Thoughts, learnings and regrets after three years on Home Assistant

1. Open and cheap DIY IP-KVM based on Raspberry Pi

   1 152 9,075 9.3

   Open and inexpensive DIY IP-KVM based on Raspberry Pi

   

2. InfluxDB

   www.influxdata.com featured

   InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

   

3. esphome

   2 231 9,467 9.9 C++

   ESPHome is a system to control your ESP8266/ESP32 by simple yet powerful configuration files and control them remotely through Home Automation systems.

   

   You can do this with a $30 Sonoff S31 running ESPHome [0]. Since the Sonoff wall switch can run a ping sensor against your server you could create a watchdog automation right on the S31 to shut off the mains power to the S31 switch and turn back on after X seconds.

   There are other ways you could have the S31 do operational checks but ultimately ESPHome is probably an interesting consideration and supported by tons of off the shelf hardware.

   [0] https://esphome.io/

4. integration

   3 46 6,301 9.3 Python

   HACS gives you a powerful UI to handle downloads of all your custom needs.

   

   I have HACS[0] installed in my Docker image, I use it for exactly one integration and the initial setup seemed a little dodgy but it's been pain-free for a couple of years now.

   [0]: https://hacs.xyz/

5. zigbee2mqtt

   4 126 13,631 9.8 TypeScript

   Zigbee 🐝 to MQTT bridge 🌉, get rid of your proprietary Zigbee bridges 🔨

   

   For Zigbee, I can recommend using the Zigbee2MQTT (https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/) integration instead of HomeAssistant's built-in ZHA system. It might be a bit more complex to set up, but it's very powerful and works fantastically. (User "simon42" on YouTube has some good videos about the topic, but they're in German.)

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