Home Assistant 0.107

[asbril]

53 minutes ago, kck said:

When it comes to my data I am a belt and suspenders (and maybe that's not enough) kind of guy.  I run a pair of Synology NAS units at houses that are 1000 miles apart.  They mirror each other.  Beyond that I run a cloud backup service (in my case iDrive but while I'm happy enough with them they have their annoyances also).  So  that gives me 3 copies of everything.  Well - actually come to think of it, each NAS is running a RAID 1 configuration so that gives me 5 copies I guess.    Seriously, though, you should think about what you are protecting against.  Disk failure?  Have at least 2 copies.  House burns down?  Make sure those copies reside in different places.  Ransomware?  Make sure there is a history of previous copies (in my case iDrive provides that as does the mirrored NAS).  Mainly, though understand what failures a given setup will and, most importantly, won't protect you against - then plan/implement accordingly.  For me, every bit of my life is online so losing stuff could be absolutely disastrous as I pitched my file cabinets and the paper in them over a decade ago.  So I figure the cost of my multiple copies is worth it.

 

P.S. to Dan - I agree on having enough horsepower for running HA without impact.  In my case, the NAS units are recent with 4 core processors in them so I have power to burn - never see any load of note on them.  But it something one needs to consider in deciding where to run stuff.  The nice thing about Docker (or a VM) is that if you do need to move where an app runs it is easy to do.  I used to run HA on one of my Pis and moving it (in one case including Zwave) was literally a half hour of work.

What model and size of Synology would you recommend ?  I have data of some 200 GB on Google Drive.

[kck]

I'm using a DS720+ but the DS220+ would probably also be fine.  The 720 just has a faster processor and support for a cache that really doesn't do anything in a home setup.  Both those are 2 drive units.  They way you buy them is that you get the NAS without disks and then separately buy a pair of (usually identical) disks.  That way you can size your storage to your needs.  If you are running a RAID 1 configuration you get a usable capacity that is equal to one of the disks (since they back each other up).  I'm running a pair of 3TB drives but that was really simply because they represented a sweet spot pricewise when I got them.  Going smaller didn't save me much and going bigger was really a lot more than I needed.  You could just get a pair of 1TB drives and meet your needs with tons of space.  I would suggest getting a NAS rated drive since these things will be spinning a lot and the NAS rated ones from Seagate or WD are designed for that.  PC rated one would probably work fine but the price difference isn't much.  By the way, if you don't want to be using a cloud service for any reason, one option is to find a buddy, probably a family member, who also wants to run a NAS and back each other up.  I almost wound up doing that with my brother - just didn't want to be the IT support from 3000 miles away.

 

Kevin

[Screw Loose Dan]

While I don't have quite the redundancy Kevin has, I agree with his approach.  For the most critical of things, I put them on an offsite server and also a backup USB drive. The offsite server is for any local catastrophes (ie. fire) and the USB drive is kept offline and only occasionally plugged in to make a new backup, so it covers the historical scenarios (ie. ransomware).  One could pretty inexpensively get in a routine of using USB drives for backups, but it's typically a bit more manual process.

Life happens.  Hardware will fail in unexpected ways at unexpected times.  With a NAS, it's very easy to put all your eggs in one basket and feel safe about it (it has built in redundancy!), but that's not wise.  Any singular backup is but one tool in the tool chest.

I'm still not completely comfortable running critical applications in virtual/abstract environments.  With Home Assistant, they build and support the Docker images (even the VM is a bunch of Docker apps bundled together), so it makes me feel slightly better that the development team is so on board with it.  And, so far I don't have HA doing anything critical (other than the UI), I'm keeping all the important routines on the ISY for now. But, I feel it is something to consider.

As far as Synology hardware, I generally WAY over buy for what I actually need.  I don't have a good measure or rule of thumb to tell you.  I currently have a DS1515+ and a DS920+.  The DS1515+ is 5+ years old I believe.  The drives are starting to get bad sectors, so I'm in the progress of migrating to the DS920+.  Both seem to have plenty of horsepower.  Running VM's and certain Docker apps can chew through some memory, so that may be a desired upgrade.

