2 years ago

Sidenote: I just installed Home Assistant this weekend for the first time. Insanely polished piece of software!

monkeydust• 2 years ago

HA is awesome but I have found that over time entropy kicks in if you don't maintain it properly (which I haven't done for a year) connections fail, switches stop doing what they are supposed to...it's on my Xmas list to spend some time sorting it out!

sedatk6• 2 years ago

My friend has lost 15GB of sensor data because of corrupted MariaDB on his HA instance after an upgrade. It's definitely not a hands-off system.

shepherdjerred6• 2 years ago

Most people don't need 15GB of sensor data, so I don't think this is the best measure of HA being hands-off or suitable for the average person.

Semaphor2• 2 years ago

I have been using HA for 4 years, no such issues. But even if, restore from backup seems like an easy fix?

theshrike795• 2 years ago

If you need to store 15GB of sensor data, a MySQL derivate is not what I'd choose

syntaxing• 2 years ago

Meanwhile MyQ “closed” their API and broke all HA integration because it “cost” the company too much. Where in reality, they just wanted people to use their app since they started serving ads. Say what you want about China and the security implications but a lot of their IoT companies are way more opened than our US counterparts.

WaitWaitWha4• 2 years ago

If you are thinking of deploying Home Assistant (HA), let me give you a few tips that I should have known when started. HA environment is vast. There are myriads of options, features, and functions. There are some gotchas that can be costly down the road.

All of the following are "for now, as you start out":

Do not gyrate over which version of HA to run. Run the HAOS loaded on RasPi, or a dedicated machine. You can migrate to other solution if that does not end up to be the best choice.

Make sure you get the latest Zigbee radio dongle the HA Forum recommends. I use in all my HA installs a combination dongle for Zigbee & Z-Wave and it works flawlessly (NORTEK Quickstick Combo).

Start with a few cheap Zigbee devices. Stay away from WiFi, LoRaWAN and other solutions. Z-Wave devices are great, but more expensive. You know you do not know if you even want to do this.

Initially, just use the built-in Zigbee (ZHA) integrations. Once you are comfortable deploying other ways, like MQTT can be established easily.

Do not spend too much on the devices now. I suggest you pick up a PIR motion sensors, door & window opening sensors, temperature & humidity sensors, smart plugs, and light bulbs. Anything else is overkill to try out. Sub-tip: all of these are battery operated, so try to consolidate on a standard battery. The ones I listed can all run off of 2032 cell batteries. Ikea sells most of these, Aqara is well known, and so on. If it is Zigbee (not Matter) you will have 96% chance it will work with HA.

Have fun!

yurishimo2• 2 years ago

Newer ikea devices are standardizing on AAA because they can be recharged. The new motion sensors, door sensors, and buttons all use AAA batteries.

WaitWaitWha4• 2 years ago

Thanks for the update. The ones I have are the Remote Control N2 using AAA, and the motion sensors use CR2032.

Sander_Marechal5• 2 years ago

Sadly there's no AAA equivalent to the simple old square Tradri 0/1 on/off dimmer switches that use the cr2032 batteries. Those old switches are small enough that I could 3D print brackets to mount them in my standard wall covers. The newer AAA devices are all much bigger or try to do too many things.

theshrike795• 2 years ago

Also: The IKEA rechargeable LADDA batteries are rebranded Eneloops, confirmed by multiple tests to be virtually identical in capacity and charge retention.

flmontpetit• 2 years ago

You probably meant the same by "dedicated machine" but HAOS runs great in a VM too. I run mine on Proxmox and it's been rock solid.

grahamj7• 2 years ago

+1 for HA on Proxmox

AdrianB13• 2 years ago

I started with HA in a VM and some WiFi devices, added BLU later, never had the need for Zigbee. More than a year later and over 40 devices in 2 locations (with VPN between, using the same HA server), I am more than happy with the results.

Conclusion: people have different needs and go different paths.

int_19h2• 2 years ago

As far as hardware, you can just get https://www.home-assistant.io/green (plus https://www.home-assistant.io/connectzbt1/ if you need Zigbee and Matter).

noprocrasted2• 2 years ago

I'd recommend a Raspberry Pi instead. Easier to source (you may even already have it!) and I can guarantee it will be supporter longer and better than whatever low-volume Chinese board they're using here. There is zero advantage to this box, it doesn't even include built-in interfaces for some of the more "exotic" protocols like Zigbee or Z-Wave so you still need dongles either way.

alwyn2• 2 years ago

Or get an ODROID! Much more powerful for (nearly) the same price.

mrj2• 2 years ago

What I wish I had known: HA is just a python program, it's pretty easy to run it manually.

After my Pi's sdcard died, I wanted to use an old laptop (more reliable with a built-in backup battery) so I followed the deployment recommendations and used the VM image. After that, for the first time I started having problems with HA not running - because VirtualBox would run only about a month before crashing. And I didn't like how much memory a VM locked up on the host.

The documentation makes it sound super complicated, but if you can make a venv and `pip install`, the setup is that easy. I tend to just run `hass` manually but there instructions for setting up supervised. I wish the documentation made this clearer, it really tries to scare people away from that method but running a whole VM is a lot of overhead for my pretty simple zwave-js setup.

151553• 2 years ago

Just use Docker?

slug2• 2 years ago

Have HA running without any issue on a Linux KVM VM.

cryptoegorophy• 2 years ago

Also a tip that will save you few days and save you few things from destroying in anger. If you have existing zwave integration in let say alarm.com hub you first need to remove the devices from the network. Resetting DOES NOT WORK. Enjoy!

beala2• 2 years ago

If your devices are bound to an old or broken controller, you can rescue your devices by putting a zwave controller into exclusion mode near the device and triggering exclusion on the device (how to do this is device specific, but it usually means "pressing whatever switch the device has"). Note that this is different than what many devices call a reset, which usually doesn't fully reset the device.

Exclusion mode should work on all zwave devices, because they have been certified as zwave compliant with the zwave alliance. The problem is that exclusion mode is extremely counter intuitive. Here is what you need to know:

1. Any zwave controller can exclude a device from any network. It does NOT have to be the controller for that network.

2. The controller needs to be near the device, as other devices won't forward the exclusion messages... at least I think this part is true.

So to rescue your device, you can plug a zwave controller into your laptop and walk around your house excluding devices. I wrote a blog post on how to do this: https://notes.bayesup.date/How+I+Made+a+Mobile+Z-Wave+Exclus.... There are some USB zwave controllers that have a built-in battery specifically so you can do this without involving your laptop.

Anyway, this is so poorly designed I suspect many devices have been thrown away in frustration even though they could have been saved. I almost did this to over $1,000 in zwave switches until I figured out how to write the freaking exclusion program myself and walk around with my laptop.

protocolture• 2 years ago

I have the weirdest issues with HA. Like I can either make or find everything I need, except audio inputs and outputs which seem like some kind of horrifying netherworld of barely supported through config hacks.

Which wouldnt be an issue if their voice assistant stuff wasnt otherwise fantastic.

They seem to really rely on some kind of all in one third party device, but I havent found any that work for me.

afh1• 2 years ago

Yeah, I never got the audio (stt and tts) / assistant pipeline quite working, always the weirdest issues. I tried running with Docker and other configurations I don't even remember. Discord folks weren't very helpful. It's too bloated to run on old Pi's, requires new ones which are just computers by now and not cheap anymore. Gave up on it long ago.

Havoc7• 2 years ago

I’ve had the opposite experience. The literally home assistant branded zigbee stick refuses to work with HA („unsupported forward“) even after updates so all the zigbee stuff is in a box

Have had much better luck with WiFi. Both commercial and self soldered circuits. 2.4ghz WiFi is as battle tested as it gets and between esphome and tasmota it’s pretty open and customizable. Just need to steer clear of the usual cheap trash that comes with an app etc

harrall• 2 years ago

Wi-Fi is battle tested but the network stacks on a lot of these devices are not.

