Home Assistant

I currently use Homebridge but would like to change to Home Assistant.

I have a 5500PC interface connected to my server running C-gate, Toolbox, and SLCC. Homebridge runs on the same machine in a VM, and it all works very well.

All the guides I have seen seem to use a Raspberry Pi for running C-gate, but I'd sooner keep everything running on my server instead of adding more hardware.

Is this possible? Can I just point HA to the IP of my server instead of the Raspberry Pi? Anyone have this working?

Thanks!

 

Coincidentally this gentleman pinged me today with an updated C-Bus add-on for HA
https://github.com/wazza-aus/cbus2ha

 

Can it just speak to C-gate like Homebridge does?

I don't think I need all that MQTT stuff, do I really?

 

I find MQTT very useful, easy to setup, flexible and reliable.

 

Sorry I'm not sure if you understand my question. I'm wanting to know if this can all be done on a windows server. I don't want a Raspberry Pi and unnecessary software layers if I can avoid them. How do you have yours set up?

 

I was using Home Assistant with MQTT integration and C-Bus add-on all running in one Hyper-V container on windows. In years gone by some people encountered problems with the HA MQTT broker but I never have.

It was a hardware fault on the windows machine that meant I loaded HA OS on an older NUC I had spare, and it has kept working so I haven't bothered to change back.
Then a CNI failure caused a move to a 5500AC2, so no longer using the HA C-Bus add-on.

At a separate house I have HA running on Hyper-V but no C-Bus.

https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/windows/
Note the warning hyper-v does not support USB connections.

 

I have Homebridge running on Hyper-v at the minute, gonna spin up another vm and install HA and see if I can bring my C-Bus setup into HA so it'll be:

C-Bus RS-232 > C-Gate > Homebridge > HomeAssistant

Not sure if this will work, but will report back.

I just want my automations done locally, I want Google and every other piece of data stealing 3rd party crap out of my life permanently.

 

I don't know what your budget is, but if you can afford a NAC/SHAC/AC controller, get one and install Steve's script from here: https://github.com/autoSteve/acMqtt

It's bullet proof, supports everything, doesn't need C-Gate, pi's or anything else and just works!

It utilises MQTT in HA and it's very easy to configure...

Steve is amazing and responds to issues/ideas almost immediately. I ditched homebridge/c-gate etc. for Home Assistant, an AC2 and Steve's LUA script and never looked back. I used to run and assist in supporting the c-bus-Homebridge plugin but have moved away from this.

I had problems with the C-Bus for HA addon above with lighting groups not on 56 and support for devices was limited. Steve's script does everything, including measurement, fan controller, covers, DLT labelling from HA.

If you afford it, then go this way...

 

Thanks for the reply.

I've ditched Homebridge now and gone:
C-bus > C-gate > Home Assistant via a new plug in that doesn't require MQTT. Seems to work very well.

Also got a PAC getting delivered today so hopefully someone can help me with that too