While you can run HA as a container. I think it's a mistake - Its more complicated and has reduced features.

I would instead recommend people use HAOS instead - either running on dedicated hardware OR as a VM. Just dont run it from an SD card if you go down the Raspberry Pi/SBC route - it will kill the card from IO cycles.

I have an IOT VLAN on my network that all the IOT bits sit in, including WIFI devices. What internet access it gets (if any) depends on the device profile.

I tried splitting things up into multiple VLANs but a whole lot of things assume just a flat network, so things stop working if you get too fancy.

The happy path is to buy https://www.home-assistant.io/green/ and then go from there. That's what I did and it was a very smooth setup for everything. I've long resisted HA as I thought it's one extra thing to fiddle with but the whole process, the updates, adopting my devices was much nicer than expected.

I've since also bought https://www.home-assistant.io/connect/zwa-2/ and got rid of all my third party bridges (Ikea, Hue etc.). I also feel good about buying devices from them as it supports the project and the work they are doing on it.

I've tried using HA a couple years ago and gave up. It was too complicated to run it in a Pi4 - I'm an experienced software engineer, familiar with containers and Linux.

I was trying to get some of the IoT I have at home like pool equipment, lights, HVAC, blinds, etc. Some of the setup were an uphill battle looking for more information in forums and trying to figure out what was broken.

Recently I decided over the weekend to use Claude and write a small app that controls my pool equipment and then deployed it using Cloudflare Zero Trust (kind of a reverse VPN). What a joy! Not only I had lots of fun reverse engineering my pool equipment API (I didn't want to depend on existing libraries - which I know exist) but I managed to create a fun and custom UI with React that my kids and wife love using. For example, whenever the pool heater is on, it adds an animated flame to the UI and change the background to a red-ish color. Plus it has a bar chart that shows the pool temp progression (takes hours to heat it up) with an animated volcano colors. The theme of the app is beach/pool vibe.

I don't think anyone here would be that excited if we were using the lower-denominator that HA turns out to be. I know it's a very cool automation tool, but just not very exciting and pretty obscure to configure every equipment I have at home.

I've been thinking about writing a blog post with the details of my fun project, let me know if anyone is interested in this. So far I've done the blinds and pool equipment. Next will be HVAC and lights. Took me 1-2 weeks total for each using Claude in my spare time.

> Though it’s kind of unreal how complicated it is to set up HA and I literally do this for a living, both embedded sw and backend web dev.

I had the same thought after I joined a local group for Home Assistant users.

Everyone always talks about a happy path where you pick the right choices, use the right setup, and everything just works immediately. More often when people come to this local group's shared Slack channel it's because they're 10s of hours into trying to set up something that appeared to be simple. Then all of the old timers remember that they, too, suffered through something similar once and share what they can remember.

I think HA can be a lot of fun for people who like to experiment and debug, but if you're not the kind to be entertained by debugging your home's operation then it can feel like a chore. Some have an easy time setting it up and then get trapped when an upgrade breaks something or they try to add a new device with less than mature support.

You're making it complicated with all the VLANs. HAOS in a VM (proxmox helper scripts for one-line install), and HA has plugins for all the other things.

Just deny WAN access to the IoT junk you don't trust at the router, or for things like cameras, a separate switch for those. That usually makes sense, since they're one of the few devices that must be powered with PoE and doesn't require gig+ bandwidth. A cheap 100mbit PoE switch will handle a good number of cameras.

I also feel overwhelmed with HA homelab stuff.

HA on my RPI is just not reliable, requiring a reboot 4-6 times a year for reasons I don't understand. Frustration at being in the literal dark doesn't translate to the right mindset to root cause.

What I need is an opinionated guide on minimum viable virtualization, but so much of the resources online are from folks that are homelabing maximalists.

I feel the same temptation as parent to create a spartan solution.

HA on R-pi running for almost a decade without issues here, including moving house a few times. Sounds like you're making it difficult with that setup. Mine is connected to light switches, alarm, duckdns for outside network access, motorized blinds, garage door opener, hvac, landscape lighting. It's magically awesome and takes none of my time to maintain.

I went through a similar process with Home Assistant. And the kicker is that months or years down the line, you'll hit some feature that doesn't work with the Docker version (I've ran into a couple)

Sounds like the complexity is somewhat self-inflicted?

I set up HA from scratch on a new mini PC with Proxmox and HAOS in about 30 mins having never touched either before.

For VLANs, I just used port-based VLAN to attach it to the IoT VLAN, with firewall rule to allow UI access, but Proxmox has tagging support if preferred.

This is a pretty common experience with Home Assistant

> Though it’s kind of unreal how complicated it is to set up HA and I literally do this for a living, both embedded sw and backend web dev.

I just bought Home Assistant Green: https://www.home-assistant.io/green and a z-wave dongle

I run an HAOS vm via VirtualBox and then use Tailscale for a secured network.

Hate to be that guy, but I've had a lot of luck promoting gemini-cli to implement whatever I want in home assistant, and it's pretty good