Okay, so years ago, I bought the original Western Digital MyCloud EX2 (model number: WDBVKW0080JCH-EESN) and have been happy with it, it does what I need it to do, which is store my music and films. I didn’t need it to do more than that so hard never needed to upgrade or invest again.
However a couple years ago, Western Digital yanked support, stripped some features and left me to fend for myself. No issue it does what I need.
I also happened to have a Hive Home setup for my lights and heating. Again the first generation. They too recently yanked support and stripped features. Only they emailed and said if I want to be able to use my lights or heating, I had to upgrade. Fool me once!
So reading around on Lemmy. I read a conversation one day where someone was looking for a setup that didn’t need to depend on proprietary services and Zigbee was recommended.
After much delay, given that it’s now getting darker earlier, I took the plunge on some Zigbee bulbs and they’ve arrived.
However the beautiful fantasy I constructed in my head isn’t that of reality and it turns out I need a third party management hub of sorts, basically HomeAssistant or OpenHAB.
This time I did some reading, everyone seems to prefer HA in the end and apparently there’s some other cool stuff I can do with it too regarding my watch notifications.
But… There’s always a but. Given that there’s no support for my MyCloud and given that I’m an idiot in regards to these things, I have no idea how to get set up.
Would anyone be so kind as to help me please?
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First google link that looked reasonable. I have not followed this. But I bet it will work.
I know HomeAssistant can run on my NAS, so buying more hardware seems like overkill
I have never seen nor used a WD MyCloud, but if you know that an upgrade allowed for HA to run (I presume in Docker), then how about just wiping whatever OS is on the NAS and installing a Linix distro, then moving up from there?
A few use TrueNAS to run HA in docker, but a few quick searches shows that won’t work on your hardware.
Probably a lot more work than you were intending, but should simplify the future for that NAS and prevent any kludgy workarounds from trapping you again in the future.
And… I presume you have a backup of everything on that NAS 😉
You need something like a raspberry or a small computer to run home assistant 24/7 and you also need a zigbee coordinator (to be able to use your ZigBee devices) like sonoff CC2652P or conbee 3 (others are available). Install home assistant, and learn how to manage/customise as you wish.
Home assistant is great but it’s not a plug and play solution (that being said, it has already been much simplified over the years and it’s not that hard to get started). Settings basics stuff isn’t complicated but you will have a learning curve to be able to do more complicated stuff (depending of knowledge you already have)
I was hoping someone could tell me how to get it to run on my NAS. I know people use Docker for it, but I don’t know which one or how to? I do have a Sonoff Dongle.
Oh! Ok. Maybe you can try this https://community.home-assistant.io/t/installing-home-assistant-on-wd-mycloudex2ultra/530270
Thank you so much for the time and effort you’re putting into helping me, I really appreciate it. Unfortunately though, that’s not for the original MyCloud. My version didn’t get the update to version 5 of the operating system, which is step one of the instructions you linked, hence the conundrum I’m in and subsequent plea for help. It was kind of a hail Mary, hoping for a miracle.
Unless you can find an alternative firmware that can run docker, I don’t see any other options. Wish you luck
