Hassberry-Pi: Part 1

Setting up Home Assistant for Z-Wave, MQTT, Discord, and Raspberry Pi integration

Automation

Documentation

Author

John Vivian

Published

March 3, 2023

Praise the Omnissiah

My Custom Home Assistant UI. Details in Part 2

Every young transhumanist dreams of the day they merge with the great singularity… but until then, there’s home automation and intra-network device integration to get a whiff of extrasensory perception. Home Assistant (or hass) consolidates temperature sensors, motion detectors, cameras, computers, phones, and more into one extensible and configurable platform that can be run completely locked down on a local network away from the prying eyes of Jeff Bezos.

I had been wanting to check out hass for a while after a good friend got me excited about it, but hadn’t wanted to shell out the money for a NUC. I realized I had a decent Windows Surface laying around from grad school that I wasn’t using and turned it into a server. As a masochistic exercise I forewent reformatting with linux (in case Surface-specific issues arose) and did everything in WSL2 – the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Part 1 covers:

Installing and running hass in WSL2 on a Windows machine
Setting up a Z-Wave USB Stick in WSL2
Running the associated Z-Wave server in Docker
Running the associated MQTT server in Docker
Communicating from the WSL2 server to the rest of the local network

Dependencies

Windows WSL2
Conda for hass environment
- Note: I have not had any issues using this approach, but there are apparently some Supervised features that are not available using the Python Core version of hass.
Docker on Windows with WSL2 integration

All commands and activities takes place inside WSL2 except for a few sporadic uses of elevated PowerShell.

Create a project directory
- mkdir /srv/homeassistant && cd /srv/homeassistant
Set up environment
- conda env update -f environment.yml

environment.yml

name: hass
channels:
  - defaults
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python=3.9
  - homeassistant
  - pycountry
  - aiohttp-cors

USB tools for WSL2

In WSL2, install tools for USB

install-usb-tools.sh

sudo apt install linux-tools-5.4.0-77-generic hwdata
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/usbip usbip /usr/lib/linux-tools/5.4.0-77-generic/usbip 2

Attach USB Z-Wave stick to machine

Note

I bought a “no drivers needed” Zooz 700 Series Z-Wave Plus S2 USB Stick

USB forwarding to WSL2

Warning

The below commands happen in Windows PowerShell Run as Administrator

List devices to ensure Z-Wave stick is present.

usbipd wsl list

Note

Mine came up under BUSID 2-2 called Zooz_ZST10_700_Z-Wave_Stick

Atach the USB to the WSL2 instance

usbipd wsl attach --busid 2-2

Launch home assistant

After installing the dependencies, launching hass should simple.

cd /srv/homeassistant/
conda run -n hass hass

Open a browser to localhost:8123 to see the hass Dashboard

Launch Z-Wave server

launch-zwave-server.sh

# Launch Z-Wave server
docker run --rm -p 8091:8091 -p 3000:3000 --device=/dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/zwave \
-v $(pwd)/store:/usr/src/app/store zwavejs/zwave-js-ui:latest

Warning

Apparently using /dev/ttyUSB0 cause issues as the name can change, but I have not encountered any.

Update Z-Wave server permissions

By default, the Z-Wave server running in the docker does not support home assistant

Go to localhost:8091
Settings → Home Assistant → WS Server

Home assistant should now be able to integrate Z-Wave automatically.

Settings -> Devices and Services -> Integrations tab -> Add Integration -> Search Z-Wave JS and install

Port Forward from WSL2 to machine

In PowerShell as Administrator

Get local IP address of windows host running wsl2/hass. IP address to connect to is bolded (look for IPv4 in the list of IPs).

Get-NetIPAddress
IPAddress         : **192.168.1.9**
InterfaceIndex    : 5
InterfaceAlias    : Wi-Fi
AddressFamily     : IPv4
Type              : Unicast
PrefixLength      : 24
PrefixOrigin      : Dhcp
SuffixOrigin      : Dhcp
AddressState      : Preferred
ValidLifetime     : 18:43:44
PreferredLifetime : 18:43:44
SkipAsSource      : False
PolicyStore       : ActiveStore

Next, get the WSL2 IP (in WSL2 not PowerShell) via ifconfig

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet **192.168.42.81**  netmask 255.255.240.0  broadcast 192.168.17.255
        inet6 fe82::211:5dwf:fec9:ce26  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:15:5d:e9:ce:56  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 12089  bytes 1368012 (1.3 MB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 10906  bytes 1009285 (1.0 MB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 61536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::2  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 26263  bytes 2461138 (2.4 MB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 26263  bytes 2461138 (2.4 MB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

Allow the port through the firewall

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="HASS Protocol" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=8123

Set up the port-forwarding / portproxy using the address in inet

netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 listenport=8123 connectaddress=192.168.42.81 connectport=8123

Home Assistant should now be accessible on the internal network via the IP of the windows machine or the phone app.

Use a static IP!

Any local server should have a static IP set or have a registered IP through DHCP. Google “Windows static IP” and you should be good to go.

MQTT

Running MQTT is a breeze after setting up the Z-Wave server and handling the port-proxying for hass. This guide explains the set up in detail which I will list the core steps below. I set up MQTT to pass messages between my desktop computer and hass using hass.agent.

mkdir -p /srv/mosquitto/config
mkdir -p /srv/mosquitto/data
mkdir -p /srv/mosquitto/log

Add the following file to the config dir

mosquitto.conf

persistence true
persistence_location /mosquitto/data/

user mosquitto

# Listen on all interfaces 
listener 1883

#Allow connection without authentication
allow_anonymous true

log_dest file /mosquitto/log/mosquitto.log
log_dest stdout

Run the container

docker run -it \
--name=mqtt \
-v /srv/mosquitto/config:/mosquitto/config \
-v /srv/mosquitto/data:/mosquitto/data \
-v /srv/mosquitto/log:/mosquitto/log \
-p 1883:1883 \
eclipse-mosquitto

Note

You will need to use the same netsh approach used to forward the hass 8123 port here to foward port 1883 and allow it through the firewall.

To add credentials:

docker exec -it <containerID> sh

(mqtt in our case due to --name=mqtt)

mosquitto_passwd -c /mosquitto/config/credentials <username>

Update the conf file

mosquitto.conf

persistence true
persistence_location /mosquitto/data/

user mosquitto

# Listen on all interfaces 
listener 1883

#Allow connection without authentication
allow_anonymous true

log_dest file /mosquitto/log/mosquitto.log
log_dest stdout

password_file /mosquitto/config/credentials

Edit the configuration file to add to hass

configuration.yaml

mqtt:
  broker: <brokerip>
  username: <mqtt_username>
  password: <mqtt_password>

Hassberry-Pi: Part 1

Dependencies

USB tools for WSL2

USB forwarding to WSL2

Launch home assistant

Launch Z-Wave server

Update Z-Wave server permissions

Port Forward from WSL2 to machine

MQTT

Touch Panel Dashboard

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