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Companion app question

r/homeassistant · u/killingerr · 2024-02-26 23:58:53 UTC
Archive observation: 2024-02-26 23:59:06 UTC

I'm looking just looking for opinions on this technology (Sorry, Reddit won't let me type the name for some reason). Secure? I'm a noob.

Discussion

u/ArchivalFrail · 2024-02-27 02:38:41 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 02:38:56 UTC

This functionality is already built in to Home Assistant, called Home Assistant Cloud. It’s not free, but it’s the best way to support the Home Assistant project.

If you want to do the same thing for free, you can look into using a reverse proxy, like nginx with cloudflare.

If you want something even more secure, you can use tailscale as well.

Lots of options to do what that website you linked to does without giving up your privacy and data to an unknown and untrusted person.

u/quinbd · 2024-02-27 03:13:23 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 03:13:42 UTC | Parent comment

Hey! I'm the developer behind Homeway! There are many great options for remote access to Home Assistant, and each has pros and cons. There are a lot of manual and hands-on solutions, but they need to be set up correctly and require some amount of maintenance. Nabu Casa is also an amazing option, but their security model of exposing your Home Assistant to the public internet might not be something some users want to do.

My goal with Homeway was to make a remote access solution that's as easy and carefree as Nabu Casa, but with a different security model so users can choose which they want. I have a very strict security and privacy policy that clearly says Homeway will never sell or share your data. Homeway also doesn't store any of your remote access data; once it's relayed, it's deleted.

We have about 150+ members in our new community right now, and they all seem to really like Homeway. They have been a super big help in polishing off the few last bugs and giving tons of feedback. Trust is definitely a thing that needs to be established, earned, and built, but I'm in it for the long haul, and we have a great foundation already!

u/ArchivalFrail · 2024-02-27 10:37:45 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 10:38:00 UTC | Parent comment

How is your service different than or better than Tailscale?

u/quinbd · 2024-02-27 17:09:47 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 17:10:00 UTC | Parent comment

Great question. Tailscale is an amazing service, and I love it. My goals with Homeway are a bit different.

The differences between Tailscale and Homeway are:

  1. Ease Of Use & Deep HA Integration - My main goal with Homeway is to make an extremely easy-to-set-up, no-maintenance, and easy-to-use secure remote access solution for Home Assistant. Tailscale isn't too hard to set up, but it requires more steps, technical knowledge, and maintenance than Homeway.
  2. Instant & Fast Remote Access - Remote access with Homeway is super simple. You can use any browser and device, log in to your Homeway account, and have instant, fast, remote access. For future remote access, you can go directly to https://<you subdomain>.homeway.io, and you're instantly there.subdomian.homeway.io For Tailscale, you must have the Tailscale app on your device, configured, and connected to the VPN, which adds some amount of overhead and friction every time you want remote access.
  3. Home Assistant iOS and Android App Support - Homeway directly integrates into the Home Assistant apps and provides remote access when not on your LAN. The Home Assitant app will automatically connect locally if possible or fall back to the remote access connection.
  4. Alexa And Google Assistant Support - Homeway provides full Alexa and Google Assistant support for all your devices in Home Assitant. It's very easy to set up; you just hit a button, and you're done. With Tailscale, you can't use Alexa or Google Assistant because you don't have a public interface with which the assistants can interact.
  5. Shared Home Assitant Remote Access - Since Homeway has deep integration into Home Assitant, it can do cool things like offer time-limited, shareable links to your friends and family to share access. This might be handy if you have someone staying the weekend or want to show off your dashboards. It also provides a way to have programmatic API remote access to your Home Assistant from a cloud-based service.
u/quinbd · 2024-02-27 03:02:30 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 03:02:49 UTC

Hey! I'm the developer behind Homeway, so I'm happy to answer your question!

To start, would point you to the pages we have on the strict security and privacy policies behind Homeway.

To summarize our strict policies, Homeway will never sell your private information to anyone. Furthermore, Homeway doesn't even store any of your remote access data; once it's been relayed from our Add-on to your browser, it's deleted on the server. That includes headers, cookies, and everything.

One reason I wanted to make Homeway is to give the community an alternative security model for remote access. Homeway does not expose your Home Assistant to the public internet. To get remote access to your Home Assistant server, you must first log into your Homeway account. Thus, if your Home Assistant has weak credentials or a security issue found in Home Assistant, your server isn't sitting on the public internet for anyone to access.

Homeway accounts can be secured with many advanced features, like 3rd party login providers, code-based two-factor auth, and we always require an email-based code challenge when logging in from a new IP. On top of that, you still have your local Home Assistant user credentials, which Homeway doesn't know or store.

There are many more details on the security pageThe security page has many more details, such as how the add-on does a crypto challenge to the server, our server and protocol update policies, and other cool stuff.

If you have any other questions, I would love to answer them! I'm making Homeway for the Home Assistant community, so your input is critical!

u/grtgbln · 2024-02-27 04:09:15 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 04:09:28 UTC | Parent comment

That's just Home Assistant Cloud with extra steps.

u/quinbd · 2024-02-27 04:35:46 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 04:36:04 UTC | Parent comment

Honestly, I take that as a compliment! It's almost the exact same number of steps, but there's one or two more since Homeway isn't baked into Home Assistant. Still, it only takes about 20 seconds to setup!

