Home Assistant

I use Home Assistant as my primary control panel for my smart home.

Setup

• Home Assistant as control panel for my smart home and host for automations.
• Zigbee2mqtt to connect Zigbee devices in my home.
• Mosquitto as MQTT Broker

Deployment

• All 3 services run on my home-server: A small Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 Tiny, attached via Ethernet to my Fritz!Box
• A Aeotec Zi-Stick for Zigbee is plugged into my server via USB.
  • The USB dongle is mounted into the Docker container of Zigbee2mqtt
• All 3 services are bundled in one Docker Compose definition
  • The containers for Home Assistant and Zigbee2mqtt are in 2 Docker networks:
    • A proxy network for ingress
    • A dedicated network for the 3 services
  • Traefik runs in a separate Docker Container as ingress service for all HTTP requests. It routes the traffic from external clients to the internal Docker containers.
    • Mosquitto needs no external access. It is used for communication between Home Assistant and Zigbee2mqtt only!

Schematic illustration of the Docker setup:

I really like this setup as it showcases Docker, Docker Networks and traffic routing in an easy way.

Zigbee2mqtt: Connected Zigbee IoT-Devices

With the Aeotec Zi-Stick and Zigbee2mqtt I avoid having multiple gateways for each vendor. I can connect devices from different vendors using just one USB-Dongle.

Schematic illustration of my Zigbee topology:

Device Types

• SONOFF
  • 02D: Smart thermometer / hygrometer
  • TRVZB: Smart thermostat
• IKEA
  • E2013: Window sensor
  • LED2109G6: Smart RGB Bulb
  • L2112: Smart LED stripe
• Philips
  • 929003017102: Hue wall switch
  • 929002398602: Hue button

For the sake of simplicity, I only included the device vendors and types in my network, not each device.

Home Assistant

This section is a work in progress!

I might or might not extend this section over the time…

Services I use

• AVM FRITZ!Box Tools: Get information from my router, i.e. which device is currently in my home
• Better Thermostat: Connect my thermometer with window sensors and thermostates
• Generic Camera: Connect to my TP-Link cameras
• Google Cast: Cast to my Google Nest Mini
• HACS: Additional services and extensions for Home Assistant
• MQTT: Connect to Mosquitto and thus to Zigbee2mqtt
• Philips Hue: Still some bulbs directly connected to the Hue Bridge…
• Scheduler: Create schedules for my thermostats
• Sun: Useful in some automations
• Sonos: Control my Ikea Symfonisk
• Spotcast: Cast music from Spotify to my Nest Mini
• Spotify: Use Spotify as music library
• Tuya: Controll some Wifi plugs

Schematic illustration of my Home Assistant services: