Home Assistant OS

The idea of using Home Assistant came from one of you guys and I love it. Home Assistant OS is designed to be the central system for smart homes with a focus on local control and privacy. It is a Linux server with a web interface running on your local network with Add-ons for services like Adblocking, hosting a Database/Web/DNS/MQTT/VPN server, displaying Grafana dashboards, and processing data using Node-RED.

Key devices:

Home router: Providing internet access to devices on the local network
ESP-link: Firmware running on the ESP8266 SoC, responsible for relaying MQTT messages between the Gbox420 Arduino sketch and Home Assistant.
Home Assistant OS: Virtual(recommended) or Physical server running the Home Assistant Operating System. Among other roles, it will act as a DNS, VPN, MQTT, database, and web server. Created in the Installation chapter.
Hypervisor (only when Home Assistant OS is virtual): Physical server hosting the Home Assistant OS virtual machine. Can be either an old laptop or desktop PC with VirtualBox installed, or a QNAP/Synology NAS with virtualization support.

Hypervisors options: Linux Mint + VirtualBox, Windows 10 + VirtualBox, QNAP NAS + Virtualization Station

Supervisor - Add-ons

AdGuard Home: Used for DNS redirection, securing DNS communication, and blocking ads/malware on all PCs connected to the local WiFi.
Duck DNS: Free DNS service needed for remote access, also used for retrieving Let's Encrypt SSL certificates automatically - Needed for securing access to Home Assistant.
Grafana: Provides charts, graphs, and alerts (PS: Grafana Alerts are not used, as alerts are handled by Node-RED)
Home Assistant Google Drive Backup: Backing up snapshots of the entire Home Assistant setup, including installed add-ons and setting to Google Drive. This should be the first add-on to install.
InfluxDB: Database to store the sensor readings reported by the Gbox420 Main sketch. Used as the data source of Grafana.
Mosquitto broker: Handles the MQTT communication between the Main module and Home Assistant / Node-RED. Used to relay sensor readings towards HA, and send back commands to the Main module.
Node-RED: Visual programming interface for creating the data processing logic on the Home Assistant side. This is the "brain" of the automation that handles receiving and storing sensor readings in a database, checking alerts, and displaying a dashboard for interacting with the Arduino modules. ( The Arduino modules are still fully autonomous and do not need Node-RED to operate)
Samba share: Accessing the system files of Home Assistant as a remote file share. Super useful for setting up Home Assistant integration in Node-RED.
Visual Studio Code: Source-code editor, perfect for editing configuration files directly from a browser window.
WireGuard: VPN service to access Home Assistant from anywhere on the internet. This is a highly recommended component for remote management. Using an encrypted VPN tunnel back to your home network is a lot more secure than opening up ports from your local network toward the internet.