[HN Gopher] My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story ___________________________________________________________________ My smart home 2021: A Home Assistant love story Author : jroovers Score : 241 points Date : 2022-02-15 17:36 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (jorisroovers.com) (TXT) w3m dump (jorisroovers.com) | spaetzleesser wrote: | Nice! If I understand correctly this is fully local and doesn't | depend on cloud stuff? After a few failures I don't want anything | that relies on somebody's buggy cloud systems. | nomel wrote: | It's all local unless you want to pay for the cloud service, | which just gives you safe remote access to your local home | assistant instance, and gives some services like a nice (cloud | based) text to speech engine. | | Neither are required. You can happily open up DMZ and use | whatever TTS engine, yourself. | boring_twenties wrote: | Do you have any suggestions for a local TTS engine to use | with HA? | | I have HA up and running but have only used its web interface | so far. | nomel wrote: | No, but I was looking at ha-rhvoice before I went with Nabu | Casa (to support the devs). The readily available local TTS | voices will, obviously, not sound as good. | anderspitman wrote: | The most-requested feature for boringproxy has been WebSockets | support (which landed in master just this week), from what I can | tell primarily because Home Assistant needs it. I hadn't realized | how popular HA is. Their forum is very active: | | https://community.home-assistant.io/ | coreyp_1 wrote: | I want SO BADLY to convert my switches to smart switches, but it | feels impossible to find what i need. Good luck searching on | Amazon, too. Search for Zigbee, and it will return page after | page of zwave, proprietary, and other listings. It's impossible | to wade through. I've tried and given up multiple times. | | This is what i need that is evidently so difficult to find: 1. | Zigbee 2. 3-way 3. Dimmable 4. Beige (almond?) Color | | Any ideas? | pydry wrote: | I found the same thing. I was searching for air quality/CO2 | monitors. It seemed that decent ones werent with zigbee. | benley wrote: | I'd recommend checking out some of the "smart relay" devices | that let you reuse your existing light switches. | | e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Compatible-SmartThings-Philips- | ZBBrid... - this one says "2 way" but I'm pretty sure you can | wire it up with two physical lightswitches to get the 3-way | behavior that you're after. The wiring diagram on the amazon | product page suggests as much. | | I've personally used this Aeotec z-wave variant and it has | worked well for me: | https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XC4CH98 | 0ld wrote: | try searching zigbee2mqtt supported devices: | https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/#s=switch | nathan_f77 wrote: | I highly recommend buying some Zigbee switch modules [1] and | wiring them up behind your regular light switches. They convert | any light switch into a smart switch that can be controlled | through your Zigbee network. (This can be dangerous, but just | make sure you turn off the power first, wear gloves, and learn | all about line, neutral, ground. Get a good multimeter and | triple check everything.) | | [1] | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002164359835.html?spm=a2... | mdoms wrote: | I simply flick a switch to turn on lights. Opening shades is no | problem for me, a physically fit human. | disqard wrote: | A non-technology solution? In this forum? How dare you, good | sir? | | Seriously, I've been going as back-to-basics with my newer | purchases as possible -- I recently purchased a used sewing | machine that has gears made of metal, has no LCD/screen or | computer firmware, and only relies on electricity to run its | motor. | nouveaux wrote: | How often do you adjust the color temperature and lumens of | your light bulbs to optimize for circadian rhythm? I can see | why you're so physically fit if you're going around to all your | light switches and making these adjustments all the time ;). | mdoms wrote: | I don't care to. | jaywalk wrote: | How do you flick that switch when you're on vacation and want | your home to appear occupied? | yurishimo wrote: | You joke, but we both know that automatic lamp timers have | existed for decades. I like home automation stuff as much as | the next person but this is a disingenuous argument. | boring_twenties wrote: | I went from those to a basic HomeAssistant setup, and | really enjoy the fact that my light timers can be "30 | minutes before sunset" instead of a fixed time that needs | to be adjusted throughout the year. | | On the other hand, the fact that everything stops working | if wifi goes down is a real bummer. I can't for the life of | me understand why these "smart" plugs don't just use | powerline ethernet. I guess I should just be thankful that | their API could be reverse engineered. | jaywalk wrote: | You should be using Z-wave instead of Wi-Fi for anything | that you can, but in reality how often does your actual | Wi-Fi network go down? HA runs locally, so it's not like | you need Internet access. Unless your smart plugs are | actually controlled over the Internet, in which case you | should throw them away immediately and buy something | better. | jaywalk wrote: | With an automatic lamp timer, you lose the ability to | (easily) control the lamp manually. Also, what about all of | the lights that _aren 't lamps_? | | If all you've got are lamps and you're willing to be a | slave to the timer, then by all means just use the timer. | But once it gets just a little bit more complicated, the | timer isn't so great. | | I've got an "evening" scene that turns on 10 or so | different lights. I will trigger it manually when I'm home | and feel it's time, or if my system is in vacation mode it | will trigger based on the sunset time. I don't have to | worry about accidentally having left a switch off or | anything like that. You cannot even begin the replicate | this with an automatic lamp timer. | luma wrote: | You could read a newspaper to get the news or send a postcard | to share your opinions with others, yet here you are on the | internet. | | Technology marches on, you get to chose if you want to engage | with it, but I don't think suggesting that people looking to | leverage new technology are somehow less physically fit or | lazier than you is the right answer. | goodpoint wrote: | Home Assistant seems to be hostile to Linux distributions. It's | still difficult to package. | | Maybe they might want to have their own OS only. Maybe charge | money for it in future. | luma wrote: | The primary distribution method for Home Assistant is via a | docker container, which should run just fine on most Linux | platforms. There is a Home Assistant OS which is free to use | and mostly exists as a lightweight docker host. It is the | preferred installation method and is simple to deploy and keep | updated. | turtlebits wrote: | Not sure if I'm just getting older, but the less | things/complications in my home, the more peace of mind I have. | Been watching the youtube LTT channel on his smart home and I | feel all the things going on would drive me crazy. | | This doesn't apply only to tech, but even for my next house | (Looking into passive homes, least possible HVAC footprint, | floorplan for minimal plumbing/electrical). | iamjackg wrote: | For me, a lot of that came down to making sure every automation | I add is usable with the least amount of mental effort. For the | longest time I didn't automate much at all and often questioned | whether I needed all this or not, then we had a baby. | | Now we have a button in his nursery that will dim the lights, | start playing white noise on a Google Home speaker, mark the | start of a new nap on our Babybuddy instance, then turn off the | lights after 30 seconds. When I press it again, it turns off | the noise and stops the sleep tracking. If we didn't have Home | Assistant we'd have to do all these things manually multiple | times a day. Instead it just takes a single button press. | | It's a small example, but things like this will keep popping | up, and I'm looking forward to making them easier. | jethro_tell wrote: | Heh, our kids have an Alexa and a couple smart plugs for | lamps in their rooms. | | They set their own bed/wake routines which was really great | because we kinda got the buy in from them on how they want to | do it and it's the same every time. They like to come by ever | now and then and update the routine, add a step or piece of | information. It's fun to do with them and it's nice to have | them do their own thing but also not need an adult for | everything thing. | NegativeLatency wrote: | There's no law of nature that says you need to track your | kids sleep and upload it to a could service. | oxguy3 wrote: | It looks like it's self-hosted: | https://github.com/babybuddy/babybuddy | huhtenberg wrote: | I feel that the vast majority home automation tech got the | whole thing backwards. | | They start with "we can do this" and then "let's see what we | can bolt it on". | | Instead, they should've started with small things like being | able to toggle every _existing_ switch from your phone. Let | lazy people be lazy efficiently. Now _that_ has a mass appeal | and would 've led to a better adoption. Once this is in place, | then you can build on it - dimmers, hues, scheduled and | presence lighting/heating, etc. Once this is done, accepted and | integrated in everyday life, move to more advanced gadgetry. | detaro wrote: | "Traditional" home automation tech does exactly that angle. | Turns out "upgrade every existing switch" does not have the | mass-appeal over a lot cheaper "replace one thing, do a bunch | of things with thing" offerings. Most people need to have the | latter before they get the appetite to invest in the former. | As annoying as they are, "smart" plugs/bulbs are a lot easier | and cheaper to deploy in many cases. | | It's an interesting balance IMHO. If you can control | everything you can build a lot on top, but even just being | able to control a few things might already provide you a lot | of benefit. | nouveaux wrote: | "toggle every existing switch from your phone" | | Home automation is not intuitive. It turns out that toggling | every existing switch from your phone is not an ideal goal. | Pulling out your phone to use your home automation gets | annoying fast. | | The best home automation is a system that works without | intervention. A good analogy is a digital thermostat vs a | traditional analog one. A digital thermostat has the ability | to change temperature targets depending on time of day and | day of the week. | | The best type of switches are the ones that work without | intervention. The most common is the sunset porch lights and | the sunrise alarm clocks. Other good ones are humidity | sensors that trigger bathroom fans, TV/stereo/console that | turns on when you pick up your game controller, floor lights | that trigger only at night when it senses movement, lights | that change color temperature and lumens depending on time of | day, etc. | huhtenberg wrote: | > _Pulling out your phone to use your home automation gets | annoying fast._ | | What I meant, if it wasn't clear, is to have this as an | _option_. In addition to what 's already in place. | Tyr42 wrote: | Speaking of that last thing, what's the best way to | implement different brightnesses based on time in HA's | yaml? I could do a bunch of ifs in each automation but | there might be a better way? | function_seven wrote: | I use https://github.com/basnijholt/adaptive-lighting/ in | my config. | nouveaux wrote: | +1 to adaptive lighting. | | Also if you need a wake up/sunrise light: | | https://community.home-assistant.io/t/wake-up-light- | alarm-wi... | alistairSH wrote: | I mostly agree. I have a few smart switches for main lighting | (5 switches of 20+) with basic automations (turn off at bed | time, turn on front step and foyer when I get close to home | after dark, turn all on if motion sensor trips while I'm not | home). | | Every time I think about expanding this, I remember what a PITA | it was to setup the basic stuff. And I don't bother. I'll walk | my lazy ass to the switch instead. | | Doesn't help that Smartthings is a dumpster fire of shitty UX | that glitches regularly. Anything "better" like HomeAssistant | is the rough equivalent of using Linux desktop in the late | 90s/early 00s. | dsr_ wrote: | Misquoted from the Internet: Tech enthusiasts have voice- | controlled smart home hubs; sysadmins have a printer and a gun | next to it to shoot the printer if it starts acting up. | enobrev wrote: | I generally agree with this, although I'm also a fan of home | automation. I want all my switches to continue to work (they | do), no internet connection between me and my automated | devices, no complicated "scenes", and I don't want to mess | around with some UI every day. Setup, sure, but that's it. | | So in the end I have lights that turn on in any room we're in | and turn themselves off some time after we've left. My porch | light adjusts itself according to time of day, and my laundry | tells me when it's done, which is huge for us since it's in the | basement. | | I keep it simple (one JS file controls the whole house), but | it's still a life improvement. | | My toddler recently knocked over my poorly placed server which | damaged the zwave dongle. Replacing it took a couple hours, but | the week spent without the automations was noticable. | | There's something about every room lighting up as I walk | through the house that makes it feel more welcoming. A bit | warmer. | | Also, my son loves to turn off the dining room light and then | try to run through the dining room as fast as he can without | setting off the motion sensor. It turns on every time, but it's | a joy to watch. | nouveaux wrote: | How do you do motion detection and presence in your setup? | How do you make sure the lights doesn't turn off if you're | just sitting in the room? | enobrev wrote: | Long timers. | | I'd love to have some sort of presence detection that will | work with multiple people (including a child) without | embedding a chip into our necks, but haven't found anything | that seems reliable, yet. Room assistant sounds pretty | cool, but I haven't had the time to play with it - and I'm | not "installing" bluetooth on my toddler. | | Early on I had 5-15 minute timers in most rooms, but my | wife