Homeassistant5

In this story, we’ll explore HACS (Home Assistant Community Store), why it’s a game-changer, and how to get started with it.

Home Assistant is a powerful open source platform for home automation. For hosting, the use of a Linux VM in Azure and Docker is a good option.

Install HACS in Home Assistant step by step: the Get HACS add-on (HAOS), the one-line installer (Container/Core), GitHub authorization, and common fixes.

My inverter cloud shows self-consumption and autarky as pretty graphs. Home Assistant gives you raw counters. Here's how I rebuilt those numbers as template sensors I own.

My Huawei SDongle accepts exactly one Modbus connection — but Home Assistant, the AC·THOR and evcc all want the inverter's data. Here's the ~300-line asyncio cache server I wrote to feed all of them from a single quiet poll.