My Home Assistant (Raspberry Pi 4, I’ve tried wired and WLAN) has never been particularly reliable. I get connectivity dropouts which plague me, whether it’s using 2.4 WLAN or cat5.
I note that other wired or wireless network components seem to work fine in comparison, so perhaps it isn’t a network problem, more a case of an unreliable RPi4.
Anyway, I am thinking of installing Home Assistant on TN using the official TN app or perhaps via docker compose in an attempt to improve the poor reliability I am suffering from.
(1) Has anyone any observations which might help me decide whether or not to go down this route - have you seen better performance via TN rather than standalone?
I need to “mount” a couple of USB items(a CC1100-ESP32 gateway for some custom radio modules, and an RTL-433 SDR for simlar purposes) so that Home Assistant can see them.
(2) Will I be able to do so using the TN app or docker compose route.
Thanks in advance for any opinions which will help me decide my best course of action.
I had 0 luck trying to use the home assistant app on truenas. Network scanning and peripheral support seem to not be great in the app. I created a VM with the Home Assistant ISO and that has been working very well. I have seen others have the same issue. I did mount a zigbee radio and easily passed it through to the VM.
That’s useful to know. I didn’t think to consider the VM approach so I had better do a bit more research. Thanks for the idea and observations - useful!
[EDITED in response to troy - I shouldn’t post half-remembered old info late at night! ]
Noting the different types of installations possible (Installation - Home Assistant), running HA as docker for me feels too limited.
For example, when I last tried HA in docker or a supervised version there was no GUI way to restore config from a backup file - that may have changed in the past year. I’m pretty sure you can’t install certain addons (although you can install HACS as per troy & HA docs above).
So, IMHO, the most full-featured type of Home Assistant install is ‘haoss’ (home assistant OS). If you want to use your TrueNAS box (as I do), your best bet is to run haoss as a VM (soon to be an “instance” in Fangtooth).
I suggest either HAOS in a VM or using docker-compose. I do not recommend the TrueNAS APP version.
I’m sorry, but this is completely inaccurate information. First, if you run the Home Assistant container (that’s the docker version), you do not get the supervisor.
Also, you can restore from a backup using any version of Home Assistant (except from the TrueNAS app because they made incompatible changes to the configuration), and HACS has always worked on every version of Home Assistant. HACS has never required using HAOS or the supervisor.
EDIT: Technically, all three official versions installation methods of Home Assistant (HAOS, the container install, and installing the Supervised version on your own) all use the exact same Home Assistant docker container.
I followed an idiot-proof guide (thank God) and only made one mistake (br0 but I decided filtering should be applied, and it shouldn’t, but then you can’t get at those settings in the VM menu so I had to delete it and create another instance).
Thanks for all of these responses, which have spurred me on to create my first ever VM within TrueNAS. The resources it is consuming, at least at the moment, are negligible.
This is going to sound really really stupid but it should work
Using a bootable ISO with something like Maxcrum Reflect on it and using that take an image of the Hard disk? MR won’t know if the the drive is virtual or not and you should be able to mount a SMB share to put the image on
So I’m going to go against the grain (because why not) and for a lot of simple installs the TrueNAS app is likely all most people need. I’ve run the docker-compose with and without host-networking and even added mDNS and disabled it on SCALE. If they’re connecting other Docker containers then having them all on the same docker host / network is a breeze
However if you just want it simple and don’t care about saving resources then the VM is fine
I would agree with this if the TrueNAS app shipped a vanilla version of Home Assistant - Instead they have taken liberty to ship Home Assistant using a 3rd party database, which in Home Assistant land is more of an advanced use case. Using a 3rd party database used to be a recommendation years ago (this was mainly to save life of SD-cards when running on Raspberry pie), but Home Assistant code has been refactored and greatly improved to efficiently use the built in database.
Additionally, there’s no mention of this anywhere. No mention that they have modified the default configuration. No mention that because of these changes, a back-up made using the Home Assistant TrueNAS App cannot be restored to an official Home Assistant installation, and no mention of what you need to edit or remove if you want move your Home Assistant configuration away from the TrueNAS App.
In my option, that is why the TrueNAS app is not for simple installs and people just getting started in Home Assistant.
Additionally, if you are a person who actually needs a 3rd party database, that should be your choice to decide what database to use, not be stuck with something someone else decided for you.
The app catalog is curated and opinionated, Postgres runs great and performs well, so it makes sense to include it, the catalog isn’t “pure defaults” for everything
If you want portability, don’t use catalog apps honestly. You want something you can click and run then it makes sense.
FYI you can restore minus the DB (aka just logging/historical data) between systems, just lose your history basically, I know because I have done it in the past*
Of course a better backup strategy would be to place all your VM zvols under a single dataset, then snapshot and replicate recursively to a different machine.
Same for me…
HA never was able to run (not even to start) as az app on my system.
Also the attitude towards Apps/containers from TN side is something I do not really like. (like kicking out complete systems by one version to another, just like what they did to the VM section)
I think this is more-or-less what I’d found, with the wrinkle of wanting to export to a common VM container format. If I recall — don’t have the links on hand atm — the data could be piped into other tool(s) to convert to VM container storage formats.
I settled on Home Assistant after experimenting with openHab. I tried HA on a Raspberry Pi 4. I didn’t use that setup long enough to experience reliability issues. I particularly didn’t like the setup issues necessitated by the Pi’s lack of a real time clock. I also didn’t like the fact that the processor was running hot even with a case with a fan.
I have HA running on a Lenovo M92P mini-computer with a mid-size SSD and maxed RAM. The Pi has been relegated to storing on-site backups via openmediavault (sorry TrueNAS).
I have a NAS running TrueNAS Core that is on my wired network. I have Plex running in a jail on that NAS.
Home Assistant, along with all its WiFi sensors and switches, is on a separate WiFi network controlled by a router running pfSense. I feel a little less anxious when visiting grandchildren ask “What’s your WiFi password?”
If you are comfortable with having all your IoT and WiFi devices accessible on the same box as your personal files, then I suppose you could run HA as a virtual machine on your TrueNAS machine.
Personally, there are easier solutions – like Proxmox – if you want to run HA in a virtual machine.
I have used HAOS in a VM for years with Truenas, never ever any issues. I would not recommend the app for various reasons, less maintenance with a VM since it’s running their own OS so it takes care of everything for you.
Hi, I installed Home assistant in TrueNAS at first using the app, but there were some shortcomings installing mods. Then I decided to use a Home Assistant OS VM and that changed everything… Stable and full featured
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