and I have ended up sitting in a dark bathroom, or | worse cooking in a dark kitchen - flailing our arms to get | the lights back on far too many times. | | So, I made the timers in most rooms 30 minutes (20 in the | bathroom, 5 in closets). That worked well everywhere but | the kitchen; I added a second motion sensor there, and it | pretty much always gets it right now. | | Once in a while the light will shut off in the living room | when we're still and zoned out on our phones or a movie, | but that's rare enough that it's not a big deal. Also we | get to laugh at ourselves for being perfectly still for an | entire half hour. | | --- Edit --- | | I imagine presence detection is significantly easier with | one occupant, and I've daydreamed about setting up a "one- | person-home" mode that just turns on the light in whatever | room last detected someone and off everywhere else. But | honestly everything works so well as-is, that I don't think | it's really worth the effort. | lm28469 wrote: | I can't imagine the state of these houses one or two | generations down the line. | | I witnessed "smart" houses when my parents' blinders died in | "down" position and had no manual override... or when the | electricity was down and they couldn't start their wood stove | because it needs electricity to work... | | I think some people are just so drawn to tech that they end up | in these kind of rabbit holes. It reminds me of my nerd friends | in uni who spent weeks configuring their linux distro from | scratch just to start over a few months later, they were | showing me their new shiny shells, how the trackpad finally | worked with X and Y drivers, how their tiling window manager | was better than macos'. | | I don't think the end goal for them is to have a useable thing, | it's more about tinkering and probably some form of attention | seeking. | nouveaux wrote: | >I witnessed "smart" houses when my parents' blinders died in | "down" position and had no manual override... or when the | electricity was down and they couldn't start their wood stove | because it needs electricity to work... | | Are you saying you have a stove that doesn't have an | electronic starter? Are you on a digital or analog | thermostat? Does your home heater work without electricity? | | New technology will always have an early adoption phase. | Smart blinds suck now but there is no reason why they cant be | as reliable as an automatic garage door. It's a motor with RF | control. It's not a complex thing. | joe_the_user wrote: | _Are you saying you have a stove that doesn 't have an | electronic starter? Are you on a digital or analog | thermostat? Does your home heater work without | electricity?_ | | Historically and mostly today, a _wood_ stove is a cast | iron container you fill with wood mostly to heat a house. | There have been innovations in shape, airflow etc to make | them more efficient but they generally haven 't used an | electric lighter. | | Electric-light gas stoves normally don't _need_ electricity | to function - in a outage you can light them with a match | or sparker. | | There have been gas heaters that don't require electricity | but not central gas heaters, this true. | | Eastern California, where I currently live, has experienced | a half-dozen days-long electrical outages in the last year | alone. A the time two months, when I spent four days | snowed-in, with it 45-40 degrees inside my apartment, is | notable. What does or doesn't work without electricity is | an important question. | NegativeLatency wrote: | There are also pellet stoves (not generally considered a | wood stove) the burn compressed sawdust and have an | electric auger, blower and igniter | nouveaux wrote: | "Historically and mostly today, a wood stove is a cast | iron container you fill with wood mostly to heat a house. | There have been innovations in shape, airflow etc to make | them more efficient but they generally haven't used an | electric lighter. | | Electric-light gas stoves normally don't need electricity | to function - in a outage you can light them with a match | or sparker." | | Does your parent's wood stove work work without | electricity? As in, can you light it with a match or | sparker? | | "Eastern California, where I currently live, has | experienced a half-dozen days-long electrical outages in | the last year alone. A the time two months, when I spent | four days snowed-in, with it 45-40 degrees inside my | apartment, is notable. What does or doesn't work without | electricity is an important question." | | Yea this totally sucks and you make a good point. You | parents' blinds needs a manual backup, just like how | automatic garage door systems have a manual override. One | of the things I try to focus on is to have my home still | function if the server is down. My light switches all | work without a server or the internet, but my sunrise | lights will not. I think that's a good compromise. | joe_the_user wrote: | _Does your parent 's wood stove work work without | electricity? As in, can you light it with a match or | sparker?_ | | My parents didn't have a wood stove but the last house I | lived had one and it lit only by a match. The Gp's | description is literally the only time I have even heard | of a wood stove didn't require hand lighting, that's | normally how they work. | | (Your tense seems to indicate you're confusing me with | the original commenter you replied to FYI - who's parents | did have an unusual wood stove apparently requiring | electricity. It doesn't offend me but I thought I'd note | it in case there was some confusion to clear up). | pydry wrote: | This is what all tech is like. I remember when having a | smartphone with apps was a quirky novelty that maintenance | that only nerds could be bothered with. | | Also while I dont give a damn about lightbulbs I would really | like more sophisticated control over heating. | ryanianian wrote: | Sufficiently advanced home automation is indistinguishable from | a haunting. | | Lighting controlled by home-assistant is endlessly frustrating. | Especially if zwave. The networks are slow, the devices are | awkward to configure, and when things go wrong debugging is | difficult. Sometimes it takes my lights a good 60 seconds to | respond during which time I'll try a few different button | dances which all then get lifo queued... End result is light | automation that works 95% of the time with the 5% remainder | being enough to sour the whole experience. | | This isn't home-assistant's "fault," it's the zwave product | space being a convoluted mess that HA tries to paper over. | Other integrations are better but each integration is a | separate plugin thing so quality depends on who wrote the | plugin. | | My house got a 10% premium due to the home-assistant setup | according to the realtor. Lights and music and blinds all | easily controlled from an iPad mounted to a thing in the hall. | I left all the equipment including the raspberry pi that ran | HA, but I took the SD card for privacy reasons. 