The differences between Nabu Casa and Homeway are:

  1. Price - Homeway has 100% free remote access limited to 100MB of data per month, or you can get unlimited data for $2.49/month. Nabu Casa is $5.50/month. As the project and its support grow, I plan on raising the monthly data limit. I have already doubled it since launch!
  2. Security - Nabu Casa exposes your Home Assistant to the public internet, and Homeway does not. I personally don't think exposing any service on your home LAN to the public internet is a good idea, which is one of the reasons I made Homeway!
  3. Speed - Homeway is built on a worldwide network of servers that all join together to make a mesh, allowing for the fastest remote access possible anywhere. Most of the users say it's just like being at home!

The similarities between Nabu Casa and Homeway are:

  1. **No Hassel Alexa and Google Assistant Support - It's super easy to set up on both services; you just click a button.**It's super easy to set up on both services; you basically just click a button.- It's super easy to setup on both services, you basically just click a button.
  2. Home Assistant Mobile App Support - Nabu Casa and Homeway can both enable the Home Assistant Mobile app with remote access.
  3. Strong Privacy - Home Assistnat's Casa Nuba and Homeway both have very strong privacy policies, you can find each on their respective websites.
u/jakegh · 2024-02-27 14:55:31 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 14:55:47 UTC | Parent comment

This is an interesting service. Basically offers the same functionality as Nabu Casa but for half the monthly cost-- and you claim a superior security model that doesn't expose our local instances to the internet.

So, how does that work? Your security page doesn't explain how Amazon and Google incoming connections work. Are they proxied also? What about the mobile HA app?

u/quinbd · 2024-02-27 17:29:42 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 17:29:54 UTC | Parent comment

Great questions! Thanks so much for pointing out the missing data on the security page, I will update it ASAP with your answers as well as put them here.

My goal with Homeway is to solve the problem precisely you said above; I want to make an extremely easy-to-set-up, no maintenance, and secure remote access solution for Home Assistant that doesn't publicly expose your Home Assistant to the public internet. It sounds like you have the knowledge, skills, and time to set up a secure remote access solution, but I'm sure that took a while, and you have to maintain it to keep everything working. I want to remove all of the time, complexity, and maintenance for users but still have the abovementioned functionality.

Remote Access - Homeway is secure because it doesn't expose your local Home Assistant to the public internet. To get remote access, you must first log into your Homeway account. Homeway accounts can be secured with 3rd party login providers, code-based two-factor auth, and Homeway always sends an email code challenge when logging in from a new IP address.

Alexa And Google Assistant - Homeway offers full and secure support for Alexa and Google Assistants. It works by Homeway having a public interface setup with Alexa and Google Assistant, which they use to query information and send commands. The interface is fully secured with encryption and uses the standard OAuth tokens required by Alexa and Google for authentication. But all of that complexity is handled in the Homeway service, so there's no need for any user configuration. The incoming requests are handled, authed, and validated by the Homeway service, the request is then proxied to your Home Assitant, and the response is sent back.

Home Assistant Mobile App SupportHome Assistant Mobile App Support - The Home Assistant mobile app can be configured using a secure and unique link, which can only be used by the mobile app. This could be made even better if the Home Assistant app supported any auth, even basic HTTP auth, which I'm going try to write and PR into the project soon.

One last note, one more cool thing about Homeway is that it's built on a worldwide server network that creates a mesh network, allowing servers to route calls to ensure the lowest latency possible. Most users already using Homeway say remote access is practically like being at home. This also applies to Alexa and Google Assistant; they will use the server closest to them to ensure the latency of the voice commands is very low.

If you have any other questions, ask away!

u/jakegh · 2024-02-27 18:12:45 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 18:13:01 UTC | Parent comment

Ahh so you generate unique URLs for each user and users point the HA app there. So how are those URLs secured, since the HA app doesn't support any kind of external authentication?

I agree adding that support would be aces. There's actually a HA forum thread and github issue open for it which I participated in; the devs said it was a pretty big blocker.

https://github.com/home-assistant/android/issues/2650#issuecomment-1533732560

u/quinbd · 2024-02-27 19:27:08 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 19:27:22 UTC | Parent comment

Wow, that's some amazing content; thanks so much for sharing! I will definitely read though all of that.

Thanks for the context on the extra security in the app; I will read up on that thread and see if I can help. I figured if I can fully implement it, PR it, and the logic is sound there's no reason they wouldn't accept it.

If you have any more feedback I would love to hear it! Thanks!

u/jakegh · 2024-02-27 19:38:34 UTC
Original comment · Local permalink · Archive observation: 2024-02-27 19:38:51 UTC | Parent comment

Cool, the ability to securely reach your home instance through a proxy (like CF tunnels or your service) without requiring a VPN would be very welcome.

If you have a good answer to my questions, would love to hear it. You could implement my IP whitelists for Google Assistant, but I haven't seen any answer for Alexa.

Honestly, the best answer I have right now is to use Tailscal or a VPN for secure interactive access including the app, and Apple Homepod Minis for voice control, as they're local control and work great with no required shenanigans. As you can see, I have put some thought into it.