Home assistant is in the top 10 most popular and active open source projects.

@Rah, you need to pull your head in with your repeated assertion that it is poorly engineered simply because it doesn’t use a particular distros packaging system. Perhaps you haven’t used it enough to fully appreciate the things HA does?

The devs are listening to their customers who value: ease of use, reliability, stability and security in the system which orchestrates the iot devices in their home or workplace.

HA often runs exposed to the internet, has a catalog of thousands of integrations and a good hundred add-ons, (before we even get into the HACS community store), has its own desktop and mobile and even watch apps. Each of these components and configurations may be backed up and updated within HA itself with no external dependency. Yet the team and volunteer devs remarkably manage this complexity and release features and changes almost every week.

Initially the project was a lot more flexible in supporting bare scripted installs. I used to run a custom supervised installation myself, managed lots of entries in a configuration.yml, however this mode of installation and operation was deprecated as the project matured. I believe it was the right call to make.

As the project’s popularity grew amongst smart home enthusiasts and vloggers and started to reach the general populace who might have never touched Linux or a command-line before, supporting all that demand meant that tighter controls were necessary to define what a ‘supported’ system and environment was. That is, a predictable and reproducible environment at millions of installations.

The solution is to recommend users install the system as a complete appliance, an entirely contained, managed and controlled operating system HASSOS, on bare metal or as a virtual machine. Or fallback to HA Core if the user is comfortable managing Docker. Experienced Linux users who want to spend time managing dependencies themselves are no longer the primary audience or user base for Home Assistant, but are still free to do so if they accept zero support and various warnings.

Hope that helps and wasn’t a waste of time explaining.

For the benefit of anyone else interested. I ended up replacing my old Actron with a 10kw Daikin system and am very happy with it.

Influencing the decision, I noticed the Daikin Airbase integration was officially maintained by Home Assistant core dev team (not HACS) and had one of the highest reported install percents for AC systems brands (a bit over 1% of all HAs).

They have a remote wall control which includes 4 or 8 zone control at 24v or 240v. Unfortunately it’s a little ugly to look at (and can’t really hide it since it has a temperature sensor, unless you purchase a separate external temperature sensor) but it’s nicer than the old Actron control, and with the zone features integrated this seems a great option for retrofit needs.

And with this configuration, the Airbase WiFi unit (on 2.4 or 5GHz) includes ability to control the zones.

I needed the Daikin app on my phone to do initial Wifi pairing, but I haven’t needed to create an online account or permit remote internet access.

Over LAN, the Home Assistant integration just detected the Airbase and worked without any hassle whatsoever.

So very happy with the result and we saved probably $3k in ducting and zone motor and control replacements which weren’t strictly necessary.

Sing out if you have any questions.

Seconded on Cockpit project w File Sharing.

Probably not best practice, but it’s possible to install it on the PVE host itself since its ZFS manager and Identity manager plugins and other features fills some gaps in what Proxmox doesn’t do (or would have to drop to CLI to do).

Also recommend RClone in a systemd can take care of various file movements, syncs and backup tasks you may need against the host, vdumps or SMB file shares.

This thread provides some useful opinions of Airtouch, iZone, Advantage air “My air.”, Daikin Airbase.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AusRenovation/comments/13w8yig/what_is_the_best_ducted_aircon_controller/

I can see where you’re coming from, and agree, but ISPs in Australia providing services on the National Broadband Network NBN will almost always describe this as a modem router.

It’s not uncommon, right or wrong, even Verisign USA describe a modem vs router thus: “The modem is responsible for sending and receiving signals from the ISP, while the router disperses the signal to devices on the network”

So, this doesn’t exclusively modulate and demodulate (mo-dem) an analog to digital signal in this case, and 100% it doesn’t have the physical hardware to do so, but it is nonetheless required to negotiate (‘modulate’?) the internet connection with an ISP, albeit software-defined through digital PPP Ethernet protocols.

All this is a bit off topic, but I hope the OP (or others) may better define the internet service needed, and may determine if this device may be suitable for their requirements.

I’m glad it includes openwrt support for later down the track. It’s one of the few AX devices with such support and I chose it specifically for this reason!

Meets definition of a modem/router depending on what physical connection and protocols your ISP provides.

My Ethernet WAN connects to the ISPs NTU (optical fibre network termination unit), but WAN is capable of negotiating PPPoE, PPTP or L2TP with PAP/CHAP. Can also Dual WAN, Port forward, NAT.

The documentation is a little lacking. And no ADSL/VDSL etc. but it meets reqs for some.

Maybe check out the Asus TUF-ax4200 gaming modem/router? Just bought one and it’s been an awesome upgrade to my old AC modem/router. Wifi6/AX, 4 core, good ram, 1x 2.5GbE WAN and 4x1GbE LAN. Has USB to take a mobile SIM for dual WAN/failover. ASUSs software is very good, but it is on the support list for openwrt once Asus stop supporting it.

Problems with spinning HDDs on RPI are common. Possibly even on powered hubs they may spike more than rpis 1.2A USB max allowance. You may need a specialised hat, or better to switch to solid state storage?

Suggest the typical hardware device troubleshooting. watch/tail your dmesg -w or kernel log as you add the extra drive. It’s curious that the system itself doesn’t crash, but from your description it still sounds like a power starvation concern or possibly high temperatures if this device is under heavy load.

Using a voice assistant (like Google assistant), these understand how to treat plurals, so if you use the same base name numbered 1 & 2 you can say: turn on the (base name) lights and both come on without having to try to define scenes or explicit device groups or links. They can still be controlled independently, so I number in a sequence relative distance to the ‘entrance’ to that room, or left to right, you might want clockwise.

I use names related to the room, area or object, like: entrance light, dining table light, craft area light, fan light, hallway light, tv light, desk light, bed light, reading light, kitchen sink light. Numbered 1 & 2 if needed since usually want them on together.

Or may be further refined by type like: night light, down light, spot light, string light, stand light, lamp, bulb, LED etc.

Hope that helps with a few ideas?