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Comment by Scene_Cast2 | Hacker News Reader

Fair warning to anyone who hasn't touched Home Assistant - HA brings so much value, but is simultaneously so frustratingly atrocious.

For example, it operates on an "update" data model. There is no difference between a sensor being offline and not reporting info vs a sensor being online but reporting a repeating (previously seen) value. Add to that the way data is stored (two week retention; this weird relationship with Grafana and Influx where not all data actually goes to Influx from HA)... Even the date picker is frustrating.

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Have you found a better alternative?

I'm trying to center around MQTT, myself, but looking for a way to use many of the wonderful integrations created by the Home Assistant community. I'm also trying to find a good solution to "react to state changes".

I've replaced all of HA with just some Python interacting with an MQTT server. I just script all the automation and don't have to care about the other 90% of what HomeAssistant brings to the table.

Not for everyone obviously but it's simple and works well.

Have you looked into AppDaemon or Pyscript, both provide a Python interface to HA.

They let you use HA's massive library of supported devices, but you don't need to bother with their YAML "programming" horrorshow.

I haven't because what's described didn't really suit my needs. I can run my own daemon that will handle the integration with MQTT, and that's all I needed.

I haven't found anything better. I want to try Hubitat and OpenHab at some point, maybe they'll be better.

All the community is behind HA though, so it has the most integrations.

Consider leveraging the HA ecosystem of integrations, but for automations add Node Red. There is a well maintained WS node to HA that lets you call any service/action in HA and listen for events or device state changes. https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-home-assista... Along with everything else NR provides like MQTT pub/sub, only limit is imagination and time. I've been doing this for years. Another moving piece I know, but it has been bullet proof for me

> There is no difference between a sensor being offline and not reporting info vs a sensor being online but reporting a repeating (previously seen) value.

Weird, I have a device with a flaky wireless connection and when it is offline HA definitely reports it as unavailable. Graphs covering these time periods have gaps when the device was offline. Perhaps what you are seeing is device specific?

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