this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Home Assistant - am I missing something? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by rarkgrames@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I decided to spin up Home Assistant on a VM on my server yesterday, and so far I'm not having much luck getting to to much that is actually useful.

I'm wondering if it's me doing something wrong, but I can't see what that would be.

I've signed up for the free trial of the cloud services which all seems to have gone fine, and I have a couple of integrations working (Roomba, printer ink levels, Sonos and a couple of others) but mostly everything else I've tried just doesn't want to play ball

  • Apple TV - won't pair - I press the pair button in HA but the ATV doesn't respond with a pairing code

  • Ring doorbell / cameras - these are found but won't display a live feed

  • Ring alarm - not recognised at all

  • Netatmo thermostat - widget displays but doesn't sync correctly with thermostat and if I try to adjust temp it sets the target temp to 137 degrees C

  • Hue lights - having issues but this one might be my hub not HA

I was really hoping I could set up automations to, say, turn off my TV, turn off the lights, arm my house alarm - all with one press of a button but it looks like currently this isn't going to happen.

Is it just me? Am I doing something wrong perhaps? Maybe I'm missing something obvious but it just seems like the integrations with these devices just isn't quite there? I'd really be interested in other people's experiences and whether they were able to solve these issues (if indeed they had them at all).

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[–] letmesleep@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's a feature not a bug. A feature to maximize profits for of the vendors that create your hardware that is.

For vendors a so called vendor lock-in is a great way to make money. Unfortunately they have an incentive to make their stuff not work well with other stuff because that may mean that you'll buy more of their stuff.

Now, in some cases they have to implement compatibility, because otherwise they'd have trouble getting customers int he first place, but in it's often obvious that playing well with others isn't a priority.

Hence solutions like home assistant rely on shoddy interfaces and that shows in the form of issues. Besides, it's a volunteer driven application. You can't expect the people who make it in their free time solve all the problems for you.

Edit: Basically, you will have to solve these issues step by step. Afaik they are all solvable. And of course you might want to rely on hardware that's more standardized. E.g. onvif cameras. That's not necessarily less of a hassle than with ring etc. but it's cheaper.