Migrating multiple Smart Home environments to Home Assistant?

banie01

Hi Folks!

I hope Santa was kind to ye all 😉 He dropped me a HA Green and I'm in the midst of getting my devices moved over and running.

My home includes SmartLife, eWeLink, Nest, Ring Doorbell and a couple of other Nvidia devices that show as Google Home devices.

For Smartlife, I think that it's either migrate them to Tuya and use the Tuya cloud integration? Or flash to Tasmoto?

For eWeLink install the add-on from add on store and setup via there?

For Nest it looks like I need to make a once off $5 payment for the API access, is that the right way to do it? I've no issue with making the payment just want to be sure I'm on the right method.

For Ring Doorbell, can I set it up in a manner that will allow me ditch the Ring subscription? I've been reading through the HA forums https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ring-video-feed-on-home-assistant/605159 Ideally what I'd like to do with ring is to keep similar functionality to the ring app and force a notification to our phones.

Any other tips, tricks or good to knows would really be appreciated too. I'm looking forward to learning as I go and eventually having all my gear controlled via my HA.

ECO_Mental

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058328597/migrating-multiple-smart-home-environments-to-home-assistant

Welcome to the rabbit hole that is HA, its a great platform. What I found is that Home Assistant usually picks up everything that is connected to your network that it can integrate. I don't have any of those equipment but I would be surprised if there want any integration.

Have you got HACS integration installed...get this installed and search through all the libraries they have you will normally find something. eg below HACS has an integration that can control eWeLink devices

The only subscription I have is the Nabu Casa annual subscription €75/year which allows seemless remote access to your HA instance and easy access to google devices. Nabu Casa You can still access HA remotely and cast to google devices but its a lot more complicated

YouTube will be your friend here as there is so much to learn but its great fun.

Only yesterday I managed to coble together a heated seed propagator using a Aquara Zigbee temp sensor, a Tapo wifi plug and a simple automation!! boom

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121547556#Comment_121547556

I am really enjoying getting to grips with it TBH. I had baulked a little at the Tuya integration as I had those devices setup via Smartlife and the workflow for the Tuya addon meant I'd have to delete the devices from Smartlife and read them to Tuya and then add the Tuya addon in HA. Some googling has led me to the https://github.com/tuya/tuya-smart-life which installed and picked up all my Smartlife devices immediately. It also picked up some additional sensor types on some of my Smartlife plugs that will hopefully allow me to setup some additional granular control of a couple of fans without resorting to a speed controller.

My current state of play is:

eWeLink: Done

Smartlife: Done

Ring Doorbell: Done via the Ring integration, but now I'm looking to see if I can use the doorbell without Amazon sub.

Google Nest: I've set up the API and Oauth and Device ID all set up correctly on the Google Side, but it isn't being recognised as active by my own HA

CCTV: Will get this added tmrw via the "generic camera" add-on

External IP: Plan is to set HA to a dedicated VPN as an additional layer of security, and have lifetime windscribe sub, so will add HA to a VPN tunnel.

Loads more will occur to me as I get to grips with fiddling with it. The Mrs has certainly found a way to keep me out of her hair for a while ;) I'm looking forward to building some dashboards and learning as I go.

banie01

On the CCTV front, my DVR is ancient, no-name Chinese yoke that I could not get working with "generic camera".

That led to a little Google fu and my installing the dahua camera integration.

https://github.com/rroller/dahua

The good news, is that this found the cameras😁 The not so good, that it isn't pulling any feed from them. I think that may well be due to my not adding ffmpeg or stream to my YAML yet.

My plan for tmrw is to get the cameras streaming and then start work on making a presentable dashboard.

Current progress with Dahua integration.

I've reached the point where I have enough of our home automation stuff added, that I was confident enough to add the Mrs to the beta test....

Big mistake🤷‍♂️🤦‍♀️

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121572969#Comment_121572969

The CCTV has me stumped for the moment. I've added ffmpeg to my YAML and I am at least getting windows for the cameras, but as yet no actual feed.

I think it may be a case of configuring a separate Dahua integration for each camera?

