Yeah to echo other comments in here, it sounds like there's some kind of config issue somewhere. The hue integration should "just work" and it's where I get most of my own utility from.

I will say though, HA isn't as user friendly as it could be. It has come a long way and it's getting better (and there is definitely nothing better at the moment), but there are still some gremlins in there that require you to hand edit config files or understand obscure device names and things like that.

I'd guess that it might be related to how you've set up the virtual network adapter. This depends on the specifc virtualization software you use, but the adapter for HA should be be set to something called bridged network, meaning the VM gets its own IP on your home network, no routing or NAT in between. HA will struggle to connect with devices otherwise, as all these protocols weren't designed to work across multiple networks.

HA is geared towards selfhosted, locally controlled stuff (zwave, ZigBee, mqqt, local WiFi, etc). Because the cloud and privacy invasion is the mainstream, HA may require a bit more tweaking and technical knowledge to get up and running.

With that said, once you get it to how you want it, it's been working rock solid for me for a few years now. I've built my house around HA automations and can't imagine living without it.

Install HACS, it will open up thousands of integrations and UI elements.

I would have a look at your networking as I have lots of cloud services setup on my home assistant running on a pi4, without more network info it's difficult to say where you might have issues

You probably tried to do to much in one day :)

Netatmo has a delay indeed. There is an option to get a developer account at Netatmo so changes get pushed to HA. But still, it has some quirks.

Advice is to work on one integration at a time, read the documentation, search for your problems. After the integration works, setup your dashboard. After that start with the automatons.

Good luck, HA it’s really worth it, invest a bit more time in it.

It's a feature not a bug. A feature to maximize profits for of the vendors that create your hardware that is.

For vendors a so called vendor lock-in is a great way to make money. Unfortunately they have an incentive to make their stuff not work well with other stuff because that may mean that you'll buy more of their stuff.

Now, in some cases they have to implement compatibility, because otherwise they'd have trouble getting customers int he first place, but in it's often obvious that playing well with others isn't a priority.

Hence solutions like home assistant rely on shoddy interfaces and that shows in the form of issues. Besides, it's a volunteer driven application. You can't expect the people who make it in their free time solve all the problems for you.

Edit: Basically, you will have to solve these issues step by step. Afaik they are all solvable. And of course you might want to rely on hardware that's more standardized. E.g. onvif cameras. That's not necessarily less of a hassle than with ring etc. but it's cheaper.

I have similar experiences. Everything seems extremely clunky and pseudo-simple. Some very basic features are utterly impossible, for most things you have to write config by hand and there's absolutely zero guidance.

To me, HA looks like a legacy enterprise project, that only works if you just happen to follow exactly the path someone had in mind when building it plus a bunch of half baked add-ons, where it seems like the maintainers lost interest after a while.

I wrote a response with links and stuff but it wouldn't submit... anyway read the integration pages. Some things you are expecting don't work, and Apple TV has a troubleshooting section.

Sounds super weird to me. I haven't had any problems at all, but I run it on a RPi rather than a VM.