Hass.io and Ethernet Gateway on PI

[pgv]

I have been happily running a Mysensors ethernet gateway on a PI that also hosted my Homeassistant server. I decided for various reasons to change over to Hass.io to host the Homeassistant server. That is all set up and working nicely.

I would like to re-install the Mysensors ethernet gateway on Hass.io

For those that don't know Hass.io is built on Resin.io which uses Docker containers to run applications. There is detailed information on how to access the GPIO pins. That suggests applications like the Mysensors gateway might not run out of the box.

Has anyone had experience with this? I'm happy to experiment but it would be nice to know it can be made to work before I embark on the exercise.

TIA

[gohan]

What are the main benefits of this kind of configuration compared with the standard installation?

[martinhjelmare]

@pgv

Just a guess, but I think you would need a hass.io addon that runs the mysensors raspberry pi gateway software, besides exposing the GPIO correctly.

[martinhjelmare]

@gohan

After writing the image to an SD card, you have 1 click install process of popular services like mosquitto, letsencrypt etc via addons. There are some featured addons and 3rd party addons already. Possibility to write your own addon too.

I would say hass.io is for people that don't want the hassle of maintaining a server with a handful of different services running or more. The goal is easy install, setup and maintenance of a fully featured home automation hub.

Limitations are that you can't install regular packages. You need a docker container (addon) for everything more or less.

https://home-assistant.io/hassio/

[pgv]

@gohan the benefits are probably marginal if you are competent in linux and have been using HA for a long enough period. In my case I only come back to it occasionally. It means some re-learning is necessary every time. The Hass.IO setup is relatively painless (although not perfect) and then there is a lot more intuitive control of what is happening with the controller.

@martinhjelmare is spot on with his description of what Hass.io is for. I suspect this, in the long run, will be the best way for controllers to work - gradually automating the automations - so the middle of the road hobbyist will be able to stay in the game.

I've setup the MySensors server on a spare Pi and that is good for me. I think it would be nice to have the server available as an add-on in the Hass.io server if anyone was up to the technical challenge.

Thanks for your input.

[martinhjelmare]

@pgv

If I had the time, I would be interested in learning more about how hass.io works and how to make an addon. But at the moment I don't think I have the time unfortunately. I'd be happy to answer questions on the parts of mysensors and home assistant I do know, if someone would want to take this on.

[ChoN]

Could you please copy/paste your setup from configuration.yaml, and your command line to compile MySensors with this setup?
I'm using Hassbian, and getting errors to validate the configuration.yaml file in HA
Thank you!

[swcrawford]

@pgv

I'm in the same boat. I used this board to add the PA/LNA version of the nrf24 radio to my Pi and it worked great. I'd love to see an addon made to avoid having another gateway device hanging around.

[ghiglie]

Hi there,
I'm resuming this old topic 'cause I'm trying to make a dockerized version of MySensors gateway, built on a debian image. It compiles easily, but I'm stuck on transport initialization. No one tried it?
Since I'm quite new to this, I can't give now a github link, but I'll do ASAP, so we can collaborate on this.