Re: USB controlled mains switch

On 2/13/25 17:04, Adrian wrote:

In message <vol5gc$2v89p$1@dont-email.me>, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> writes

On 2/13/25 12:15, Theo wrote:

Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> wrote:

So far as I've been able to find out, HA is only installed as an image
on the SD card (using the RPI Imager), rather than manually installed on
an existing Pi image (e.g. apt install ...), so that means that the Pi
can only be used for what HA allows you to do.  Therefore, one downside
(for me) with HA is that I don't seem to be able to gain SSH access to
the PI.  I can access it via the web interface, and I can install a ZSH
shell on it, but that is in (I think) a Docker Container.  What I would
like to be able to do, which I can with my other Pis, is to run regular
health check stuff, CPU temp, free memory, free card space that sort of
stuff.  I can do that from the Docker Container, but I can't set up a
cron job to do it, and I haven't even tried getting it to email me a
daily summary.

 HA can be installed in several ways.

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I had no idea why I chose Domoticz over HA, it was a few years ago, but you present a compelling argument.
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My rpi4 Domoticz install is a 12 line docker-compose.yml.
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I already had MQTT.
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Domoticz works, lets me switch things on and off, immediately or scheduled, and provides me with historical usage graphs. Which is all I really want.
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 I've managed to get a PI to ask HA to turn my switch on and off, but I've not been able to get the PI to read the data used to generate the graphs, which I'd like to be able to do.  It would be useful to at least know if the switch is already on before I try to turn it on again ! Bonus points for being able to get the power consumption of the device it is controlling.
 

Try Domoticz, it is supposed to be much simpler than HA. Not as feature rich as HA, but maybe a better fit for a simple home setup. (Caveat: I've never used HA).

Dunno if it relates to you, but I had a similar SSH problem.
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I had a Gitea Container (a pretty UI git repo manager) needing to reserve the standard SSH port for git to work, this took over the host rPi host standard SHH port. My solution was to assign the Gitea container its own LAN IP address using a Docker Macvlan network drive, thus the Gitea container and the host rPI could each use the default SSH port as they had distinct IPs.
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That should be Macvlan network driver, not drive.

Until installing HA, I've never (knowingly) had any dealings with Docker.
>

Docker is brilliant! If they had had it when I was working, I wouldn't have needed to wear my brown trousers every release day, at least not so much :-). Although, I'm sure the bright young things of today will have introduced new complexity, so it is still easy to mess things up.
Nowadays, for me, it can make installing third party software simple, as opposed to a nightmare of conflicting environment.