Using Home Assistant OS for Scalable Hotel Automation

[next gyro]

Hey everyone! 👋

We’re working on a hotel automation project and using Home Assistant OS (HAOS) on a dedicated mini PC.

We’ve got:
• Zigbee-based Akubela HyPanel F51 thermostat (for HVAC)
• Tuya Wi-Fi clamp power meters (Room 1 & Room 2)
• Nabu Casa for secure remote access + multi-user login for hotel staff
• Branded dashboards (10s refresh, CSV/PDF downloads, graphs)
• Optional: OTA update UI, technician view, WhatsApp alerts

Currently trialing in 2 rooms with plans to scale to 100+.

Any advice or best practices for:

• Scaling HAOS in multi-room setups?
• Graphing/logging with InfluxDB or Grafana?
• Role-based dashboards or user access?

Would love your thoughts — thanks so much! 🙏

[brazen hawk]

home assistant is not designed for this purpose. and largely my advise is to be extremely careful

there is not currently role based user stuff using the normal interface. there are some ways to limit what is displayed on something like a wall mounted tablet but its not fully secure and there is a risk that any user could start messing with any and all devices.

if you want custom dashboards with limits for guest interaction etc... then you are likely better off writing a dedicated frontend which you then display to people. you can do any restrictions on that system which can then communicate with home assistant itself via API.

i messed arround with influx/grafana ages ago and it worked well enough but i havent touched it in ages.

[next gyro]

Thanks a lot for the heads-up — really appreciate your input!

Just to clarify our use case:
This isn’t guest-facing at all. We're not giving access to hotel guests or public displays.

It’s strictly for the hotel’s admin/engineering team to:

Monitor HVAC and power usage in each room

View temperature trends and energy graphs (auto-refresh every 10s)

Download graphs/data regularly and upload to their internal cloud

Use a custom-branded dashboard (with their logo/colors)

We’re running Home Assistant OS on a dedicated mini PC with Nabu Casa for secure remote access by only 1–2 staff members. No multi-user editing or tablets involved.

Right now it's a 2-room trial. If the hotel likes it, we may build a dedicated frontend later for deeper control and permissions — but HA is perfect for this controlled phase.

Thanks again for the heads-up — your comment really helped us validate the scope and plan safely. 🙏

No editing, no tablet UIs, no navigation.
Just clean, read-only dashboards for internal ops

If this succeeds, sure — we’ll level it up with a dedicated frontend

[brazen hawk]

awesome, glad you understand the issues at play. sounds like a cool project. people use home assistant in various places.
things like this can be handy for "shutting down unoccupied rooms" to save power etc...

perhaps for data output you could look at exposing grafana and just using grafana dashboards. although i cant remember exactly how permissions and stuff work with it as its been a while

[next gyro]

Thanks! Really appreciate the support — and yes, you’re spot on.

We’re already looking into automating energy-saving measures like shutting down unoccupied rooms, reducing HVAC load when no one’s inside, etc. That’s definitely in the next phase once the basic monitoring and reporting is validated.

Totally agree on Grafana — we’re planning to expose it (secured behind reverse proxy or VPN) just for the engineering team to interact with:

Real-time + historical graphs

Energy usage trends

Downloadable CSV/PDF reports

If you ever get back into Grafana and recall anything about role-based dashboards, would love to hear it — especially if there’s a way to show a read-only room view per staff member or floor.

Thanks again for the input — it really helps solidify the direction we’re taking! 🙏

[next gyro]

I’ve actually been in home automation for over 8 years now, working across two countries — mostly in residential and light commercial spaces.

When I heard this hotel requirement, it immediately caught my attention.
The scale, the energy-saving potential, and the ability to give real data to engineering teams — it felt like the kind of project where open-source can really shine if done right.

If we can make this work even at a 2-room scale and prove the ROI through real data and graphs, I truly believe we’ll have something that’s both impactful and scalable — without relying on bloated proprietary BMS systems.

Really appreciate all the feedback here — this is what makes the HA community great. 🙌

I will share the hardware info as well once everything was finalized.

[icy panther]

I have heard this thing before in Arduino/ESP32 groups. Using something not designed to be installed / used in other environments. Security apart, money rots everything

[next gyro]

Totally hear you and yeah, I’ve seen that same sentiment pop up in the Arduino/ESP32 world too.