That will need me to dig a little and find the .rtsp stream for each, so I'll be playing around with VLC and my NVR later to do that.

WildCardDoW

I've had similar issues with Google integrations, Google make it much more awkward than their peers. My doorbell constantly doesn't work truly through Google Home. To the point that I am considering replacing it.

On the security camera integrations I don't have much too add other than don't be afraid to try the Home Assistant forums for some help.

Great updates by the way!

Where you need to go after all integrations are done is the UI.

That will help with the missus factor. It can be complicated but there's some easier to setup ones out there (Mushroom UI).

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/mushroom-cards-build-a-beautiful-dashboard-easily/388590

Personally I'm a fan of one called Rounded as well as another one iOS.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/rounded-dashboard-guide/543043

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ios-16-home-theme/433464

banie01

A further little update on how integration of my existing devices is going.

Regarding my Sonoff switches, I had initially used the "eWeLink Smart Home" adding. It worked but I had to access it from the side bar. The devices didn't show in "overview" despite being assigned to rooms. I also wasn't able to get the devices to work LAN only.

A little digging and I found the SonoffLAN add on. It works brilliantly, my devices now appear in their assigned rooms and are also available LAN only.

https://github.com/AlexxIT/SonoffLAN

I've also added Tuya Local for control of my Smartlife devices. I've yet to give it much of a test. As it stands tho, everything works ok.

https://github.com/make-all/tuya-local

My next jobs are spending a bit more time on the CCTV integration. As of yet I just cannot get the cameras to stream. The CCTV is old, streams http rather than rtsp or ONVIF. It may well be that I end up replacing the Cameras but that can wait. I still have access to the NVR via the android app.

I have my Ring Doorbell visible but need to sort out MQTT integration and notifications. I don't think it's possible to ditch the subscription so I may well end up looking at a Reolink Doorbell in the future too.

Once I get the remaining device integrations sorted. I plan moving over to a local voice assistant iteration and then spending a lot of time reading over the info on dashboards that @WildCardDoW shared above.

banie01

I added the wrong version of the Tuya integration I'm using. Apologies for that. A downside of using multiple browser tabs open and experimenting and spitballing decisions.

I'm using Localtuya, initially setup with Tuya developer account and then siloed to HA control.

https://github.com/rospogrigio/localtuya

banie01

So a couple of weeks more tweaking, fiddling and testing under my belt and here's the current state of play on what I've got integrated, what I used to do it and what's next to do.

16 x Tuya/Smartlife devices; a mix of bulbs, sockets and alarm panels. This is currently managed via Smartlife integration as the TuyaLocal integration doesn't allow control of alarm panels. I do have local device for all switches & bulbs and once I figure out a way to control my alarm panels? I'll move to wholly local control.

5 x Sonoff switches. Currently managed via Sonoff integration.

1 x Google nest. Managed via Google Nest integration. I setup local control via the Google API and the $5 set up fee.

1 x Ring Doorbell. Managed via the Ring integration. The level of granular control is poor IMO. I'll likely switch to a wholly local doorbell in the near future.

1 x Smartthings device, The integration is poor and I find myself relying on Google Home for this particular device. I have the local device key, but it just constantly hangs in HA

2 x Asus Routers. 1 in Router mode & other as wireless AP. Plenty of detail available via AsusWRT integration. That said, I use it as an overview. Settings and options still managed via GUI.

1 x Yamaha AV Amp, lots of options available to control this. I tend to use musiccast integration as it allows good options.

5 x Various Android TV devices and a webOS LG TV. All of these devices are controllable via the android TV remote integration.

1 x Epson Ecotank. Managed via the Internet Printing Protocol integration.

Things still to do. My CCTV is just not integrating with HA in a way that is workable. Likely a side effect of it's age but rather than keep spinning my wheels? I will likely change to a newer IP camera system.

Similar situation with my ring doorbell, the integration is there, it works but it lacks granular control. Swapping to something with local control will help save me some cash as I can ditch the Ring sub.

My wife has gotten to grips with the HA dash. That said, she still wants pretty 😉 I told her that pretty will come once functionality is sorted.