Not a lot of these devices seem to understand the complexities of IP addressing (ARP, IP, etc.) very well so I’ve noticed they can lose connection easily. I’m sure you can limit yourself to products that have good network stacks but it’s hard to tell until you’ve wasted money. My Zigbee/Z-Wave devices have fared a lot better because the protocol is simpler and there is less for developers to screw up.

beala2• 2 years ago

I think this advice is pretty context dependent. Plenty of folks have tons of trouble with their wifi network. For example, someone in an apartment with a very crowded wifi spectrum might have better luck with zwave (900 MHz).

Coelacanthus4• 2 years ago

WiFi is not good for a network with lots of devices. It's star topology which limits multi-device performance. And the WiFi AP which can carry many devices is expensive.

Many WiFi smart home devices only support old WiFi standard, it will pull down both performance (If there is a old standard device, the AP have to fallback to old behavior to match it. OpenWRT's setting also inform that.) and security (You can't use WPA3 only, even WPA2/3). And because these devices use the same network technology with your home network, you need something like VLAN to isolate them.

It's whole terrible story.

tw04• 2 years ago

Pretty much any z-wave device is going to work as well.

Highly recommended zooz devices, they’ve been robust and get consistent firmware updates.

farhanhubble• 2 years ago

This is the way to go if you want get things running without wasting days. HA needs to be on on wired LAN for the best experience so one more reason to have it run on RPi and maybe have it sit next to your router.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

Can openwrt run HA? To run it on the router itself?

ericd2• 2 years ago

Good advice, except that I’d try whenever possible to get AA/AAA devices rather than button cells. Not only do the button cell devices burn through batteries, causing a maintenance headache if you have a non-trivial number of devices, but the rechargeable battery ecosystem is much better developed for AA/AAA. We’re currently working on swapping out all our button cell remotes, especially.

Also, the replacement process on the button cells tends to be so fiddly - tiny screws, tiny little doors, etc.

Sander_Marechal5• 2 years ago

A battery detection automation really helps with the maintenance (even for AA/AAA): https://community.home-assistant.io/t/low-battery-notificati...

s2l2• 2 years ago

Can you share some of the zigbee devices that you are using? Thanks.

WaitWaitWha4• 2 years ago

Happy to, but caveat emptor, your mileage may vary, and so on. The following is for a North American site I was just in.

The things that are battery operated, no big deal. The things that are full power, make sure they are UL, CSA, CE, AS/NCS, JIS, IS, and such listed. The cheaper the device the more likely to have quality shortcuts. Last thing we need is things to catch on fire unnecessarily.

Aqara Smart Plug

Linkind PIR Motion Sensor

Linkind Door Window Sensor

Seedan Zigbee Smart Light Bulbs

Seedan Zigbee Smart Plug

Sonoff SNZB-01 Zigbee Wireless Switch

eWeLink SNZB-03 ZigBee Motion Sensor

IKEA STYRBAR remote control

TRADFRI motion sensor

Some Zigbee devices go to sleep (e.g., STYRBAR) and disappear from the list or show unavailable. Once acted on, they would come to life and perform as expected.

shepherdjerred6• 2 years ago

They also have a nice piece of hardware you can buy if you want an appliance that just works: https://www.home-assistant.io/green

punnerud• 2 years ago

Two more important notes:

- Use an MicroSD card that can handle multiple read/write like the purple MicroSD cards. Can also be a benefit with too big card to save some writes, to make the card last longer. Talking about <1year vs +50 in how long they last.

-It’s just Python, Jinja and Sqlite3 at the core. For custom programs I find it easier to write the Python program and then just convert to Jinja syntax.

consp• 2 years ago

Good microsd cards have write cycle or bytes written estimates in their specs. I usually buy those meant for dashcams since they have a bigger reserve capacity and are decently fast.

alwyn2• 2 years ago

Instead of an error-prone SD card, use an SSD (internal, external doesn't matter).

OR create frequent backups that are pushed to a better medium.

mindwork• 2 years ago

Does that includes Qingping air monitors?

erinnh• 2 years ago

Dont those already work via Bluetooth?

