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.
I started on home assistant with just a couple Smart bulbs and oh boy has it gotten out of hand since then lol. Home bridge sounds good if that’s all that’s needed though.
Its so weirdly addictive, started with proxmox, then to home assistant, now I have frigate handling PoE cameras, every bedroom has a morning alarm light automation, the vacuum starts itself, its ridiculous
Home Assistant hates it if you install anything else on your server besides Home Assistant. Don’t even think about running other docker containers besides HA or you’ll get persistent nags and it’ll prevent you from updating without doing workarounds
I am running home assistant as a docker. I also run >10 other docker containers on the same server. It works fine. There are minor issues (like the „add to my home assistant“ button on the website does not work) but it is far from what you are saying.
I use Home Assistant for controlling my smart lights. They do support Docker, but I installed it as a VM with KVM. You get more features with it, such as add-ons. But you should definitely look into your options. They have a diagram on this page.
To be fair, the add-ons are just containers installed and managed by HA. In most cases, you can install all of them as separate containers via something like Docker, but configuration takes more steps (though you also get more control).
Example: I have HA, Eclipse mosquitto, zigbee2mqtt, zwave-js-ui, node-red, Grafana, and influxdb all running as docker containers on two different devices (my main HA host wasn’t ideal for Zigbee and zwave USB dongles, so those are on a Pi 4). The other containers are accessible separately or from within HA as iFrame panels.
I don’t know if tapo plugs are supported, but this git code lets you turn tplink kasa plugs into local server activated plugs so you don’t have to use tplink app for activation online. Then homeassistant is a great tool for control
Just throw it in a VM and try it out that way if you can. The Docker version is just the Home Assistant part but if you run the VM you can run HAOS which is the “Supervised” version that can install add-ons to. There is a way to run Supervised in Docker but it’s not supported (and when my version died it was devastating)
Thanks so much for the advice. Easy of use is a major concern for family members, however. My plan is to open the web page on a tablet and put it in the living room then the family doesn’t need to use a phone. I’ll look into both options.
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