I am making smart switches and plugs using the ESP32 platform. When we sell these devices, we want people to be able to control and view their devices using Home Assistant even over the Internet. What is the roadmap for enabling consumers to do this? (We do not want to have our device customers to deploy homeassistant cloud themselves)
#Is there a community version of home automation cloud that I can deploy to my own AWS account?
weary fox
grim yarrow
I am making smart switches and plugs using the ESP32 platform. When we sell thes...
why wouldn't they just use home assistant cloud?
weary fox
Dear Michael - thanks for responding! 1. Cost. I want to give the cloud service for free to customers of my devices. 2. I want to be able to modify and improve the cloud service myself.
clear holly
I mean, there are free ways for end users to access and control their HA instances remotely if they don't want to use the HA Cloud. There's also ways to improve ESP32 devices via firmware updates without you having direct access to their HA instances.
weary fox
Dear Ender - thanks for responding. Can you please point me towards a free way for a non-technical consumer/end user to control an ESP32 smart switch in their home - without using the home assistant cloud? (What I want to do is - to run my own cloud instance like Nabu Casa (which is a paid subscription service) and give it for free for customers of my devices.
perplexity is pointing towards homeway.io
Can I run multi-tenant HomeAssistant on the cloud - so that many customers of my smart devices can have their own accounts for managing their own devices?
grim yarrow
from a business prospective, this doesnt make a lot of sense? how much of a markup are you planning to try and have on a switch/plug that its profit margin pays for providing a free service to the user forever?
grim yarrow
Can I run multi-tenant HomeAssistant on the cloud - so that many customers of my...
no, home assistant is designed to be run locally. running it in someone's cloud is the opposite of what its design philosophy is.
weary fox
I see - so there is no open source version of what Nabu Casa is running
clear holly
That’s not what nabu casa is doing either
grim yarrow
NC cloud doesn't run the instance, they just provide service to help you access your own server
clear holly
And that can be done with out the NC service as well.
weary fox
aaaah I see ... I am new to HomeAssistant - what exactly is 'home-assistant-cloud'?
grim yarrow
it does a few things, but the remote access is just that. its a relay that allows you to connect to your own instance from outside your network without any extra network config.
they also give access to a TTS and STT service and a place to store encrypted backups
you must still host your own server
weary fox
I have built my device prototypes for controlling power outlets (smart plugs) - I used a custom built flutter app and configure and control things over WiFi. Now am thinking about the best way to enable people to control their things over the Internet - and was thinking of building my own cloud based service - but then I came across HomeAssistant and thought that I should not have to re-write the wheel and give the customers of my devices a UX that is as minimal and easy as possible (ideally they should not have to do any network or cloud config at all) Right now - I am handling multiple devices on the home WiFi using a Flutter App and mDNS discovery. There is no 'gateway'.
I see - so the relay will handle things like NAT hole punching/STUN/TURN etc ...
grim yarrow
write an integration that allows for your devices to be controlled by home assistant.
or just use ESPHome as your firmware. which integrates already.
weary fox
Will I have to ship a physical 'gateway' along with my devices?
and where will 'home-assistant-cloud' be running?
grim yarrow
i think you are totally misunderstanding what home assistant is
weary fox
apologies 😦
grim yarrow
it will not do what you are trying to do with it.
weary fox
Okay - so I will have to do something like this - ship a raspberry pi with HomeAssistant pre-installed on it, and my devices with the ESPHome firmware on it - and then use Nabu Casa or homeway.io to enable the customer to be able to control all the devices connected to the raspberry pi gateway. Does this sound - correct?
Also - is there a guide for writing custom HomeAssistant integrations, if I'm making a non-ESP device?
serene imp
Okay - so I will have to do something like this - ship a raspberry pi with HomeA...
No not correct. You do not have to ship anything except your device running ESPHome. That's it. The end user can choose if they want a Home Assistant server to talk to it and how they want to connect remotely.
fathom turtle
Yep, and attempting to providing remote access to your devices for free will cost you money (easy route for users but you have to front the bill for the server), or will cost your users time (for setting up the free routes).
weary fox
Won't the user need one of the things here - https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/
grim yarrow
Won't the user need one of the things here - https://www.home-assistant.io/insta...
if its news to you that home assistant users would need an installation of home assistant, you are perhaps not in the right business...
weary fox
Which is what I meant when I said 'ship a raspberry pi with HomeAssistant pre-installed on it, and my devices with the ESPHome firmware on it' - but then Tom said above that 'you do not have to ship anything except your device running ESPHome'
My customers will be people who are -not- tech savvy. I do not expect them to install HomeAssistant on their own. Hence - I said that I will need to give them a device that runs home assistant - perhaps a raspberry pi. Otherwise - option 2 is make my ESP32 devices Alexa/Google Home compatible.
grim yarrow
Which is what I meant when I said 'ship a raspberry pi with HomeAssistant pre-in...
if someone doesn't have a home assistant setup already then you could recommend that they buy a green. there's no need for you to ship something along with switches/plugs which is already a highly competitive market without complicating it.
weary fox
hmmm - retrofit smart electrical switches and home automation in semi-urban India is not very saturated/competitive yet - if the consumer does not already have a home automation gateway or maybe an Alexa/Google Home - I am trying to find the best possible solution to get them set up.
weary fox
For instance - manufacturers of smart bulbs in India do not mandate that the customer have alexa/google home, or any gateway for that matter, but they provide their own mobile apps and (most probably have their own custom) relay servers that allow people to control their bulbs over the Internet. But then, they are the big players who can afford to have their relay servers up and available for free to the end consumer.
fathom turtle
If I were in your position, I'd just focus on local control.
weary fox
That part is solved - we have a mobile app written using Flutter, which works.
(on the same WiFi network)
fathom turtle
Right, but getting free remote control is either hard to set up or costs money. There is no easy to set up route that is free.
and the free routes provide less network security
weary fox
Right - options - so we can 1. Make our devices Alexa/Google Home compatible, 2. Use ESPHome and sell a HomeAssistant gateway in a package (and recommend that they use Nabu Casa (or homeway.io) 3. Develop a cloud relay server with auth, device registry, API gateway, TURN/STUN ... once we develop it, run it with as minimal an op-ex budget as possible .... maybe use AWS IoT Core (?)
grim yarrow
Right - options - so we can 1. Make our devices Alexa/Google Home compatible, 2....
this sounds like you need to do market research
jolly violet
Tell them to buy this...
https://robu.in/product/home-assistant-green/
All loaded with HA, installed, and running HA. They can then cloose to further buy Nabu Casa or follow the documentation to make it work out of the home without buying nabu-casa.
This as-is will give full control on the customers own network of all the functions and esphome. full local control of your stuff and whatever else.
And pick whatever reseller. This looked like one based in India, but shop around.