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Home Assistant remote access without Nabu Casa — plus sensors, LoRa and a watchdog for HA

Two different things, one board. Your HA dashboard through the node's tunnel (no cloud subscription, no port forwarding). And a HACS integration that turns node readings, LoRa sensors and emergency state into HA entities — and tells you when HA itself has stopped answering.

mqtt · homeassistant/discovery
sensor.node_workshop_power2114 W
sensor.node_garage_temp3.4 °C
binary_sensor.node_uplinkonline
sensor.node_rtt_p5018 ms

1. Remote HA panel — without Nabu Casa

Open your HA dashboard from the Sensmos app, anywhere, through the tunnel your node holds open:

  • No Nabu Casa subscription, no VPN, no port forwarding, no public IP — works behind CGNAT.
  • Owner-only: every request is signed by your wallet; the tunnel needs a pairing key that only your phone writes onto the node.
  • Tiles you can arrange: chart, reading, switch, light, button; scripts and scenes as buttons.

Switch it on: node → Settings → Remote access → Pair (on the node's Wi-Fi), then add HA panel on the node card and enter HA's LAN address and a long-lived token. Details in Remote access.

2. HACS integration (sensmos-homeassistant)

Install through HACS → Custom repositorieshttps://github.com/Galusz/sensmos-homeassistant (Integration). Add the integration with the node's LAN IP and PIN.

What appears in HA:

EntityWhat it is
sensor.<node>_*every reading the node publishes (own sensors, native ones, data you subscribed to from other nodes)
mon.* diagnosticsWi-Fi signal, ping/jitter/loss to the network, link quality
binary_sensor.<node>_online, _backend_wsnode reachable on LAN / node connected to the network
binary_sensor.<node>_lora_emergencyON while the node has lost its uplink and is broadcasting over LoRa
sensor.<node>_lora_frame, _lora_frame_sub_Nlast LoRa frame per sensor behind the node (attributes: encrypted, via radio/backend, time)
sensor.<node>_lora_last_command, _lora_rolelast emergency command received; radio role (point/scanner)
Sensmos node as a device in Home Assistant: entities including LoRa frames, and the activity log
The node as an HA device — entities, LoRa frames per sensor, and every frame in the logbook

Events for automations: sensmos_message (a message reached the node), sensmos_lora_frame (every LoRa frame, one event each), sensmos_lora_cmd. Each LoRa frame is also a line in the device's logbook.

Services:

  • sensmos.push — write a value into the node as an entity (own.*), e.g. your tariff, a boiler state, anything a script on the node should react to.
  • sensmos.lora_send — transmit a LoRa frame from the node's radio to one of its sensors (or another node): dst, sub, payload, aes.

Feeding the node from HA is configured in the integration options: map any HA entity to a node entity; the integration pushes changes (throttled, with a keepalive). Units are converted where it makes sense.

Example: when the node goes off-grid, tell the owner over LoRa

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.garage_lora_emergency
    to: "on"
action:
  - service: sensmos.push
    data:
      entity_id: own.status
      value: "ALARM"

If own.status is one of the node's four emergency entities, the word goes out over the radio and shows in the owner's Emergency Panel — with the internet down. Values are ASCII, max 8 characters.

Example: actuate a LoRa valve from an HA automation

service: sensmos.lora_send
data:
  dst: ccd6f51f     # your node's id8
  sub: 3            # the valve's sub-address
  payload: "valve=off"

3. MQTT (local broker)

Independently of HACS, the node can publish to your own Mosquitto: status, diagnostics, entities with Home Assistant discovery, plus message/lora_cmd and lora_frame topics. Configure it on the node: Settings → MQTT. Works with the internet down.

4. A watchdog for HA — the thing Nabu Casa cannot do

Your HA already watches your home. Who watches HA? The node monitors your HA instance from outside it (a monitor on the node, plain HTTP/TCP) and pushes an alert to your phone when it stops responding — including the case where HA is dead and so are its own notifications. Set it up under Monitors on the node.

Price

The HACS integration, MQTT and monitors are free. The remote HA panel is a tunnel: 0.5 GALU per day of use, shared with SSH and LAN panels. LoRa features have their own daily fees — see LoRa and Wallet & fees.

Questions, straight answers

Is this a replacement for Nabu Casa?

For remote access to your dashboard, yes — the panel goes through the node's tunnel, owner-only, without exposing HA. It does not replace Nabu Casa's other services (Alexa/Google voice bridges).

Does the integration need the cloud?

No. It talks to the node over your LAN (HTTP with the node's PIN). The node's own uplink is what makes remote access work; the HA integration works even with the internet down.

How do LoRa sensors show up in HA?

As sensors per sub-address (one per physical sensor behind the node), plus an event for every frame and a binary sensor for the node's emergency mode. Firmware 1.00 or newer.

Can HA send commands to LoRa sensors?

Yes — the service sensmos.lora_send transmits a frame from the node's radio to a sensor (or another node). Use it in automations like any other service.

Does the node know when HA is down?

Yes. The node monitors your HA instance from outside HA and pushes an alert to your phone when it stops responding — including when HA's own notifications are dead with it.

Last updated: 2026-09-03