My Air Monitor Lite at least do.

pammf• 2 years ago

I love Home Assistant but I now have a pretty strict minimum effort rule after years of configuring integrations and building dashboards that I would forget about after 2 months:

I only do automations (no dashboards at all), and try to keep them as simple as possible. Once I feel I’m reaching diminishing returns territory, I stop.

Only use HA if I need to mix different vendors (e.g. turn on the hue lights if the tuya sensor switches to on) or if the vendor app/service has a limitation that doesn’t allow me to do what I want. For instance, I have some automations for my Mitsubishi airco units cause their app sucks. Otherwise I’ll just use the default app or service.

Only configure an integration if I’m going to use it in an automation; I have a bunch of integrations detected that I don’t configure.

I decided to follow these rules a couple of years back, and since then I could address all my needs with almost 0 maintenance.

AdrianB13• 2 years ago

How many apps do you have installed to control everything? And how is the stuff integrating if you have equipment from different vendor that need to talk to each other, like AC units with PV inverter to start and shutdown based on electricity net production and real temperature in the rooms (using external thermometers, not the one in the AC)? And how do you consolidate and monitor power consumption in a single place, are you using a different solution for that?

c0wb0yc0d3r4• 2 years ago

It sounds like I use HA in a similar manner. For me, I make HA available to Google Home and HomeKit. HA is just glue to hold everything together.

I tried do make a dashboard some time ago but it felt rather complicated. Google Home and HomeKit integrate the best into my life and the lives of my family that there is no way HA can compete. Maybe that will change if I find myself in a house that I own… Maybe spending time to make a dashboard will have a better value prop.

shepherdjerred6• 2 years ago

At the other end of the spectrum, I just managed to split up my HA automation files and mount them into a ConfigMap on my K8s cluster

https://github.com/shepherdjerred/homelab/tree/main/cdk8s/co...

c0wb0yc0d3r4• 2 years ago

I assume then, you don’t use HAOS? What benefit do you see by managing your config this way? Do you also have an operator to reload HA when when you update configs?

guerrilla• 2 years ago

Why do people care about Xiaomi specifically? Tons of stuff is supported by HA.

odiroot• 2 years ago

Interesting but this one doesn't work with my containerised Home Assistant. Xiaomi Miot Auto works on the other hand.

There's also another, a built-in one.

perdomon• 2 years ago

Is this the software suggested by my new robot vacuum?

seanvelasco2• 2 years ago

low-end Chinese phones, including Xiaomi and Huawei, show ads on system apps like Settings and Contacts. soon, smart home appliances might also display or speak ads. there's nothing stopping these Chinese companies from doing so - both technologically and ethically.

Xiaomi definitely should not lead the way in smart home automation.

noicebrewery2• 2 years ago

What makes you think this is unique to Chinese tech companies? Windows 11 put ads in our start menu.

dtquad• 2 years ago

Windows 11 "advertise" Microsoft services for Windows 11. It's more like feature announcements.

seanvelasco2• 2 years ago

do you mean putting Bing on the start menu? Microsoft just made them opt-in by default and hoped that folks won't notice or care. you can disable them.

for Chinese devices, there's no way to disable them.

the difference is, for Windows, having Bing on start was a feature (although a bad one). for Chinese devices, you just get ads - you're stuck with ads while changing your brightness.

maxglute2• 2 years ago

You get ads for agreeing to buy a cheap subsidized device, like amazon devices. There's lots of guides out there to disable ads/msa.

soon, smart home

How? With what screen or speaker? The half inch oled on my smart ricer cooker? Xiaomi has been in the smart home market for ~10 years, with 100s of products, except pushing for storage subscription in the mi home app, they haven't done anything aggregious. My robovacuum, air purifier, air conditioner didn't screamed ads in the middle of the night. There's nothing stopping any tech company that inputs to a screen or speaker from monetizing ads, except for past behaviour, and so far Xiaomi home has been very good.

jwr• 2 years ago

…unlike appliances from non-Chinese companies like, say, Amazon? :-)

There is nothing "Chinese" about enshittification of the world around us. My LG TV insists that my "home screen" is not my property, even though I bought the TV, and invents new ways of showing ads and tracking me invasively. Amazon devices show ads and speak ads. Even Apple devices, even though apple pretends they are above this, show ads in app store search results, and send you ad notifications.