[asbril]

4 hours ago, Screw Loose Dan said:

While I don't have quite the redundancy Kevin has, I agree with his approach.  For the most critical of things, I put them on an offsite server and also a backup USB drive. The offsite server is for any local catastrophes (ie. fire) and the USB drive is kept offline and only occasionally plugged in to make a new backup, so it covers the historical scenarios (ie. ransomware).  One could pretty inexpensively get in a routine of using USB drives for backups, but it's typically a bit more manual process.

Life happens.  Hardware will fail in unexpected ways at unexpected times.  With a NAS, it's very easy to put all your eggs in one basket and feel safe about it (it has built in redundancy!), but that's not wise.  Any singular backup is but one tool in the tool chest.

I'm still not completely comfortable running critical applications in virtual/abstract environments.  With Home Assistant, they build and support the Docker images (even the VM is a bunch of Docker apps bundled together), so it makes me feel slightly better that the development team is so on board with it.  And, so far I don't have HA doing anything critical (other than the UI), I'm keeping all the important routines on the ISY for now. But, I feel it is something to consider.

As far as Synology hardware, I generally WAY over buy for what I actually need.  I don't have a good measure or rule of thumb to tell you.  I currently have a DS1515+ and a DS920+.  The DS1515+ is 5+ years old I believe.  The drives are starting to get bad sectors, so I'm in the progress of migrating to the DS920+.  Both seem to have plenty of horsepower.  Running VM's and certain Docker apps can chew through some memory, so that may be a desired upgrade.

I am going to think about all you guys suggested. For the time being, I believe that I am ok with the following setup :

All my important documents and pictures are on a Google Drive with 2-step verification. This Google drive synchronizes with 3 different computers. Furthermore, my desktop PC backs up every day on a local external hard disk. The biggest theoretical risk may be that if someone gets into my home and takes the external disk with all my info. However that is rather unlikely in my pretty secure condo building.

Of course your systems are more efficient and more secure, and eventually I will go there. Thanks for your kind responses to my question.

[PPlacr]

On 11/3/2020 at 9:02 AM, Michel Kohanim said:

@asbril,

Thank you for the feedback. If you know the person with whom you spoke, please have them contact us since 0-100 and 0-255 are 100% protocol based, i.e. Z-Wave = 0/100 while INSTEON is 0-255 and hence the problem you are having (since all your devices are Z-Wave). My worry is that they may fix your issue and then cause issues for everyone else on 5.x and INSTEON. This is one of the underlying reasons for 5.3 and node servers: so that each protocol/device can define its own range.

With kind regards,
Michel

Michael, would you please expand on  "This is one of the underlying reasons for 5.3 and node servers: so that each protocol/device can define its own range." Thank You

[shbatm]

On 11/3/2020 at 9:02 AM, Michel Kohanim said:

My worry is that they may fix your issue and then cause issues for everyone else on 5.x and INSTEON. This is one of the underlying reasons for 5.3 and node servers: so that each protocol/device can define its own range.

@Michel Kohanim I was the one that updated Home Assistant for the range issue; it now looks at the UOM provided for the device to see if it's a 0-100% device or a 0-255 (8-bit) device to determine which range to use. Home Assistant still works only in 8-bit brightness so it translates anything with a UOM=51 to/from 8-bit to 0-100%. This shouldn't break anything for v5 or Insteon users.

[Michel Kohanim]

@shbatm,

Thanks so very much for your work on this. What you have done is correct and it should work.

With kind regards,
Michel

[asbril]

2 hours ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@shbatm,

Thanks so very much for your work on this. What you have done is correct and it should work.

With kind regards,
Michel

I confirm that Zwave dimming is now perfect.

[PPlacr]

Home assistant is great as a front end. For the most part, if you set it up right, it will work great. The issue with zwave light entities and percent control was fixed several weeks ago but there are ways you could have gotten around it by using the templates. 

[asbril]

11 minutes ago, PPlacr said:

Home assistant is great as a front end. For the most part, if you set it up right, it will work great. The issue with zwave light entities and percent control was fixed several weeks ago but there are ways you could have gotten around it by using the templates. 

I agree HA is very good as front end. I did not know about the template solution but anyway the dimmer percentages now work. I tried to install Home Panel in HA but was not successful.

[xlurkr]

btw I just installed this for the first time a few days ago and the latest version is 2020.12.1.  They have moved to calendar-based release naming.  The OP might want to consider updating the original graphic...

-Tom