99% certainty | that they don't even know what Z-wave is let alone how to | rebuild the network... I'm sure that if I buy a "smart house" | in the future it will be beyond my abilities. | luma wrote: | You have a serious problem with your ZWave network if it is | performing as you describe. I have just over 70 devices live | right now and have none of these problems. | | Monitor your logs and see if some node out there is screaming | or otherwise taking up a lot of bandwidth, as your experience | is not at all typical of how ZWave should work. | nathan_f77 wrote: | I had a similar problem with my Zigbee network when I first | started, but I was able to dig in and fix all of the issues. | I changed the Zigbee channel and moved everything away from | my WiFi router. @NathanCu was really helpful [1] on the Home | Assistant community forums. | | [1] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-problems- | how-to... | jaywalk wrote: | I don't know what your Z-wave setup looks like, but all I've | got are GE smart switches and GE smart outlets, controlled | with Home Assistant using an Aeotec Z-stick. It works | flawlessly with zero noticeable delay, 100% of the time. | | It sounds like you've either got some bad interference or bad | devices. | asveikau wrote: | I've had a lot of issues with battery powered z-wave | devices not waking up. | | Also, IIRC there is a bug in the zwave-js github issue | tracker about the 700 series Z-sticks dropping commands. | Sometimes I need to reboot for outgoing packets to reach | devices from the Z-stick. | jamiepenney wrote: | I have this bug too. It happened with the old zwave | plugin as well, my Aeotec stick just stops delivering | packets if it gets bumped and I have to restart the whole | system. | asveikau wrote: | One of the recommendations I read on some github issues | was to put the z-stick on a USB extension cable to rule | out interference from other ports. I was skeptical of | this but it did seem to improve my experience. | | I still get the issue that makes it need to reboot every | now and then however. | oldsj wrote: | Same setup here. Love using z-wave as a standard and then | bridging everything over to Homekit for siri / phone | control center access | ryanianian wrote: | So much of one's experience depends on the z-wave hardware | and it's not obvious at all which brands or products will | be more reliable or better than others. My network is a | hodge-podge of different switches and outlets, but mesh | networking means it's easy to poison the network with a bad | implementation. And then good luck finding the offending | hardware. | luma wrote: | Up until this past year, every single ZWave radio was | made by the same company. They are now allegedly | certifying third parties but I haven't yet seen anyone | announce that they've achieved that certification. It's | possible to build a crappy ZWave device, but the radio | and network side should be solid, even on crappy devices. | jonathankoren wrote: | I get the geeky joy of monitoring and possibly automatically | controlling things, but the added benefit feels marginal at | best for a home. It's less than marginal unless you go big into | the automation. | | The other thing that jades me to automation is that in my | experience with technology, you either get a easy to use, but | limited, remotely brickable, subscriptionware, or you have to | roll your own, and end up debugging your bathtub. Neither is | very appealing. | amphitheatre wrote: | I struggle with this too. Whilst there is a lot of | opportunities for learning and fun when setting these systems | up, you soon forget how things intermingle and monitoring, | upgrading, or debugging things becomes a chore. | | Systems like this balloon in complexity with all of the | different server hardware, IoT standards, subnets, cables, etc. | For the average user, things that aren't easy or set-and-forget | are probably too much. That sense of overwhelm is my personal | experience, at least. | fuzzieozzie wrote: | I imagine readers here would want local control for home | automation. Take a look at www.hubitat.com | afavour wrote: | I really want hubitat to succeed but to me it feels like it's | in a tricky place: less open/customisable than HA but not user- | friendly enough to be used by total beginners. Hopefully they | get the second half of that sorted out and can carve out a | niche. | JshWright wrote: | The setup described in the article is local as well. | detaro wrote: | The article describes a fully local setup, with much more open | components... | dmatos wrote: | Home Assistant is also quite useful in a Company Office / Small | Business. There's daily "added value" on repetitive tasks and | simple automations that provide immediate productivity gains. | | It's also a great platform to implement weird "physical | workflows" that aren't common in household scenarios. | casenjo wrote: | I really enjoyed reading this, thanks for posting. I've been | struggling to find a more sustainable solution on my end for all | the sensors and buttons I have set up. Anecdotally I feel their | battery life tends to be shorter based on whether they're in busy | locations or not. I've ordered the CR2477 and CR2450 batteries | they use in bigger quantities but I'd much rather be able to | recharge them instead. Have you ever found devices of this type | that allow them to be recharged? | tylergetsay wrote: | I have been using ZWave motion sensors that have USB input so | no battery required, for buttons I have replaced a lot of wall | switches with Tasmota switches that are programmed for | single/double/hold click actions on multiple buttons. This can | be great on multi gang switches where I have one button control | the relays in all three switches, leaving two buttons open. | andylynch wrote: | Have a look online for LIR2450s. They are rechargeable button | cells. | vladgur wrote: | I dont think its clear from the blog, but HomeAssistant Blue | and/or Yellow are nice, but not required to get going with HA. If | you get your hands on RPI 3 or 4, an SSD card and a supported | Zigbee/ZWave card, you should be good to go. Installation is well | documented. | | But overall customization is in fact a major time sink regardless | of hardware you use | nomel wrote: | > But overall customization is in fact a major time sink | | I think that depends on what you're trying to accomplish, since | "customization" doesn't really have a limit. If it's just | exposing your smart devices so you can access them with your | iPhone, it's easy. If it's having your lights turn to 5% | brightness if you enter the kitchen at 3am, to get some milk, | but then slowly ramp up the brightness to 15% when you linger | around to make pancakes, then sure. You'll need to write an | automation for that. | | Having my HomePod remind me that my car charger isn't plugged | in at 8:30pm required an automation that involved selecting | things from some dropdown boxes. | sanguy wrote: | Home Assistant is great, but it will face huge hurdles as the | founder tries to cash in on the popularity. It's already | underway. | | 1) Nabu Casa was founded with a claim that "it will all be | transparent and reported" as to income, etc, etc. | | 2) Then the "private" components happened only for Nabu Casa - | like the cloud connection stuff. | | 3) A few years later when pointed out nothing was transparent yet | the response was "We will not share this information." | | 3) Nabu Casa then started to hire up the more active community | developers and