The state of my Home Assistant in 2024

The state of my Home Assistant in 2024

Update (3. 12. 2024) – Misc integrations, Addons and HACS added.

My #homeautomation journey started 4 yrs ago (2020) when I bought 1 Aqara #zigbee hub, 1 room temp. sensor and 1 smart socket (for controling the heating of the office). I started with Aqara app. with 1 automation: If office temp < 21 turn on the pump, if > 22 turn it off.

After some months I moved to Home Assistant (in 2022).

The state today (end of 2024) is somehow different:

Main system – server and frontend

• Home Assistant system running in VirtualBox on an old i5 4GB RAM Asus laptop
• 1 Amazon FireHD display running FKB (Fully Kiosk Browser) and YAKK (to show various chart and info), on the kitchen fridge
• 1 ESP32 based e-ink display to show temperatures at the front door
• HomeAssistant companion apps on all family member phones (to deliver notifications)

Zigbee devices

24 zigbee devices:

• Sonoff Zigbee dongle (router for all zigbee devices)
• Tuya 3 phase electricity meter (for measuring electricity consumption on all 3 mains)
• 8 Tuya/Aqara/Elivco smart sockets (for monitoring the consumption of various individual devices like dishwasher, production of solar panels, controling central heating pump etc.)
• 3 sonoff smart switches (for controlling bathroom exhaust fan, aquarium/terrarium lights and pumps, charging of tablet)
• Aqara smoke detector
• 3 Ikea movement sensors
• Ikea Vindstyrka air quality sensor (to improve our ventilation – window opening habits)
• 2 Aqara door sensors
• 1 Aqara temp/humidity sensor
• 1 Aqara button

BLE devices

11 BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) devices:

• Xiaomi Mi temperature/humidity sensors connected to ESP32 BLE proxy
• all Xiaomi sensors flashed with custom firmware

ESP32 & ESPHome

5 ESP32 (ESPHome) wifi devices:

• BLE proxy (ESP32 board)
• e-Ink 2.13” display system
• door unlocking system
• ESP32Cam 1 (yard)
• ESP32Cam 2 (3D printer)

Wi-fi appliances

2 other wifi devices integrated to HA

• Midea dehumidifier (via Midea Air Appliances integration)
• Mitsubishi Heatpump with Wifi module (via MELCloud integration and some sensors via manual REST integration)

Other systems/servers monitored from HA

• Computers/servers monitoring via Glances
  • 6 proxmox servers (via )
  • HA server
  • PiHole server
  • RaspberryPi W Zero
• Modem/router integrated to HA (monitoring speed and connection drops) via UPnP/IGD integration
• Office printers integrated to HA (monitoring ink consumption) via Internet Printing Protocol integration and Brother integration
• NVidia Shield via Android TV remote integration

Misc integrations

• Battery notes integration (for tracking time from last battery change)
• Weather Card integration (to see weather forecast)
• Browser mod (currently not used much – the plan was to play music from MusicAssistant – TODO)
• Certificate Expiry (for monitoring Let’s Encrypt certificate expiry and autorenewal on my web servers)
• Command Line integration (for monitoring CPU temperature on my Proxmox server)
• DLNA Digital Media Server (not used, it installed automatically)
• Electricity Maps (to see how much renewable energy is currently used in my country)
• Elektro Network Tariff (for monitoring grid price time slots)
• Forecast Solar (for solar production forecast)
• Google Cast (to play notifications on my NVidia Shield)
• Landroid Cloud (for controlling mower)
• Mastodon (to track posts, followers, following)
• Meteorologisk institutt (to see weather forecast)
• MJPEG IP camera (for displaying video stream from ESP32 cameras)
• OctoPrint (to monitor 3D printer via OctoPrint server)
• PiHole (for displaying ratio of blocked requests)
• PowerCalc (to calculate power consumption of devices that does not track power consumption)
• Proxmox VE (to display various info from Proxmox server and hosts)
• Scheduler (for scheduling the heating of the office)
• Seasons (to modify automations based on the season)
• Speedtest.net (for tracking the speed and dropouts of the internet connection and as a ‘evidence’ for my internet provider if the speed is too low)
• Sun (for triggering automation based on the state of the sun – aquarium and terrarium)
• Synology DSM (for monitoring Synology NAS)
• Thermal Comfort (to calculate how pleasant is the climate based on temperature and humidity – Sharlau, Simmer, Thoms perception index)
• World Air Quality Index (WAQI), to monitor air quality in the nearby city

Total: 1400 entities in #homeassistant

Add-ons

• Backups by Stephen Beechen (to GDrive)
• Browser mod
• ESPHome Compiler
• HACS (unofficial integrations)
  • Mushroom (for nice UI cards)
  • auto-entities
  • apexchart-card
  • Config Template Card
  • Sankey Chart Card
  • Weather Chart Card
  • Weather Radar Card
  • Moje Elektro
  • Device Tools
  • Mold Risk Index
  • Network tariff/Card
  • Thermal Comfort Icons
• Music Assistant (currently not working)
• motionEye (currently not used, too resource intensive for my server)
• Terminal
• Zigbee2MQTT
• Studio Code Server

Automations

40 automations for (major functionalities):

• Controlling bathroom exhaust fan
• Adapting humidity threshold to external humidity (to reduce the number of bathroom fan turn ons during humid weather)
• Controlling office heating radiator (pump)
• Unlocking the front door via NFC stickers and mobile phones
• Controlling and monitoring aqarium and terrarium lights/pump (turn on at sunrise, turn off at sunset, de-airing the pump)
• Notifying if windows are opened too long
• Front door ring bell notifications (notifications on mobile phones, TV, voice notification on kitchen tablet)
• Turning off TV and related devices at night (to reduce standby power draw)
• Monitoring solar panels output and export to grid, turning on various appliances (dehumidifier, heatpump – hot water) to minimize electricity export
• Notifications in case of going over max. ‘agreed’ grid power draw (>8,4kW)
• Controlling the charging of the tablet (between 20%-80%, to prolong battery life)
• Various notifications of 3D printer (too hot, finished)

Dashboards

• 1 main dashboard

• ~40 other lovelace dashboards, for each room that has at least one device

That’s very brief description of my Home Assistant system at the end of 2024. I’m documenting the progress and the document is already 100 pages long.

Maybe it sounds a lot, but I feel I didn’t even scratched the surface.
Plz. send help 🙂

When I published this info on Fediverse, I found out there are people with far larger setups (200+ zigbee devices). Good, it looks like I still have some self-control 🙂

Join the AHA (Anonymous Home Assistants 🙂 ) debate on Fediverse.

Tags: #homeassistant #zigbee #ble #selfhosting #wifi #esp32 #esphome #tuya #aqara

If you’re reading this on fediverse and the layout (embedded pics) is off, here’s the link to the original blog post.