How to move a VirtualBox .vdi file?

I have a new Aqara Hub E1¹ and Aqara Motion Sensor P1² connected and working with the Android Aqara Home app³. Today I hope to get them working with Home Assistant (HA⁴)

I’ve had a niggling concern that the hard drive on my Windows⁵ personal computer (PC⁶) won’t last forever and I wanted somewhere to have a backup in the event of a disaster. Google One⁷ seemed to be the most cost effective option for me, so I recently signed up to it.

The synchronization process completed and then I tidied up my Windows PC (deleted loads of files).

During that tidy up I managed to remove my VirtualBox⁸ HA vdi⁹ file.

This meant that when VirtualBox tried to start the virtual machine (VM¹⁰) I got the error message: Could not open the medium ‘C:\Users\xxx\Downloads\haos_ova-9.2.vdi\haos_ova-9.2.vdi’. It was stupid of me to have it sitting in my Downloads folder anyway.

Now I need to reinstall and try to recover from backup files. Wish me luck!

Here are the steps I hope will work:

1. Install latest version of VirtualBox for Windows (VirtualBox-7.0.8-156879-Win.exe)
2. Follow steps to install HA on VirtualBox
3. Install Home Assistant Google Drive Backup on Home Assistant
4. Restore backup files from Google Drive

I got as far as completing step 1 before thinking to check the recycle bin where I found the missing vdi file.

HA appeared to start OK in the VirtualBox VM.

Unfortunately my browser couldn’t load http://homeassistant.local:8123/lovelace/0

I had this problem before and used the IP¹¹ address directly to access HA. Which IP address? I think the problem occurs because it’s been a while since the .local address was used and the IP address has changed since then.

HA on my phone tells me that it’s running version 2023.7. Red herring! That’s just a changelog of what was recently installed. No direct connection to my HA server.

The VirtualBox HA screen tells me the IP address is 192.168.0.80

My browser is happy with http://192.168.0.80:8123/

I manage to login -> http://192.168.0.80:8123/lovelace/0

How to move a VirtualBox .vdi file?

Repair issue The default configuration for add-ons and Home Assistant has changed. To update the configuration with the new defaults, a restart is required for the following:

Home Assistant

I try that but: Unknown error occurred

Instead I look at the 3 available updates:

1. Home Assistant Core 2023.7.3
2. Home Assistant Operating System 10.3
3. Home Assistant Google Drive Backup 0.111.1

Home Assistant Core upgrades from 2023.6.2 to 2023.7.3 with no errors. I have time to read the Home Assistant 2023.7 release announcement.

Home Assistant Operating System upgrades from 10.2 to 10.3 with no errors.

Home Assistant Google Drive Backup upgrades from 0.110.4 to 0.111.1 with no errors.

After I get HA back in line I hope to add my new Aqara devices and if I can I would like to trigger my Hue¹² lights from my Aqara motion sensor.

First problem: Settings | Devices & Services ==> Error while loading page integrations.

I’ll reload HA and hope for the best. Phew, that worked.

I also update HACS¹³ from 1.31.0 to 1.32.1

Uh-oh: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/aqara-e1-usb-hub-in-home-assistant/549954

Connecting the Aqara Hub E1 to HA is not so straightforward as I’d hoped. No direct HA integration for Aqara. Some suggestion that Homekit might help(No!).

I eventually went down the Matter route, so after an hour of faffing, I’m back to being hopeful. Sadly, illuminance is not being reported to HA via Matter¹⁴ at this time which makes the automation less usefull.