Alternative to Home Assistant for ESPHome Devices

Hello,

My IoT/Home Automation needs are centered around custom built ESPHome devices and I currently have them all connected to a HA instance and things work fine.

Now, I like HA’s interface and all the sugar candy, however I don’t like the massive amounts of resources it requires and the fact that the storage usage keeps growing and it is essentially a huge, albeit successful, docker clusterfuck.

Is there any alternative dashboard that just does this:

  1. Specifically made for ESPHome devices - no other devices required;
  2. Single daemon or something PHP/Python/Node that you can setup manually with a few systemd units;
  3. Connects to the ESPHome devices, logs the data and shows a dashboard with it;
  4. Runs offline, doesn’t go into 24234 GitHub repositories all the time and whatnot.

Obviously that I’m expecting more manual configuration, I’m okay with having to edit a config file somewhere to add a device, change the dashboard layout etc. I also don’t need the ESPHome part that builds and deploys configurations to devices as I can do that locally on my computer.

Thank you.

lemann,

I went with the virtual appliance when I installed Home Assistant several years ago, turned out to be a great decision looking at how it’s architected. I only self-host the database separately, which i’ve found easier to manage.

the fact that the storage usage keeps growing

There should be a setting to reduce how long Home Assistant retains data for - I removed the limit on mine, however its possible that on newer versions they’ve changed the default

Hope you find a solution though - I think node red (capable of doing dashboards on its own) with something else is going to get you part way there.

TCB13, (edited )
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been doing this. I’m running HA under LXD (VM) and it works.


<span style="color:#323232;">$ lxc info havm
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Name: havm
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Status: RUNNING
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Type: virtual-machine
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Architecture: x86_64
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PID: 541921
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Created: 2023/12/05 14:14 WET
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Last Used: 2024/01/28 13:35 WET
</span>

While it works great and it was very easy to get the VM running I would rather move to something lighter like a container. About the storage I just see it growing everyday and from what I read it should be keeping for 10 days however it keeps growing. Almost 10GB for a web interface and logs from a couple of sensors, wtf?

I would be very happy with HA, really no need to move other stuff as long as things were a bit less opaque than a ready to go VM that runs 32434 daemons and containers inside it.

CapillaryUpgrade,
@CapillaryUpgrade@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Node-Red can do dashboards. I don’t know if it does data logging, but I would guess so since it can do dashboards. It also supports MQTT so it should handle ESPHome devices without a problem.

It’s made for automations (and great at it) but it can be a minimalist HA hub too.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Hmm… that’s interesting. I’ll have to explore further. Thanks.

b1g_bake,
@b1g_bake@sh.itjust.works avatar

How has home assistant become a resource monster? What kind of integrations are you using aside from ESPHome?

Zeoic,

Yeah, home assistant is tiny… I’m not sure what he expects? Does he need it to run on a pi zero or something? Lol

TCB13, (edited )
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Tiny you say… answer to what you asked: lemmy.world/comment/7101252

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not using any other integration. Isn’t this a resource monster?

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d26476df-d1b5-4afd-84ac-a4f737c4846d.png

I just don’t want to keep running an entire VM with their image. Something more simple that could be used on a LXC / systemd-nspawn container or directly on a base system would be nicer.

icanwatermyplants,

Consider running HA in a light weight systemd-nspawn container with minimal debian. No docker, only install the repositories you need. HACS if needed. Run your own database on the side somewhere and let HA use it.

By itself HA is fairly lightweight already.

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

I was trying to go that route with LXC actually and while it seems great what about the ESPHome addon? I’m not even sure if that thing is required to use ESPHome devices or not.

TheInsane42,
@TheInsane42@lemmy.world avatar

I’m running domoticz with an rflink interface for my rf433 devices. No clue if they support ESPHome, but you can check. It runs confined to my network.

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