I won't even honorably mention Windows, where my computer and the main UI is basically considered a free-for-all for the Microsoft marketing department.

xbar• 2 years ago

I might modify your argument to say that there is nothing uniquely Chinese about enshitification of the world around us.

GBiT• 2 years ago

Samsung, and some other major players put a lot of ads and bloatware in their phones, TVs, laptops and other appliances. Xiaomi doesn't have ads on global versions of TVs and Phones. I know the Chinese version does have ads.

As a homeowner, I don't know what is worse. Using stuff where the local government can watch and spy on every step or some Chinese guy watching your boring life if you are low-level person.

sexy_seedbox• 2 years ago

low-end Chinese phones, including Xiaomi and Huawei

Did you mean Oppo and Vivo?

ancorevard• 2 years ago

There is a lot of upside of inviting CCP into your home, for instance...

harry8• 2 years ago

I've had a reasonable run with athom pre-flashed tasmota kit and HA.

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/5790427

Low effort, low maintenance, works good. mqtt & wifi, tasmota has everything you could want in a timer interface while still exposing switching etc to override it HA.

immibis3• 2 years ago

All I know about Xiaomi is that I bought a phone from them because the hardware specs were pretty good and the bootloader was unlockable. Upon trying to unlock the bootloader, I was told my account must be 30 days old (effectively, that I must have owned the phone for 30 days). Annoying, but not that unreasonable if it's some kind of anti-theft protection or something. After 30 days, every time I press the button for the first step of unlocking, I am told that I should try again on tomorrow's date. Apparently every 6 months they change the roadblocks to bootloader unlocking, and as of this moment there is no simple way to do it (their server no longer processes the requests), with rumours they plan to permanently disable it. This is pretty bad for my trust in their brand.

petre• 2 years ago

It loses the login every few months to the point that I got fed up to repeatedly login and obtain the token again and never touched it again.

euroderf3• 2 years ago

Is anyone else trying to run HA with deCONZ & Conbee II ? AFAICT the documentation is scattershot and the software is ugly and fickle. OTOH maybe I'm just stupid.

Sander_Marechal5• 2 years ago

I tried it for a year or so, then I moved everything to zigbee2mqtt and a slae.sh CC2652 stick (https://slae.sh/projects/cc2652/). I had a lot of problems with deCONZ / Conbee II dropping messages and losing devices, forcing me to reset, re-pair and re-configure every few weeks (specifically my Hue lights). The new stick and zigbee2mqtt has been flawless so far (18 months)

herbst• 2 years ago

I tried. It was unreliable as f. Conbee lost connection whenever he wanted. HA was way to heavy for modern raspi. Documentation was horrible for all tools and plugins I needed. Many python connectors I found to work with HA in my research before turned out to be outdated and/or only work in specific setups.

As the far majority of my devices is bound to random online APIs anyway, I hacked my own solution back then and today sometimes 'i port' HA plugins using chatgpt :)

draugadrotten• 2 years ago

I am running HA with Conbee II using zigbee2mqtt in docker, and it is very stable and easy to use. However the Conbee II stick needs to left at an older version of firmware. The most recent updates of Conbee II firmware are unstable.

"Warning: Conbee 2 firmware versions newer than 0x26580700 will result in an unstable network with devices dropping randomly, see Issue 9554" https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/deconz.html

vladvasiliu• 2 years ago

I have a Conbee II stick but it's running through Zigbee Home Automation.

HomeAssistant is running inside a VM with the stick passed through from the host.

It works mostly well, hasn't lost any of the Sonoff and Lixee sensors. The only issue is that I need to reboot the VM after an update, or it will lose access to the stick for some reason.

Xiaomi Home Integration for Home Assistant

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