Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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I've purposely ignored solutions like port forwarding since I wouldn't recommend them, but suffice to say there are several ways to achieve the same basic thing.

You are absolutely right, though, @leeshore, that if you do pay for Home Assistant Cloud then you're effectively donating back to the Home Assistant project overall. Current prices mean that's £65 per year which is not a huge amount especially if you use Home Assistant functionality extensively.

Agree, £65 to get that functionality while supporting the HA community is worth it.   

I use a duckdns address with nginx, works well and was intellectually enjoyable to set up.

On security, vpn tunnel sounds great. Even if the usual home network would not be such a big prize for anyone to breach..

I think the current version of HA makes it a bit simpler to be accessed remotely than when I looked for options, but the duckdns option (using some packages to manage certs automatically) survived those changes without any config adjustments. 

Posted by: @batpred

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Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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I've purposely ignored solutions like port forwarding since I wouldn't recommend them, but suffice to say there are several ways to achieve the same basic thing.

You are absolutely right, though, @leeshore, that if you do pay for Home Assistant Cloud then you're effectively donating back to the Home Assistant project overall. Current prices mean that's £65 per year which is not a huge amount especially if you use Home Assistant functionality extensively.

Agree, £65 to get that functionality while supporting the HA community is worth it.   

I use a duckdns address with nginx, works well and was intellectually enjoyable to set up.

On security, vpn tunnel sounds great. Even if the usual home network would not be such a big prize for anyone to breach..

I think the current version of HA makes it a bit simpler to be accessed remotely than when I looked for options, but the duckdns option (using some packages to manage certs automatically) survived those changes without any config adjustments. 

 

I would say you've probably chosen the most complicated of the alternatives to set up and it might well not be right for quite a few others for exactly that reason. However, your comment about "intellectually enjoyable to set up" highlights how what's the right solution for one person may well not be the ideal for another. I imagine you've learned a lot about your network connectivity as a result and there's a significant value in that.

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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I would say you've probably chosen the most complicated of the alternatives to set up and it might well not be right for quite a few others for exactly that reason. However, your comment about "intellectually enjoyable to set up" highlights how what's the right solution for one person may well not be the ideal for another. I imagine you've learned a lot about your network connectivity as a result and there's a significant value in that.

Sort of, it was fun setting up the containers (as it all runs in the thin pc). As I expected, the docs are a bit limited for some of these components.

What was not expecting was it would survive the constant improvements in the HA core and OS. Always a good surprise. 

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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Posted by: @kevh

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@majordennisbloodnok Pardon my ignorance, but this means nothing to me.

Should it, I wonder?

Quite possibly not, @kevh.

Something that seems to be particularly important for a lot of GivEnergy customers is the ability to control their setup when away from home. This is a big plus for anything cloud-based, but Home Assistant - the preferred plan B for many - is purely locally hosted. There are several ways of making one’s local Home Assistant instance available over t’interweb and Cloudflare tunnels are one option. It so happens it’s my preferred one, too.

If you don’t have something local on your home network that you want to be able to access when you’re out of the house, this is all irrelevant for you. If that is, however, something you want to achieve, it’s a topic in itself and perhaps deserving of a thread of its own; just say if that’s the case.

 

Many thanks for your, and the subsequent, answers tk question.

Whilst not a Luddite I do like my IT to be a solution rather than a new hobby and I also fall into that category of GE customers who desire plug and play solutions. 
So, HA is definitely not on my horizon and I suspect that the promised GE Software solution for £5 a month will meet my needs.

Thanks again for explaining although I admit that 95% went over my head 🤣.

Posted by: @editor

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Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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If that is, however, something you want to achieve, it’s a topic in itself and perhaps deserving of a thread of its own; just say if that’s the case.

The Cloudflare tunnels sound very interesting and I think it definitely merits its own thread. 

An incredibly enlightening piece on the subject by @majordennisbloodnok: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/other-renewables/home-automation-and-the-cloud-is-there-a-better-way

Posted by: @editor

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Posted by: @editor

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Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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If that is, however, something you want to achieve, it’s a topic in itself and perhaps deserving of a thread of its own; just say if that’s the case.

The Cloudflare tunnels sound very interesting and I think it definitely merits its own thread. 

An incredibly enlightening piece on the subject by @majordennisbloodnok: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/other-renewables/home-automation-and-the-cloud-is-there-a-better-way

 

Many thanks for the link, Mars. 
I have read the relevant posting, it is indeed very well set out, and I appreciate that.

Yet I can't help but feel that as a typical owner of an ASHP, a small PV array and battery, this is all well OTT and can only serve to deter large scale adoption of these much needed technologies.

There must be a better alternative, surely.

Posted by: @kevh

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Yet I can't help but feel that as a typical owner of an ASHP, a small PV array and battery, this is all well OTT and can only serve to deter large scale adoption of these much needed technologies.

There must be a better alternative, surely.

Fully agreed and there is an alternative which for many will be better, namely to use the native controllers.  I don't have a battery but I do have PV and an ashp.  The ashp native controller does everything I need and much more besides, the PV need no control.  

I chose octopus go which is a simple tou tarrifs, easy to use fixed times.  I could use my car's native timer to ensure it's charged at cheap rate.  For this I chose to use HA to control a relay, but only because I wanted to to experiment.  Nevertheless there is a clearly labelled manual override on a physical switch which bypasses the ha control completely.

Most of this tech comes with pretty capable native controllers that can work without the cloud.  If you want to do something very sophisticated like adapt to octopus agile then that's your choice, but expect it to be more complex.  If you alternatively do something simple then you don't generally need to do anything complex.

