Is adding Home Assistant the right way to go?

[British_Kiwi]

HI
I am really not sure whether this is the right section to post, so please move if need be.

I have my MM set up on RP5, have the usual google calendar, weather etc, planning on adding some other bits and pieces as I go on.

This year, we have got a new EV (XPeng) and now have Sigenstor battery and have updated our panesl. We are also going to add WIFI to our Daikin splits. I have already set up MMM-Pages and would like to have a page to cover our Sigenergy information with solar and battery info, have info about our car battery and eventually to have the Daikin stuff on there. I have found the module for Daikin, but not for the other things. Home Assistant does seem to already have these things and I am trying to work out whether it is best to try and develop MM modules to access these information (or put a request in), or to add Home Assistant modules via iFrame or something like that. If the latter, then I am a little stuck on how to proceed. I don’t have anything set up for Home Assistant, and I’m reluctant to wipe the RaspberryPi and start again with the HAOS. I have seen something about dockers, do I create a docker on the Pi to setup HA there? and can that be on there whilst MM is installed on the RPi? I seem to be going in circles. I will possibly ask about creating HA in a docker container in their forum, but was wondering if anyone here, knows which is the best approach for those with a lot of MM set-up already.
Thanks in advance.

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi there is a HomeAssisstant module that seems capable of displaying just about any element

MMM-HomeAssistantDisplay

and you should be able to have multiple instances on different pages…

I run HA in docker, not on HAOS( setup up that way to begin with)
first as an app, then moved to docker when I wanted to upgrade the host OS,
now moved to my synology nas box as the server

only thing you don’t get is the ‘easy’ Addons…

[British_Kiwi]

@sdetweil thanks Sam as always!! So if I install docker and then follow the HA install instructions for the container, then should be fine. I think i eventually found the correct instructions.
I do have a Synology NAS which I could possibly put it on, would need to check where to put it and what permissions.
Could I add docker directly onto the Pi?

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi for synology use the container manager community tool (added to package manager), HA install link https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/alternative/#install-home-assistant-container

Each App has its own compose file

You could put docker on pi 4/5

I run a mosquito mqtt server there too
And dozzle to be able to see all the container logs
And uptime-kuma to monitor apps
And watchtower to keep the containers up to date

I use zigbee devices, so run the zigbee2mqtt server there too
And the esphome server for ha integration of esphome devices (new ha assist devices for voice)

I Moved all my pi docker stuff to synology
here is a dozzle list of all the containers I am running on my synology 923+ nas, 32 gig memory

[Hilt]

@British_Kiwi

I too use HA in a container on Synology. I make the dashboards within HA and use iFrame’s to display them on the MagicMirror. This way you can make the dashboards as pretty as you like. You really don’t have limits.

To get some idea :

https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/19738/home-dashboard?page=1

Initially I was running an older version of MagicMirror and I had to add the following in the configuration.yaml file of Home Assistant to have them to display :

http:
  use_x_frame_options: false

To be fair, I haven’t tried excluding this since I rebuilt the MagicMirror using the latest build at the time. But it’s still in there today and isn’t causing any harm. It was more a HA workaround in any case

[British_Kiwi]

@Hilt @sdetweil sorry for the delay in response. School holidays, plus investigating options for heat pumps and keep getting distracted. I did manage to install Docker and Portainer (hadn’t seen your response yet) to my Pi and so am going to have a play with HA today. However, also going to check all your suggestions to see what can be useful :)

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi have fun. Lot to learn…

[British_Kiwi]

Hey Sam

Hope you are having a good week! I’m back! I have had a fun week playing with MM and HA and with a few issues with permissions which I finally fixed I am certainly getting there. So have a couple of questions for you (or anyone else reading along)

So my set-up is RPi5 with Bookwork. MM is on there and I have used MMM-pages - first page is things like my calendars, weather etc. Second page is currently my testing page, and am going to put the HA on there.

I have used Docker and Portainer on the RPi for HA. I have created a Dashboard for our solar and batteries etc. I followed the “Home Assistant - Recreate Synergy ‘Home’ Card #184” on here https://github.com/TypQxQ/Sigenergy-Local-Modbus/discussions/184.

I tried to add iFrame which is now read only so tried MMM-iFrame-Ping. As a basic test I tried to display our (Australia) ABC news site and it couldn’t be displayed. I even just tried google in case it couldn’t go in an iFrame and that didn’t pop up either.

I then tried MMM-HomeAssistantDisplay and have managed to get the title Home Assistant up but of course the templates on my code don’t exist, but I wanted to clarify something. For this module, can I display a dashboard, or do I have to build the page with templates. Does each template act like a “card”? I haven’t tried to do anything with templates as yet.

Any pointers? I like the idea of doing both ways, but the first doesn’t work and the second I think I might need to know about templates more.

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi Did you add the iframe statement above to the HA config file? Mentioned in
https://forum.magicmirror.builders/post/128421

I dont have a lot of experience with either approach
I used the sample from HoneAssistantDisplay to build a table of settings

And I just put a dashboard on a pages page w MMM- EmbedUrl
I didn’t size it so it’s just a corner
It didn’t work before adding the iframe stmt to ha config

For the module. I use the programmatic approach
https://github.com/wonderslug/MMM-HomeAssistantDisplay?tab=readme-ov-file#programmatic-sections

[Hilt]

@British_Kiwi

Try the following :

In your HA configuration.yaml file, include the following

http:
  use_x_frame_options: false

Restart HA first, wait for it to finish, then restart your MM instance to see if the iFrame shows.

If not, give this this older MM module a shot. It’s more straight forward than iFrame Ping and it works with custom button cards ( i use them in my notification area ).

