I gave my old Chromebook a second life as a dedicated Home Assistant terminal

I’ve an previous Chromebook with a barely damaged casing that used to belong to my spouse. It is nonetheless completely usable, and I hate throwing tech away unnecessarily. I made a decision to set it up as a devoted Dwelling Assistant terminal, and it is far more helpful than I anticipated.

A Chromebook is surprisingly nicely suited to Dwelling Assistant

Virtually all the pieces occurs within the browser

Credit score: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek

Chromebooks are designed for use primarily with the browser and web-based apps, relatively than software program that runs on the {hardware} itself. It makes a Chromebook quick to begin up and simple to make use of for searching and easy on a regular basis duties.

At first, it does not appear to be a Chromebook could be a great match for Dwelling Assistant. Nonetheless, I am not utilizing a Chromebook to run Dwelling Assistant; it is running in Proxmox on my mini PC. The Chromebook is just getting used as a terminal to entry my Dwelling Assistant server.

Whereas there are Dwelling Assistant desktop apps you should utilize, you can even entry the UI with any browser, and that is precisely what I am doing with the Chromebook. There’s an enormous quantity you are able to do from the browser; with the Terminal & SSH add-on, you may even entry the Dwelling Assistant terminal in a browser tab with out the necessity for an SSH consumer.

Dimensions (exterior)

4.41″L x 4.41″W x 1.26″H

Weight

12 Ounces

Dwelling Assistant Inexperienced is a pre-built hub straight from the Dwelling Assistant crew. It is a plug-and-play resolution that comes with all the pieces you might want to arrange Dwelling Assistant in your house while not having to put in the software program your self. 

I gave Dwelling Assistant the eye it deserves

Having a everlasting workspace adjustments your habits

One of many advantages of utilizing the Chromebook as a Dwelling Assistant terminal is that it makes it far simpler to simply leap in and begin working. The Dwelling Assistant UI is not essentially the most conducive to productiveness; my sidebar continues to grow longer and longer and navigating by way of menus is usually a painful expertise.

With the Chromebook, I can open particular person tabs for the important thing pages, equivalent to Automations, Units and Providers, HACS, the Home Assistant logs, ESPHome, Zigbee2MQTT, Node-RED, and extra. After a reboot, Chrome can restore all these tabs automatically, recreating my workspace in seconds.

As a result of my Chromebook Dwelling Assistant terminal is able to go in a matter of seconds, it is a lot simpler to leap in and fiddle round when I’ve a spare 5 minutes, as a substitute of getting to open Dwelling Assistant on my predominant laptop and wade by way of the sidebar or menus earlier than I may even do something. I’ve discovered that since I’ve arrange the Chromebook, I’ve bought by way of way more of the fast, boring upkeep duties that I might have delay prior to now.

I can now preserve good residence work separate from all the pieces else

No extra digging by way of dozens of browser tabs

Credit score: Adam Davidson / How-To Geek

The issue with utilizing Dwelling Assistant on my predominant laptop was that it was at all times competing with the opposite apps that have been working. If a Slack message would pop up, I would lose deal with Dwelling Assistant to get caught up in a thread about some geeky tech matter. The identical was true when emails would arrive and distract me from what I used to be engaged on. Even the opposite tabs may very well be sufficient to take my focus elsewhere.

With my Chromebook, there are not any different apps to distract me, and I be sure that the one tabs that open are ones straight associated to Dwelling Assistant and my good residence. It signifies that I haven’t got to wade by way of a mixture of work, enjoyable, and good residence tabs to seek out what I would like, that means that I get far more performed utilizing the Chromebook than I used to on my predominant laptop.

It was higher than throwing the Chromebook away

Outdated {hardware} is extra helpful than you would possibly suppose

Credit score: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | Davizro Pictures/Shutterstock

One of many predominant causes that I made a decision to do this was as a result of I didn’t want to simply throw the Chromebook away. My spouse had changed it with a greater laptop computer, and I wasn’t going to make use of it as my every day driver. Regardless of the damaged housing, it was nonetheless a wonderfully usable gadget.

It took me some time to land on the thought of utilizing it as a devoted Dwelling Assistant terminal, however I am glad that I did. It has been extra helpful than I ever actually anticipated. Having tabs open to all the important thing areas of Dwelling Assistant makes it far faster to navigate, and it is one thing I would probably not thought of earlier than, because the tabs would have been competing with all the other open tabs on my laptop.

Now at any time when I’ve a couple of minutes spare, I can open the Chromebook, choose the suitable tab, and get to work updating integrations or attempting to determine the reason for the errors which might be popping up within the logs. With the boring stuff out of the best way, it provides me extra time to dedicate to the enjoyable stuff when I’ve extra time to get caught in.

I by no means thought I would develop into a Chromebook consumer

I by no means understood the enchantment of a Chromebook, however then I am not the goal market. I did not count on to finish up utilizing one every day, however now that it is arrange as my Dwelling Assistant terminal, the Chromebook has develop into a genuinely helpful a part of my setup.