home alarm system under openHAB and home assistant, and more

[francois]

I am installing some intelligent devices to secure my home but also to see if I could not save some money on energy.

For now my preoccupation is to install an alarm system. My choice after trial and error was to go with the Aqara Zigbee devices, trying to get them as cheap as could be. The problem is that mosts Aqara hubs are for mac osx.

A way to fix the situation is to go for the open source Home Assistant system. There is also an equivalent which is called openHAB.

Concerning intelligent home devices, it seems to be a jungle: compatibility between brands is almost a nightmare, android phone interfaces are numerous and cryptic. The information does not seem to be well organised.

Please share your experiences, if you have any.

Thanks.

[francois]

The installation of home assistant will be thru: msi 340 x and virtual box on porteus and eventually raspbery pi 3b or pi 4.

The aqara hub is M1S gen 2
- I have tried aqara hub e1 which is a little cheaper and compatible with my android phone. The problem is that it does not have an integrated 110 decibel alarm.
- I have tried the M1S gen 2, it will not show in the android aqara app.
- I have tried the M2 hub model, it will show in the aqara android app, and with the aqara sensors (movement detector for example). However, it will not connect within the Home assistant or openHAB systems.
- I was told on the home assistant and openhb forum to ditch the aqara hun and to by a sonoff usb dongle which will connect to the Zigbee sensors. Working within the openhab environment it will be possible for me to connect the zigbee devices together to implement a intelligent home alarm system. In addition, as I have a Tuya alarm siren, I should be able to connect the Zigbee alarm system to the wifi tuya siren.

[francois]

The installation of home assistant on the old MSI 340 did not work. VirtualBox would not start on that old machine. I have installed Home assistant on a raspbery pi 4. The procedure is quite straightforward. The home assistant documentation is well documented. Essentially, if everything goes fine once home assistant is booted on the pi, you will access it from your laptop, desktop or cell phone.

I will eventually try to put home assistant on my toshiba satellite, if it seems useful. They provide a virtual machine compatible with Vbox.

[francois]

Finally, I went for openhan, the community is very helpfull. They are quite motivated. Almost as much as are the members of the Porteus community.

I have tried to install openhab under Porteus. It did not worked. Maybe there could be a possiblility thru Nemesis with docker. There is a testing version of docker under Arch linux. I will see later for that.

Presently, I have the openhab system thru docker on my toshiba Satellite 340. My first steps with docker were not intuitive. But I think that my brain is beginning to understand the usefulness of that virtual system. Virtualbox becomes obsolete with docker.

More information and development to come.