home assistant on S805 android tv box

The project

The main idea of this project is to get a fully working home assistant test environment on a cheap TV box.
Well, it's easier to do with a raspberry pi but I've an unused  TVbox.

The Hardware 

This box is a cheap (I think that I paid over 25€, perhaps less).

It's based in quad core Amlogic S805 with 1GB of RAM, 100Mbps ethernet and wifi but only on 2,4GHz band.
It also has a 8GB internal storage but I'm using a 32 GB microSD

The software

OS installation

I've installed an armbian version for S805 build by user balbes150 at freaktab forum. You can download the image files from:

https://yadi.sk/d/DnCkh3KBvAFES/Linux/Armbian

I suggest Ubuntu bionic server:

Armbian_5.44_S805_Ubuntu_bionic_3.10.108_server_20180521.img.xz

 because it has newer software versions of all packages than debian etch.
For example, it has installed python 3.6 instead of python 3.5 that is in debian etch and for install home assistant in a python virtualenv you'll need at least a version 3.6 of python

Well, let's go:
Firstly download, decompress and copy the image you have downloaded to an SD (or microSD) card:

xz -d Armbian_5.44_S805_Ubuntu_bionic_3.10.108_server_20180521.img.xz

dd if= Armbian_5.44_S805_Ubuntu_bionic_3.10.108_server_20180521.img of=/dev/sd?

where /dev/sd? is the identifier of your SD disc in linux, in my case sdd

HomeAssistant in a python virtualenv

https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/installation/virtualenv/

• Create a virtual environment in your current directory:

python3 -m venv homeassistant

• Open the virtual environment:

cd homeassistant

• Activate the virtual environment:

source bin/activate

• Install Home Assistant:

python3 -m pip install homeassistant

• Run Home Assistant:

hass --open-ui

"You can now reach the web interface on http://ipaddress:8123/ - the first start may take a couple of minutes before the web interface is available. This can take longer if you’re using lower-end hardware like a Raspberry Pi Zero."