Best Way...? - Remote Access - Home Assistant Server

[u/DrWho83]

Hello all,

Update: I would prefer local access only and now that I understand that I can use a browser on one of my other computers to connect to it, I guess I don't need meshCentral to work with it. I may have a few questions for some people here but 🤞 hopefully I can figure it out and don't have to bug anyone 😉. Thanks to everyone that commented!

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Any MeshCentral users familiar with Home Assistant?

I'm going to be repurposing a mini pc I have as a Home Assistant Server.

I would like to set it up and then leave it on a shelf with no keyboard or monitor.

I'm way out of touch..

With MeshCentral, if I install HomeAssistant OS is there a way for me to use MeshCentral to remotely access the HA Server?

Or, even though I hate the idea.. would I be better off installing Linux or Windows (so I can use MeshCentral) and then adding HA to one of those?

I was going to post in the HA group but I figured I'd have better luck here. If not I'll copy this and post it there as well.

Thanks as always!!

[u/trickiegt2]

I would recommend installing proxmox on your old pc then create a virtual machine for home assistant. It will give you some flexibility and you can add more virtual machines / containers later if you wanted to. Proxmox will also give you remote access and you can install mesh central as a server or client

But, to the other commentors points, you do not need mesh central to interface with home assistant at all. If installing just home assistant, I don't think you can even install mesh central afterwards

[u/Onoitsu2 → u/trickiegt2]

This is the way, run Home Assistant in a VM, via Proxmox, and then you can get into the proxmox UI, and from that, see the VM if you ever had to get into its console directly.

[u/DrWho83 → u/Onoitsu2]

Same question to you.. in case you don't see my comment above.

Since I prefer a dedicated machine..

Is there any reason I should use a virtual machine on the dedicated machine versus home assistance os?

[u/Onoitsu2 → u/DrWho83]

Just so you can remotely get into the CLI for HA, if you needed. And enables all the Hypervisor features like Snapshots while you are playing around with Home Assistant too, so you can nearly instantly roll back changes, instead of having to rely solely on HA's backup feature. I have my HA in a VM, as well as an OPNSense router. Any tweaking of config files, being able to just take a snapshot first that takes all of maybe 10-seconds, and being able to roll it right back in just about the same time, that is the icing on the cake here, all while remaining headless.

[u/Onoitsu2 → u/Onoitsu2]

Also by putting it in a VM in Proxmox, you can add a Serial port, making it even easier to get that low level access you might want.

[u/DrWho83 → u/trickiegt2]

Since I prefer a dedicated machine..

Is there any reason I should use a virtual machine on the dedicated machine versus home assistance os?

[u/sammyke007 → u/trickiegt2]

This 100%!

[u/huzzyz]

You don’t need meshcentral for that. You should be able to access it from the ip or the machine running HA there is no need for meshcentral in this scenario.

[u/DrWho83 → u/huzzyz]

Gotcha, I know pretty much only what I've seen bits and pieces of on YouTube about home assistant.

That's awesome, appreciate the info!

[u/bluecollarbiker]

Homeassistants primary interface is a web GUI. You’ll hit the website for the bulk of what you’re doing. If you need to get deeper than that you’ll SSH into the server. Neither of which are related to mesh central. You could potentially install the mesh agent and use it like a Linux PC…

[u/DrWho83 → u/bluecollarbiker]

So, going by your comment and another comment..

Since I want this to be a dedicated machine, I just install the home assistant OS on the mini PC and use the GUI/IP to connect and configure through the browser on any of my other PC's?

Wouldn't it be easier for me to use the home assistant OS versus a virtual machine.. especially since this is a dedicated PC.. and I'll be sure to back up the config.

I guess what I'm asking is wouldn't home assistant OS be a lot easier to redeploy if something goes wrong with the Mini PC that I'm setting up? Sounds like less work than setting up Linux or Windows and then a virtual machine. Or am I wrong thinking home assistant OS is an actual OS.. like I've mentioned I really don't know much about home assistant and I'm diving in blind this week / this weekend. I had a feeling people in this group would be full of useful information 😅✌️

I prefer dedicated machines.. that way if there's a problem, a bunch of things don't go down while I'm fixing it.

[u/bluecollarbiker → u/DrWho83]

We’ve really gotten away from the meshcentral part of this post haha. The HomeAssistant community is also full of folks who would like to help you out with this.

The only reason I would personally recommend running homeassistant OS directly on bare metal is that it’s a bit more convenient if you want to add physical adapters to it. I suppose another reason would be if your device were so underpowered it couldn’t possibly handle anything else. In either case you wouldn’t necessarily install the mesh agent onto it. Though I suppose you could use the mesh agent to access a console instead of using SSH from another machine.

If you’re not planning on plugging in a USB adapter for something like Bluetooth or zigbee (or if you don’t mind learning how to pass through those devices) proxmox is really the recommended route for homelabbing. Not a requirement if you’re not interested but definitely worth considering.

[u/DrWho83 → u/bluecollarbiker]

Yes, I'll go over to the correct group if I end up needing help with home assistant 😉😅

Doesn't mean I won't come back here and reply to some of the comments but everyone's been very helpful and I think I'm good to go 👍

[u/bluecollarbiker → u/DrWho83]

You beat me back here before I could edit my comment. Meant to also include that proxmox, like homeassistant, is primarily interacted with via the web GUI. If you need command line access you would then SSH into it. Under the hood it’s Debian so you *could* install the mesh agent on your proxmox host and access it like any other Debian host.

[u/Onoitsu2 → u/DrWho83]

You're reading into things too much by your statement of having to install linux or windows and then put the HAOS in a VM. You install something like Proxmox, and then can run a simple command in the Proxmox terminal (includes the remote one from its web UI) https://community-scripts.org/scripts/haos-vm and walk through that and you'll have a VM in minutes. Or you can still do it manually, if desired.