I own a couple TP-Link Tapo Wi-fi light bulbs. Currently, each family member installs an app on the phone to control the light bulbs. I wonder if there’s a way to do the same but in a browser (via docker app on my NAS). And because we may use smart devices of other brands in the future, it seems too much trouble to install yet another app on each phone.
That’s what home assistant is built to do. There is a docker version, but I hit limits pretty quick and fired up an old raspberry pi running HomeassistantOS
One app, many devices & brands, custom interfaces for each member.
It was many, many years ago, but if I recall some of the add-ons or installations didn’t work in the docker version. I started with docker on a Synology server, but I gave up on the whole project for a year until I found a Pi in a drawer I forgot I had.
HAOS just feels more “complete” to me.
Addons on HAOS are just Docker containers. When you use HA in Docker you have to just install the addons you like yourself as containers next to HA. It gives you more freedom to change settings for the “addons” when you install them yourself, but it is also a little more work. I think it is still worth it because you can also just install whatever you want. I run a minecraft server for example on the same server.
Ah. I’m running HA out of docker currently and haven’t hit any walls, but I’m not exactly pushing it. There’s an annoyance where I have to tell HA to trust my docker’s default IP, and there was some reverse-proxy messing around I had to do to get it working on my network. Once it’s up and loaded, it’s indistinguishably HomeAssistant.