Within HA, you can also make use of the Kiosk Mode HACS add-on to hide the header and/or sidebars. Once installed, you simply add the following at the top of your dashboard YAML using the Raw configuration editor ( this step is shown in the vid ).

kiosk_mode:
  non_admin_settings:
    kiosk: true
    ignore_entity_settings: true

[sdetweil]

I did have to logon thru the iframe for the dashboard to appear instead of the HA logon panel
the logon persisted across MM startups, at least close in time

the HomeAssistantDisplay module use the api token

[British_Kiwi]

@sdetweil and @Hilt

I have made progress (sort of). Before when I was testing the various versions of iFrames I hadn’t even tried linking to HA and was using basic websites and just couldn’t see it.

I commented out the HA Display one for now in case it was all throwing a wobbly and I tested that I could access the HA login screen from the monitor using the browser.

I have used this to add an iFrame with the URL for the HA:

           {
			module: 'iFrame',
			position: "fullscreen_above" ,	// This can be any of the regions.
			classes: "testing",
			config: {
				// See 'Configuration options' for more information.
					url: "http://xxx.xxx.xx.xx:8123/",
					width: "100%", // Optional. Default: 100%
					height: "100vh", //Optional. Default: 100px
					border: "1px",
				},
		},

I can now see it, but I cannot get it to fill the page. It is a very thin window at the top. I have tried changing height to 100%, but found something on the forum about vh. I have tried fullscreen, fullscreen_below and other sections and nothing seems to make it particularly big.

The other thing I have noticed is that on my first page “home” my google calendar is missing, or at least the data has gone. I am using MMM-CalendarExt3 and my Todoist (MMM-Todoist2) list has all gone too. the title is there, but no tasks. I had noticed that the calendar and page indicators etc needed updating so I tried that afterwards, but no luck. Is it because I have multiple places using URLs? The calendar has 5 google calendar’s, though the Todoist is using an API.

Apart from that, it is going well 😂

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi you dont want full screen_above, that puts it on top of every other module, hiding them

Try mmm-embedurl, works for me

[British_Kiwi]

@sdetweil . I’ll try that tomorrow. Just about to head to bed.

I think I might know why I lost my google calendar in the meantime. I had seen there were updates which I had been ignoring, but in the end i updated the calendar, pages and page indicator. I have since seen that the new MM update has impacts on the calendar and looks like my nodjs was an old version. I followed your instructions from here https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/19770/nodejs-version-update-issue/2?_=1759892047767 and have updated nodejs to v 22.18, but I still don’t have any calendars showing.

A problem for another night!

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi if you had used the upgrade script it would have been done for you

Nothing in the MagicMirror upgrade should have affected calendar.

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi MagicMirror is a 3 layer design

Full screen_below on the bottom
Module positions. (These will hide parts of fs_below)
Fullscreen_above on top (this will hide anything below it), great for a security panel when no one is around, for example

[Hilt]

@British_Kiwi

You can also try placing it bottom right and sizing by pixel count, increasing gradually until you reach your monitors full(ish) resolution

I haven’t tried full screen. But one of my configs looks like this :

                {
                        module: "iFrame",
                        position: "bottom_right",
                        header: "HOUSE STATISTICS",
                        config: {
                                url: "http://192.168.1.4:8123/mm-dash-right",
                                        width: "410px",
                                        height: "215px"
                }
                },

If I increase width, the iframe expands to the left. If I increase height, it expands up. Worth a shot.

[British_Kiwi]

@sdetweil and @Hilt

Sam, I usually use your script (not quite sure why I didn’t, blaming lack of sleep). I have run it and all running correctly. keep getting a message about environment variables, but have been running the following code which seems to sort it till the next time.

pm2 restart 0 --update -env

Thanks for giving more details about fullscreen below and above. I don’t have anything else on that page, so I am surprised why this didn’t fill up the screen.

@Hilt I ended up using your code about using bottom_right and after a bit of tweaking and I can now see it. just need to log in.

My main problem now (there is always one) , is that I still can’t get the calendar to populate or todoist. Of course, my last back up was not just before this stopped working and I think it was around the time I updated the module. However, I didn’t update the Todoist module so a bit baffled. I’ll have to check my code and see if I have inadvertently done something. I am using VSCode and doesn’t look like I have, but will go through it carefully after work. Here is what it looks like now:

I do have to tweak my sizing of the modules on my home page as there is a little overlap when everything is populated, but apart from that this page was working well.
Anyway , have a great day :)

[sdetweil]

@British_Kiwi ok

Calendarext3 gets its events from the default calendar module
Do you have that configured, and does it work?
To
Make it not show just comment out its position using // in front of that line

Now, because ext3 gets events from the default calendar module, and there couple be many individual calendars contributing events, the developer doesn’t want the screen to be flashing for individual updates

So there is a cycle, refresh interval, default 10 minutes
So every 10 minutes the events received since last time will be displayed

Now the first time you don’t want to wait 10 mins
So there is a waitFetch parm, 5 seconds

After 5 seconds, whatever events have arrived will be drawn, even if none, then we wait refreshInterval and do it again

You can increase the waitFetch time, side effect is NO Display til after that time limit

[British_Kiwi]

@sdetweil the default calendar isn’t working either! I have commented out ext3, I have reduced the calendar entries on the default calendar to just Australian holidays in case Google is having a fit! It just says loading. I had not touched any of this code in the config at all. I have seen there have been cases of calendar’s not loading last January and few again now. Is it worth me raising it on the github discussion or issue list?

https://github.com/MMRIZE/MMM-CalendarExt3/issues ?