set off on their own closed vision. | | 4) NC has bought up many of the associated pieces - the companion | apps, the ESP32 stuff, etc, etc. | | 5) NC has hired many of the community developers and now quite | some secrecy around the roadmaps and decisions. | | 6) You dare not question decisions or you get thrown off the | forums and Discord channels for life. Many cases of this | happening. They have a community manager who is particularly | sensitive over any perceived negative comment and prone to going | off to which the founder needs to step in and smooth the | emotions. Not sure why they've not fired him after strike 4 or 5. | | The end result is that Home Assistant is far less open than it | was. It is going the same path pFsense did under the ownership of | Netgate. | | The challenge is many people invested into it and when it | implodes it won't be pretty. I am hopeful someone forks it with a | better community engagement model. | | (I've been a user since the start, and a contributor in the early | days. Left the community due to my work being monetized by NC | without my consent.) | anderspitman wrote: | Nabu Casa seems like a great model to bring self-hosting to the | masses. | smashah wrote: | I'm looking forward to the founders and the core maintainers | being able to make a healthy living off of home assistant with | the least amount of pointless overhead :) | eisa01 wrote: | Any prospect of a an alternative commercial provider to NC for | the cloud stuff? | | Other open source software (E.g. LibreOffice) has several shops | that help businesses with support and integration/bug fixes | luma wrote: | There are three major cloud components. Alexa and Google | integrations both have open options that are documented by NC | and you are welcome to use them. There's a lot of setup as | you need to deal with a semi-complex config on AWS or GCP | which can be challenging if you're new to those environments, | but they work as well as the paid NC option. | | The remote access proxy service doesn't really have an open | equivalent but there are tons of other supported solutions | out there for secure remote access to your Home Assistant | install. Here is one example add-on to provide Wireguard | support, developed and supported by an NC employee: | https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-wireguard | | In short, the paid cloud services provide an easier path to | solutions you can deploy for yourself if you wish. You can | still use equivalent services that you host yourself under | your own AWS/GCP account. Those services cost NC money to | host, so asking for money isn't too far out there. Of course, | that money is more than what the cloud parts cost, and what | we all get in return is a team of skilled developers working | full time on the project and releasing everything for free. | zsarnett wrote: | Wow, that is a bunch of assumptions incorrectly presented as | the truth! The Open Home conference in December is laying it | out pretty good and shows why and how most of the above is | actually miles off: https://www.home-assistant.io/state-of-the- | open-home/ | madjam002 wrote: | I mean it's still all open source, so what if they want to | monetise some hardware and cloud connectivity? Worst that will | happen is they will drive more and more into paid plans, a fork | may or may not happen and there will be a community split, but | for my place personally I don't see much of a risk there when | most of my stuff just uses the MQTT integration. | | Hopefully with money coming in they can improve the core | itself, because at the moment the real value of Home Assistant | is the huge community around it and 3rd party integrations. | gedy wrote: | I know the HA founder and think you're mischaracterizing him | and his motivations. What you call "Cashing in" is attempting | to focus full time on a really terrific project. He's certainly | not rich off this and could have instead gone for a | commercial/closed source vs the open project it is now. | robbiet480 wrote: | Hello, I'm the original creator of the Home Assistant iOS | Companion App. Just wanted to clear up that Nabu Casa took over | the iOS and Android apps purely because of requirements by | Apple and Google around a corporation being the only entity | that can have a development team. At no time did Nabu Casa pay | any money to me or anyone else to acquire the apps. They were | transferred to Nabu Casa purely for convenience, since Home | Assistant Inc doesn't exist. | stingraycharles wrote: | Do I understand correctly that you just gave the iOS app out | of your hands, for Nabu Casa to maintain? Or is it solely a | legal structure? | | I find it interesting if it were the former, I personally | would have considered monetizing it myself, but then again, | it's probably not a coincidence I haven't founded any | opensource projects as impactful as Home Assistant. :) | robbiet480 wrote: | Nabu Casa doesn't maintain it, the community does. I | personally haven't worked on it in a while now because I've | been consumed with my new company but it is still being | very actively developed. I still have full access to the | source code and developer account and such and am a | resource to whoever needs my input as time permits. | sneak wrote: | If the community maintains it, why hasn't the community | removed the phone-home surveillance in the iOS client? | | This is something I only see in packages maintained by a | central authority that wants to consume the data from the | community, at the expense of end user privacy. | zacwest wrote: | I'm the maintainer of the iOS/macOS app these days. I'm | not paid by Nabu Casa and I do it in my free time (if | anything, Nabu Casa has avoided doing things which may | inadvertently monetize my work to not my benefit, which I | appreciate). | | There's no analytics nor reporting in the app. I've been | slowly removing[0] things that talk to servers other than | your Home Assistant server, but your private | information's never left the device. Right now the app | will talk to 2 additional sources, both of which you can | disable in the Privacy settings: | | 1. alerts.home-assistant.io, which will alert for | security issues but is strictly a JSON file it loads [1] | | 2. Firebase Cloud Messaging, for push notifications | (since we can't talk to APNS directly in HA) | | FCM is a dependency I'm actively trying to kill off in | favor of an implementation that is both end-to-end | encrypted and talks directly to Apple's Push Notification | Service. Apple would not allow a solution where HA talks | directly to APNS as they do not want that many active | connections, and it would require disclosing private keys | for the App Store account. | | Unless Robbie wanted to give me his personal Apple ID | password, moving the app to the Nabu Casa App Store | account was the only way for me to do anything with the | app. | | [0] https://github.com/home-assistant/iOS/pull/2010 [1] | https://github.com/home- | assistant/iOS/blob/861a40a50aa201ff4... | madjam002 wrote: | That's freakin awesome, it's so refreshing to see this, | especially when Home Assistant is likely to be installed | on non-techie's phones and you want to just set it and | forget it. | | Thank-you for all of your work on the Home