I recently purchased a ratgdo device to replace MyQ's kit for a local non-cloud dependent solution. ratgdo offers homekit, mqtt, and Control4, Nice/Elan, or Crestron integration. For this tutorial, I'm going to cover ratgdo and MQTT integration.
If you run Home Assistant as-is or are using their hardware, you can easily setup an MQTT broker by navigating to Add-Ons and installing the MQTT Broker, however in the past I have written articles on Home Assistant and Z-Wave JS as separate containers, so I wanted to follow the same concept by running the MQTT broker as a container as well.
Across the board, the consensus seems to be that most people are running Mosquitto as an MQTT broker, so here is how you can get that setup as a container.
Download the docker image for Mosquitto
docker pull eclipse-mosquitto
2. Create directories for Mosquitto's config and data files. If desired, you can create one for logs as well, but I'm ok not persisting that.
3. Create a configuration file for mosquitto. This file will configure what ports MQTT data should be listed on as well as its corresponding port for receiving data via WebSocket. In addition, we will define where data should be stored, and require authentication to be able to connect. For now, leave the password file, which contains the username/password combo for who can authenticate.
vi /home/docker/mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf
Press i to enter insert mode and paste the following:
6. Use the mosquitto_passwd utility to generate an encrypted username and password. An ask for the password will prompt once you run the command. Type exit to return back to your local terminal.
Continuing from my previous guide on how to setup Home Assistant + Docker + Z-Wave + Raspberry Pi, this tutorial will show you how to update Home Assistant to the latest version. Updating Home Assistant to the latest version is critical to ensure you have the latest bug fixes, integrations, and security patches.
Note: during the update your devices will continue to work fine, but please note any automations or access to the application will not be available, so it's recommended to do this during a time that you know no automations will be running.
Validate your current version
Navigate to the Developer Tools section of Home Assistant. Here you can validate the latest version you currently have deployed.
Get the current name of your container and version
sudo docker ps
In running this command, note the NAME of your container as well as the IMAGE.
Stop and delete the container
Replace the name of the container in the command below with the value you had.
Make sure your replace the name and value of the image with the values in the previous step. In addition, ensure you specify the correct path to where you existing configuration files exist to have the container load your existing configurations.
Note: If you are now using the Z-Wave JS docker container, you will not want to attach the Z-Wave stick to the Home-Assistant container. In this case, run the following command:
In newer versions of the docker container --init should not be specified in the docker run command. Specifying --init will result with the following error: "s6-overlay-suexec: fatal: can only run as pid 1". This was mentioned as a breaking change in: 2022-06-01 update: 2022.6: Gaining new insights! - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Notice: Home Assistant has released a new integration called Z-Wave JS. You should be using that integration vs the older Z-Wave integration that this article covers. I will be updating this guide soon.
A few years back I had a SmartThings Hub and for the most part it worked great. It was simple to setup, can be accessed anywhere, and for the most part automatically updated itself. Unfortunately, with the acquisition of it by Samsung, it seems to have turned into bloatware with poor responsiveness, the mobile application's UI is horrific, and they have a less than desirable security/privacy policy.
Luckily, the open source community has thrown together Home Assistant, an open source home automation project backed by hundreds/thousands of individuals. Over the years, they have now brought native support for mobile devices, at time of writing this there are 1500+ integrations for dang near any device, and the software puts you in control of who has access to and where your data is accessible.
The one trade-off though is while Home Assistant works well and is very extensible, the documentation and usability of the application can be overwhelming to understand for someone new to home automation, unfamiliar with Linux/Open Source technologies, or new to debugging/command line interfaces.
In this case, I've tried to document a crash course in getting Home Assistant up and running as quickly as possible for those that want to get started with Z-Wave devices and Home Assistant.
Home Assistant will run on any version of Raspberry Pi, but it is recommended to use version 3 or 4 for best performance. In this guide, I use a Raspberry Pi 4 for reference. Below is a link to the Raspberry Pi kit, which contains everything you need to get started.
First things first, update your Raspberry Pi with the latest updates. Open up Terminal or SSH to your Raspberry Pi and execute the following command:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
Prepare your Z-Wave USB Stick
Plug in your Z-Wave USB stick. Once plugged in, we need to find the device path so that we can reference it for Home Assistant. Execute the lsusb command to find your device ID. In this case, you can see my device ID begins with 0658.
root@raspberrypi:/dev# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0658:0200 Sigma Designs, Inc. Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5 (ZW090) - UZB
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Next, let's find what the device path is for the USB stick. You can do this by executing the following command: dmesg | egrep '0658|acm' Please note, if you purchased a difference device, 0658 may be a different number. In this case, you can see my device is presented on ttyACM0.
root@raspberrypi:/dev# dmesg | egrep '0658|acm'
[ 1.405327] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0658, idProduct=0200, bcdDevice= 0.00
[ 3.468875] cdc_acm 1-1.2:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
[ 3.471348] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
[ 3.471359] cdc_acm: USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
Install Docker
Home Assistant doesn't require Docker, but by leveraging Docker you can easily copy/backup your configuration and simply redeploy the container if something goes wrong. As updates are made, you can simply remove your container and redeploy. To install Docker, execute the following command:
curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh
Deploy Home Assistant Docker Container
Once Docker is installed, you can deploy the container from Docker Hub. Docker Hub is a public repository that has tons of different prebuilt containers to deploy. Here you can find the official homeassistant containers: https://hub.docker.com/u/homeassistant
To deploy the container, execute the following line, replacing the following variables with your desired configuration:
This allows the container to leverage the Z-Wave USB device. Make sure you specify the path to your device found in the previous step
-v /home/docker/home-assistant:/config
This is the path that the home assistant configuration files should be stored to. You can specify a fileshare or other path to place your configuration files.