My personal view is that infrastructure which is mission critical to the house should work without the cloud and be usable by the least technically capable person in the house.

Where tech firms go bust, as some inevitably will, the consumer may be left high and dry if the essential features (as opposed to the nice to haves) are cloud dependent.  So check before you buy!  I returned a Sonos soundbar when I read the licence agreement, because it was clear that I could be held to ransom and for a loudspeaker that's just not acceptable.

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @kevh

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My personal view is that infrastructure which is mission critical to the house should work without the cloud and be usable by the least technically capable person in the house.

Yes, that is exactly my point. 
I am no Luddite, I have used Agile and controlled it through a beta Octopus Labs app which was actually easy to use and enabled some complex scheduling. Now on a Cosy tariff so no longer needed.

And I meddled with PDAs before smartphones were a thing. Ha ha.

The thing is, if the Government wants to encourage the average household to adopt new tech that IS house critical, then maybe the MSC (or is it MCS) minimum spec should mandate that basic local control? 
IMO it just isn't readonable to expect Joe Public to accept the risk of loss of control if the only real alternative is HA. 

Posted by: @kevh

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The thing is, if the Government wants to encourage the average household to adopt new tech that IS house critical, then maybe the MSC (or is it MCS) minimum spec should mandate that basic local control? 
IMO it just isn't readonable to expect Joe Public to accept the risk of loss of control if the only real alternative is HA. 

Is there actually any example of something that doesn't meet the spec you outline?

Whatever the answer I agree it's not reasonable, but that's how capitalism works particularly if there is an opportunity for annuity revenue.  Caveat Emptor! 

As a country we predominantly elect a government that is ideolocally disposed to low regulation - 52 years out of 80 since the second world war.to be precise - and regulation of this type takes a long time to develop because of the inherent complexity and high level of opposition.  Furthermore it is unlikely to be top priority for an incoming government in a first term.   Thus I think your wish is unlikely to occur unless we consistently change our voting habits.  

That said the EU is relatively good at this sort of thing so we might one day benefit from an EU regulation of this nature if it's not economic for manufacturers to carve out an exception for the UK market.

Posted by: @kevh

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Posted by: @kevh

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Yet I can't help but feel that as a typical owner of an ASHP, a small PV array and battery, this is all well OTT and can only serve to deter large scale adoption of these much needed technologies.

There must be a better alternative, surely.

 

 

Fully agreed and there is an alternative which for many will be better, namely to use the native controllers.  I don't have a battery but I do have PV and an ashp.  The ashp native controller does everything I need and much more besides, the PV need no control.  

Yes and no.

Native controllers generally do a good job controlling what they’re designed to control, but they normally work independently from other native controllers. If your EV is plugged in and the sun shines, you may well want to tell the car to start charging in an eco mode, but the inverter won’t know you don’t want the EV to drain your home battery. Your heat pump, inverter and car may have been designed to work with ToU tariffs but they’re blissfully unaware of each other and so act like islands.

@kevh, the last thing you said is the most important IMHO; there really should be a better alternative. If we can get all sorts of smart home kit that says it works with Matter or Alexa or Homekit, it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of mankind to get some kind of standardisation for heating systems, inverters and cars. I use Home Assistant so I can get everything playing nicely together but it annoys me there isn’t currently a more plug and play solution for the average homeowner. The more HA proves it can be done, the more the manufacturers of big ticket items should be hanging their heads in shame.

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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Yes and no.

Native controllers generally do a good job controlling what they’re designed to control, but they normally work independently from other native controllers. If your EV is plugged in and the sun shines, you may well want to tell the car to start charging in an eco mode, but the inverter won’t know you don’t want the EV to drain your home battery. Your heat pump, inverter and car may have been designed to work with ToU tariffs but they’re blissfully unaware of each other and so act like islands.

Well yes, but thats a level of complexity thats a nice to have not essential, so expecting regulation to mandate that it can be cloud independent is somewhat optimistic to say the least (and definitely counter cultural in the UK).  You don't need this level of sophistication and please bear in mind that regulation (the industry will argue) stifles competition.  Remember the enormous fuss when the EU mandated usb charging, something relatively simple and hardly an area where manufacturers genuinely differentiate!

As it happens I deal with the opportunity very simply.  I export at 12p and import at 7p at night.  So its more cost effective (and a whole lot simpler) just to export the excess solar and charge the car at night.  No link needed between the two.

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of mankind to get some kind of standardisation for heating systems, inverters and cars.

I was told at last years installer show that the EU is considering standardisation for heating systems, which would simplify the task of third party controllers (and make installers jobs easier).  However with Vaillant being German and a pretty strong French heating industry I suspect it will prove a challenge!

Posted by: @jamespa

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Well yes, but thats a level of complexity thats a nice to have not essential, so expecting regulation to mandate that it can be cloud independent is somewhat optimistic to say the least (and definitely counter cultural in the UK).  You don't need this level of sophistication and please bear in mind that regulation (the industry will argue) stifles competition.  Remember the enormous fuss when the EU mandated usb charging, something relatively simple and hardly an area where manufacturers genuinely differentiate!

I have a feeling you misunderstand me, @jamespa. I don’t advocate regulation here at all. What I advocate is that consumers be made aware of what’s easily possible so they can start demanding the manufacturers do better. That’s one of the fundamental reasons I’ve written as much as I have about Home Assistant; not because I think it’s the mainstream answer but because it demonstrates what is not only achievable but also practical.

Even if the manufacturers don’t do it, I can foresee the possibility that small startups may come up with little dongle-type interfaces that are compatible with all the major smart home protocols and just need to be plugged in locally to the heat pumps, inverters and so forth. The pressure of consumer demand can yield results in more than one way.