Assistant iOS | app, it's one of the best parts of the ecosystem imo. | [deleted] | buro9 wrote: | When you sell a house like this... what do you leave behind and | what do you take? | | This has increasingly been on my mind. I've no desire to sell | soon, but there's a Nest doorbell that is wired in, so it stays. | A Nest thermostat, which I could remove but when I got the boiler | I chose to not have the control panel extra with timer as I knew | I had Nest. Then the lighting, the motion sensors... should I | take the few thousand GBP worth of Hue bulbs? That feels like a | yes, just put in the cheapest bulbs. | | And so it begins... some things stay, some things go, and the | tooling is the hardest. This person has touch screen control | panels and Home Assistant. Even if you left it behind, you'd need | to transfer the knowledge around it too. But remove it, and the | house goes beyond dumb in many ways. | giobox wrote: | There is almost no way you can handover _any_ HomeAssistant | installation during a home sale, not unless you want the buyer | to be calling you for help with technical issues /gremlins | _months_ after the sale closes. Every single Home Assistant | installation is effectively a custom install - there can be | almost zero commonality between two different setups really. | Things break because you don 't update them; they break because | you do update them. It's a small but constant stream of | maintenance tasks once your HA installation reaches a certain | degree of complexity and new owner is likely not going to be | interested in that at all? | | For me and my own HA install, I accept I will have to revert | everything to how it was when I bought the home, which is | itself a really tragic statement on the state of home | automation in 2022. I get satisfaction from running it, but it | does require running. It is not an "appliance", and there are | still no real building codes/standards for ensuring these | things stay compatible for years to come. | | Similarly, if the seller tried to convince me to take a house | with his own home made HomeAssistant setup, I would likely | request it be removed completely before I closed the sale, | regardless of any perceived quality of the work. If nothing | else, I couldn't trust they hadn't left their own remote access | ability somewhere in the stack and I don't have time to audit | what might be years of quite hacky integration work. | | There is an old saying, "Never sell a car to a friend". Home | assistant is like that, but you should never sell it to anyone, | regardless of how good you think you've got it running today. | colordrops wrote: | > you'd need to transfer the knowledge around it too. | | My experience with house shopping in LA is that you've got no | leverage to question why some panel is missing or some | disconnected wires are sticking out of the wall. | TYPE_FASTER wrote: | We left the hardwired stuff, a couple Nest thermostats and the | garage door openers (obviously) that were connected via wifi, | and unplugged and brought with us the Phillips Hue hub. I | forget if I took the time to take the Hue bulb out of the | ceiling fan. | alistairSH wrote: | Things like light switches (zwave, wifi) could probably remain. | New owner would just pair them to their own hub/controller. | | Hubs probably go with previous owner. Turn-over too complicated | - just unplug it and take it. | | Something like a Nest (or anything else with direct cloud | integration) is a bit more complicated. You'd either have to | unpair it from your account or replace it with a dumb | thermostat. | andrewstuart2 wrote: | I believe there are laws (the legal term being "fixture," for | things permanently attached to a home) about what can be taken | unless it's explicitly included in a contract. The sale | contract will probably say that fixtures are included, and if | you are not selling certain things, those will need to be | specified. And from some brief reading, you may need to be | careful earlier in the process as well to avoid false | advertisement in the listings. | gregmac wrote: | 10 years ago I sold a house that had only a couple smart | switches, and I took them out before we listed and replaced | them with regular switches. | | A few months ago I sold a house a house with lots of Insteon | stuff, and I left almost all of it in place. Partly it was | because we sold quickly and I didn't have time, and partly | because it was 9+ year old gear anyway. Insteon has the benefit | that the keypad scenes and switch-to-switch links work without | a hub. I took my hubs (ISY99 and HomeAssistant) which means no | automations or timers. | | I would have left the ISY99 if the new buyers had asked, but I | didn't want to provide tech support of any sort for it. The | downside of this type of gear compared to (the orders-of- | magnitude more expensive) commercial stuff is you really have | to know quite a bit about it to manage it. For the most part | there's really not any local trades people you can call for | service, and frankly, it's not worth the headache as a seller | to even try to explain any of this. | | In my new (current) house I'm in the process of installing | Zwave switches. I think they're pretty hub-dependent, which is | definitely a downside compared to Insteon for resale. I am | really not sure what I'll do when I move, but hopefully it will | be several years before that's an issue. I am fairly certain | though that HomeAssistant (both software and ecosystem) won't | be at the point where I could just leave it for the new owners | and not cause more trouble for myself than it's worth. | jon-wood wrote: | ZWave is designed to work without a hub once devices are | programmed, but you do need to go the extra mile to make that | work - as an example you can configure a ZWave switch to send | a message directly to the lights it should be controlling, | rather than going via the hub (although the hub can also be | notified). If you're curious the keyword you're looking for | is Association. | stevenpetryk wrote: | Kinda related but I've always imagined selling a house and | leaving behind a "readme" with the latest state of things. I | know inspections cover many things, but it'd be nice to have | something from the previous owner talking about how specific | things work. | constGard wrote: | One of the most frustrating aspects of this is all the stuff | that's buried in the backyard. I've had to painstakingly | survey the property to find all of buried electrical and | water pipes and I fully intend to pass the map on to the next | owner. | nathan_f77 wrote: | I had a very similar setup in my previous apartment. I used a | lot of battery-powered Zigbee devices for motion sensors, | contact sensors, etc. and attached them using 3M command | strips. I also wired up some Zigbee switch modules behind the | light switches, so I could control all of the lights in our | house. (This was way nicer and cheaper than using Hue bulbs | everywhere.) I also had curtain motors, and a SwitchBot Hub to | control air conditioners, etc. | | Everything was pretty easy to remove and take with me to our | next house. | denimnerd42 wrote: | you wouldn't be required to perform KT. | | in Texas anything attached stays so even lightbulbs but you can | also