For a while now I've been trying to fully switch over from the SmartThings ecosystem over to Home Assistant.  Although Samsung is a great company and there was great support within the SmartThings community and developers when it was more open, there were a couple of things that I didn't like about the SmartThings ecosystem.  For one I didn't like that there was always a delay to process commands since they had to get sent to a cloud server to process, and then sent back to the hub to carry out the command. The other reason is that data and all the devices are not fully under my control.  And this is why I like the open source nature and self hosting that Home Assistant provides. 

I started moving over by installing Home Assistant on a Synology NAS with DiskStation Manager 7.1 with Docker.  (On a side note I'm hearing things that DSM 7.2 might not be so great with compatibility with docker.) However the Synology server doesn't seem to be compatible with the z wave stick that I have.  I've followed a lot of guides online on installing different drivers, but it just doesn't work like other Linux operating systems.

Then I've bought a Raspberry Pi 3 A, and that's just because it's almost impossible to source a Raspberry Pi B+ or 4 right now.  Installing on Home Assistant 2023.5.4 was giving too many memory issues, and 2023.6.1 wasn't much better.  At least I'm getting to run Home Assistant, but I'm still getting memory overload problems in the CLI.

I'll try a few more routes to get this going. I'm willing to turn an old Linux PC into a dedicated Home Assistant server, but it seems to be such a waste of an entire setup. I'll also try getting a new z wave USB stick. But I'm really hoping that those Raspberry Pi manufacturing issues resolve now that Sony is willing to help manufacturer some of the chips.

About the Author

John is one of the editors and helped start up the website. He's a DIY handyman and likes working on automating stuff for the smart home - smart? lazy?... or both!

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