You're right: Home Assistant wasn’t designed for large-scale commercial deployments and neither were Arduino boards, technically. But what I’ve found over the years is that when used thoughtfully, with proper isolation, security layers, and clear scope, these “non-enterprise” platforms can still solve real problems extremely well especially when traditional systems are overkill, overpriced, or locked down.

And you nailed it money does tend to rot things, especially in this industry.
That’s why it’s exciting to explore something like this with an open-source foundation, a light footprint, and full transparency. If it doesn’t scale perfectly, we adapt. If it works, it opens doors for a different kind of solution more accessible, more flexible, and not locked into vendor politics.

Appreciate your honesty and this kind of feedback helps keep the whole direction grounded. 🙌

[small coral]

Split problem in multiple subpart. For energy use emoncms and link to ha. Works rock solid.

Don't rely on wifi, use mesh network dedicated. Zigbee or matter over thread.

And do NOT use Tuya devices. Or zigbee / matter only (over wifi then...)

[next gyro]

Thanks for the thoughtful advice really appreciate it!

We’re actually approaching this exactly as you suggested:

Split into HVAC + energy submodules

Each floor has its own Zigbee mesh (no Wi-Fi-only reliance)

HA is running on HAOS with InfluxDB + Grafana works great for quick rollout + flexibility

We do use a Wi-Fi clamp meter (Tuya) temporarily for the trial, but long-term plan is to move to Zigbee-based meters only.

EmonCMS is great we considered it, but HA covers both automation + monitoring in one place for this use case. We may link the two via MQTT later if needed.

Appreciate the reminder on Tuya — keeping our eyes open as we scale.

[small coral]

Emoncms to ha is seamless. Believe me better have emoncms in the loop. Just my opinion. For meters use Bituo is made by a friend in China. Also sold as other brand on aliexpress. Can can you direct factory buy at good price if this can help you.

You had better master the hardware completely if you really make volume. For a poc it is ok on alliexpress. I can help you on this I have plenty of open source hardware I can share.

[next gyro]

Hi dbn,

Thanks for the valuable suggestions. EmonCMS integration definitely sounds like a solid choice for our long-term energy monitoring needs, and I’ll explore adding it as the primary logging layer while keeping Home Assistant for control and branded dashboards.

For power metering, Bituo seems like a great fit. A direct factory connection would be ideal for cost efficiency and reliability. For this POC, we can start with AliExpress units, but for large-scale deployment we’ll master the hardware and ensure a stable supply chain.

On the HVAC side, we plan to integrate Zigbee-based smart thermostats (e.g., Akubela HyPanel F51 or Saswell models) so we can capture both set/return temperatures and fan control, and feed that data into EmonCMS for analytics alongside power usage.

I’d also be interested in the open-source hardware you can share it would help us accelerate testing and deployment. Let’s discuss how we can collaborate further.

Thanks,
Karthik

[small coral]

Hello, no problem, I do hardware for 30 years. Firmware and others also. You are lucky I am in my zigbee phase. Finishing a complete (with all kind of device clusters including almost unsupported multistateinput and output with actions). I will create a git and a web page from hardware to ha with z2m. I have a lot of things for emoncms in python because I have one emoncms server for multisite energy, test and debug (I use it because way simpler to debug numeric things than graphana & co). I am currently developing a hardware board to fully evaluate zigbee full custom a to z look at other esphome, etc.. discord to find it. If you want me to add some hardware stuff for sensors or others feel free to shoot here. I own a company in Belgium we are developing in Belgium and producing in China from zero. Xian, the boss of Bituo is a friend also. I have direct contacts with Tuya, I went there a couple of time and the boss of BDM is my friend, he slept at home, if you need a pipeline. I am currently on esp32c6 ( tested nfr52 and 53 but too expensive for me as we buy esp32 per batches of 10.000) under arduino to evaluate faster (and it works great, also tested matter over thread) in order for my "how to do it" for people of HA and other diy. Tuya zigbee are great in order to do simple sensors / actuators because of cost and ease of development. Just a little bit too high level and lacks I/o and peripherals. Better send me an email here I can miss messages. [e-mail]