The first half of this is the container you wish to deploy and the second half is the version. You can find all of Home Assistant's official containers here: https://hub.docker.com/u/homeassistant
Note: In newer versions of the docker container --init should not be specified in the docker run command. Specifying --init will result with the following error: "s6-overlay-suexec: fatal: can only run as pid 1". This was mentioned as a breaking change in: 2022-06-01 update: 2022.6: Gaining new insights! - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Setup Home Assistant
Give the container a few minutes to deploy and configure itself for the first time. After a few minutes, try opening your web browser and navigating to the IP address assigned to your machine, using port number 8123: http://192.168.1.2:8123/
When the page loads, it should first ask for your Name, Username, and Password. This is the username and password you will use to login to Home Assistant.
Next, specify the location of where your Home Assistant deployment is located. Oddly enough, you cannot type in a location, but you can place the pin near your location by dragging the map around and clicking once to set the pin.
Once you click Next, Home Assistant may have already found a few devices connected to your network. You can add them now or skip and add them later.
Tell Home Assistant to use your Z-Wave USB Stick
Although we granted access to the container to use the Z-Wave USB Stick, you need to tell Home Assistant how to leverage the device. To do so, you will need to open up Terminal or SSH to your machine and edit the configuration.yaml file to point to the device. Before we get into modifying the configuration.yaml file, first execute the following command to generate a Z-Wave Security Key. This key may be required by Z-Wave security devices (Door Locks, Keypads, etc), as an extra layer of security. More information on this can be found here: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/adding#network-key
Execute the following command via Terminal or SSH:
Next, we need to edit the configuration.yaml file, which can be found in the path specified when the Docker container was deployed (using the -v parameter). For the purpose of this article, /home/docker/home-assistant/configuration.yaml is where the file is located. Using your favorite text editor, add the following lines of code:
Once saved, go back to Home Assistant and click the Gear icon and then select Server Controls
Select the Restart button to restart Home Assistant. Any time you make a change to the configuration.yaml file, you will need to restart Home Assistant to pickup the configuration changes.
Click OK to Restart
Upon restart, navigate back to the Gear icon and you should see a new entry in the Config portal for Z-Wave. If you do not see the "Z-Wave" section, scroll down to the troubleshooting step at the end of this article.
Add a Z-Wave device
Once you see that your Z-Wave network has started, adding a device is a piece of cake. First click the Add Node button. When you click the button, nothing will happen, but go ahead and put your device in inclusion mode. Once the device is in inclusion mode, Home Assistant should automatically add the device.
At this point, if you navigate back to Configuration (Gear icon) and select Devices
You should see your newly added Z-Wave device!
At this point, you can select the Device to give it a friendly name or start to work on building your own home automation actions.
Hope this helped! If you have any comments or suggestions on how to improve this guide, please drop it below.
Troubleshooting Missing Z-Wave Configuration
The first time I ran through this, I noticed I was missing the Z-Wave configuration tile after making changes to the configuration.yaml file. It turned out I specified the wrong device path in the configuration file. To verify, you can check the logs from your Docker container by executing the following command in your Terminal or via SSH. (Replace home-assistant with the name of your container if you specified something else)
sudo docker logs home-assistant
In my case, I had the following error:
2020-02-16 21:08:01 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.scene] Setting up scene.homeassistant
2020-02-16 21:08:02 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.zwave] Z-Wave USB path is /dev/ttyACM01
2020-02-16 21:08:02 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.config_entries] Error setting up entry Z-Wave (import from configuration.yaml) for zwave
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/openzwave/option.py", line 78, in __init__
raise ZWaveException(u"Can't find device %s : %s" % (device, traceback.format_exception(*sys.exc_info())))
openzwave.object.ZWaveException: "Zwave Generic Exception : Can't find device /dev/ttyACM01 : ['NoneType: None\\n']"
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/config_entries.py", line 215, in async_setup
hass, self
File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/zwave/__init__.py", line 369, in async_setup_entry
config_path=config.get(CONF_CONFIG_PATH),
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/openzwave/option.py", line 81, in __init__
raise ZWaveException(u"Error when retrieving device %s : %s" % (device, traceback.format_exception(*sys.exc_info())))
openzwave.object.ZWaveException: 'Zwave Generic Exception : Error when retrieving device /dev/ttyACM01 : [\'Traceback (most recent call last):\\n\', \' File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/openzwave/option.py", line 78, in __init__\\n raise ZWaveException(u"Can\\\'t find device %s : %s" % (device, traceback.format_exception(*sys.exc_info())))\\n\', \'openzwave.object.ZWaveException: "Zwave Generic Exception : Can\\\'t find device /dev/ttyACM01 : [\\\'NoneType: None\\\\\\\\n\\\']"\\n\']'
Here you can see I accidentally specified /dev/ttyACM01 vs /dev/ttyACM0. Simply updating the configuration.yaml file with the correct device path solved the issue.