exclude anything explicitly. | jethro_tell wrote: | Sure, but you might just throw in cheap bulbs before you show | it. Depends if you move out first. | | If I ever sold this place, I would move out most of my ha and | automation stuff first. | | Even a generic hot cold thermostat is pretty cheap and easy | to put in. | | Would probably leave recessed touch screens though. | mrweasel wrote: | I believe one of the hosts on the Coder Radio podcast moved | into a home with some home automation stuff (light, heating | and locks), but wasn't informed about the configuration or | how to operate it. He described it as moving into a haunted | house. | merryMellody wrote: | This sounds incredibly fascinating. Do you have a link to | the specific episode or a title? | xxpor wrote: | This does prevent doing some cool stuff, but I have a rule that | everything still has to work without HA. Obviously automation | won't, but at the end of the day, the light switches are still | light switches. The sensors will simply just not send their | stuff anywhere. | JoBrad wrote: | I've experimented around with HA and some other options for my | home. We bought our home just a few years ago, and not likely | to move soon, but I thought about perhaps registering an email | for the house, and using that for accounts that I wouldn't | consider taking with me. Selling the house would consist of | clearing out most (perhaps all) email from the inbox, clearing | the trash, changing the password for the email account and then | handing it over to the new owner. Then they just have to go | through the 'forgot password' routine to create new passwords | for accounts linked to it. Anything I plan to take with me | would need to be disassociated from that account first, of | course. | | This is just a thought at this point, frankly, so there are | obviously some gaps that need to be worked out. | dr_orpheus wrote: | I feel like the declarations for what comes with the home are | going to start to get longer. The big ticket items used to just | be fridge/stove/etc. but I wonder if people will start making | sure they declare (or explicitly exclude) other things when | selling a house. | | I moved in to a house with a Nest and it wasn't too difficult | to set up again after doing the hard reset. Would've been much | more awkward if I moved and there was just no thermostat... | gnopgnip wrote: | You negotiate it between the buyer and seller. You can take | everything, or leave everything if you agree. | | Otherwise the default if not excluded in most contracts in the | US would be to leave nearly all of it. Kind of like keys, even | if something is not permanently affixed to the home it is | "annexed" and transferred with the home when it is part of the | customized home automation system. So the thermostat is part of | the real estate even though it is wireless. The motion sensors | and door bell are both annexed, and fixtures as they are | attached with a wire. The lightbulbs are one thing that is | probably not annexed or a fixture, it is a grey area, but | potentially are addressed specifically in the contract like | curtains. | bmurphy1976 wrote: | I've been wiring up my house for the past couple years. All of | our light/dimmer/fan switches are Lutron Caseta and work | without a hub. You can add the hub for additional automation | and functionality, but you don't need it. Without the hub, the | switch controls the device and it just works. | | When we leave my plan is to leave the Caseta system in place. | Some of the devices are wireless and some switches have | batteries (CR2032). We did this so we could put switches in | locations you would normally have switches in a modern home | without having to tear out the walls and rewire an 80 year old | home. Ripping the system out is not an option, and I'm ok with | that. | | Everything else is going with me. All the z-wave outlets, | bulbs, timers, sensors, etc. will still be useful in a new | home. I've saved all my old outlets so it will be an easy swap | switching the new back to the old. | | The only thing I'm unsure about is the Wyze camera/security | system I am currently building out. My expectation is that by | the time I even think of selling my home it will be obsolete so | I'll probably just leave it for the new owners to worry about. | lkramer wrote: | It also seems like it would severely lower the value for any | buyer who is not interested in all that stuff? | tlsalmin wrote: | This is why I opted for Shelly on my house build. The dimmers | keep dimming and everything works regularly without a | hub/HA/Wifi. Leaving the modules inside the light switches. No | need for special bulbs and having switches with springs allows | any light to be dimmed as long as the fixture/bulb supports it. | buro9 wrote: | There's room for a future product to discover everything | within a house. Find all the Shelly devices, figure out which | bulbs are Hue, discover any small sensors left behind, etc. | egeek wrote: | It'll be easy to find the Shellys. Just look for light | switches that don't cause the light to turn on or off, or | lights that turn on randomly. We put a Shelly 2 on every | light switch in our new build 2 years ago (about 30 | Shellys) and over 50% of them have already failed. | | Usually its either the relay refusing to switch on or off. | Or its able to switch on and off via the app, but not via a | light switch that it was happily doing the day before. Or | it disappears off the WiFi and refuses to connect no matter | how many resets / power cycles are done. | | After replacing 10 or so of them, I decided it was easier | to rip them all out. | stavros wrote: | Personally I'd prefer if Zigbee just took over everything, | then everything would be interoperable and we would avoid | being in yet another dystopian hellscape. | bradstewart wrote: | I just did this, and it's... fun. Particularly account | transfers--most devices that are tied to internet accounts | (like Nest) don't allow you to transfer them to other accounts. | | So hard-resetting them is often the only option, which is often | a time consuming process in itself (I'm looking at you Insteon) | and throws away the configuration. | | I didn't even attempt to leave the HomeAssistant-based stuff in | place. | scarby2 wrote: | So for stuff that's not trivial to remove just set up new | accounts i.e. 123ExampleRd@gmail.com, tie everything to that | e-mail and then just hand over the passwords when you move. | Preferably do this when you move in, It also solves the issue | of providers with no means to share accounts or devices that | tie to google/other auth, this way you share the password | with everyone who lives with you without giving out any | personal credentials. | | Not to mention the convenience of having the ability to have | e-mails sent to whoever happens to be resident at that | property and keep a history that can be transferred. I.e. | maintenance invoices, remodel invoices, appliance receipts. | Then when you sell the house the new owner will get all that | info. | bradstewart wrote: | Yea, that's definitely what I _should_ have done. But it | did not cross my mind when I originally set everything up. | Next time! | CrossWired wrote: | I just sold, all switches were GE ZWave paddle switches, new | house is old wouldnt work, left them all. | | Both doors were Z-wave enabled locks, left both of them as I | bought updated ones for the new house | | Left 2 IP Cams (with manual and details) that were not smart to | take down, and planned on switching at the new house. | | I took all the Ubiquiti wifi gear, all the home automation hubs | and anything I could EASILY reuse. | mikepurvis wrote: | I didn't have a "full" setup, just a Nest and a few rooms on | Hue; I ended up leaving it all behind-- the realtor actually | had the Nest right on the listing like it was a major selling | point, and our new place had an older boiler anyway, so it | wasn't clear it would be a good fit. | | It was fairly easy to just factory reset everything and walk | away, but yeah if there was an actual PC/RPi and a user-managed | software stack in the picture, I could picture it being a real | headache to sort out. | llamataboot wrote: | I have slowly gone all in on Home Assistant over the past 5 years | and I think it is an amazing community, and amazing open-source | success story, and fantastic software. | | I will say that programming your house yourself can be fun (you | can literally do anything) but you also have to then keep up with | all the technical debt and changes over time. I still don't think | it's a great choice for non technically minded folks that would | find that level of tinkering and fixing overwhelming - but I must | say that Home Assistant is moving positively in that direction by | really focusing on UX - and having a giant community keeping | integrations updated, even unofficial reverse-engineered ones, is | great. | everyone wrote: | All this smarthome stuff like an enormous amount of work. What | are any actual concrete benefits over doing things the dumb way? | | I can't think of anything significant, certainly nothing to | justify the cost (not just money, also time, embodied energy | etc). | | Though I have 0 experience with this stuff, so I am asking a | genuine question. | nouveaux wrote: | Without knowing your home, it's hard to say. I think the | biggest benefit right now is sun rise alarm lights and | circadian rhythm lights. This should have a noticeable benefit | for everyone. The hardest part is figuring out what to do with | your physical light switches. | | At the end of the day though, the ones that benefit the most | from home automation are enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering. If | that's not you, get some hue lights and light switches, and | call it a day. | markvdb wrote: | We use a traditional system at our first home, but at the | family holiday home in the remote countryside, smart home stuff | makes a lot of sense: | | - burglary alarm | | - smoke alarm | | - no guests? all lights off | | - minimal heat in winter to prevent freezing pipes | | - preheat home and boiler before arrival | | - ... | thebean11 wrote: | Whoa, I didn't realize automatic radiator valves existed. Always | feel guilty about using a space heater because the radiator gets | way to hot. | mrweasel wrote: | The valves/thermostats in the article is actually kinda big. | More modern ones are not much larger than the regular | thermostats. It might be a question about which models can be | integrated into Home Assistant. | OJFord wrote: | You can also get them that look exactly like a regular one, | just with a mains cable coming out too - add any HA-supported | relay (or interface to a relay). I've been meaning to do that | for some time; I'd prefer that to integrated temperature | sensing & controls on every radiator personally. | vetinari wrote: | > It might be a question about which models can be integrated | into Home Assistant. | | There are also multiple ways (zha vs zigbee2mqtt); and the | given valve may support one, but not the other. | pixelbreaker wrote: | no thanks. I like switches and using my body. This kind of tech | as progress is a fallacy. | mrspuratic wrote: | I like using switches and my body too. I mostly like the latter | at the beach though, so last year when we had to drive 70km | back from the coast because the kid next door thought it would | be fun to bounce a football off a window, I caved. Replaced the | old school hard-wired 110dB neighbourhood-bothering alarm (home | insurance policy requirements suck) with one I can | set/unset/silence/check via internet or SMS. | | Since then I've added a handful of sensors, switches and pass- | through sockets. Very much cheaper than upgrading the entire | heating system, long term fuel efficiency gains aside. I don't | need to plan/remember to turn off things or change thermostats, | I just need to set the alarm "away" and that's done. | | I have 3 rules: everything has to work with the same app, I do | not talk to my house, and everything has to work acceptably if | there's an outage. If it's not helping with security or | tangible energy savings I probably don't want it. | Kiro wrote: | Good for you. I personally wish I could control everything with | my mind. | nmcfarl wrote: | I'm not sure. I love my house, but the lights are insane with a | switch under every overhead light, and using smart switches to | control them has been so very useful. Generally I control all | the lights in a room with 1 smart switch so I don't have to | walk across the room to turn on all the lights in the room | | My bedroom came with 3 switches in 2 panels across the room | from each other, the kids room 2 in 2 locations, bathroom 4 in | 1, kitchen 4 in 3, living room 6 in 2, dinning room 2 in 2. | | Detailed example: It takes 4 light switches in 3 locations to | turn on my kitchen lights: | | * 1 panel - 3 sides of the kitchen ceiling lights switch, | kitchen recessed lights switch | | * separate panel 4 feet away on the other side of a counter - | breakfast bar (4th side) ceiling light switch. | | * final panel 10 feet to the right, down the breakfast bar | counter to turn on the recessed breakfast bar lights. | | Is it too much to ask that you circumnavigate the kitchen every | morning to turn on the lights to make coffee? No, the previous | owners did it every day for 20 some odd years. But do I want to | do it? No. | | And I certainly think it's progress that I can choose not to. | grvdrm wrote: | I'm right there with you. I own a relatively new house (8 | years old) and it has SO many switches associated with | various lights. Easy to use the switches as they exist, sure. | But some simple automations make it easy to flip things | on/off without walking all over the house to find the right | switch. | | Also, some of us have roommates that don't obey the rules. My | 3-year old DOES NOT turn on the lights when she walks | downstairs on her own in the morning. Perfect opportunity for | a simple Z-Wave motion senor + switch automation,. | | Otherwise, I agree with the general sentiment to keep it | simple. I use Z-Wave switches for lights, a Z-Wave lock for | one of my doors, and run HA on a RPi4. Haven't spent an | insane amount of time building custom scripts because I want | to do other things. And those switches still work without HA | too. | | (totally see the benefits of Shelly, but hard to stuff in | some electrical boxes like those in my house) | Havoc wrote: | You can sidestep the cloud stuff if you've got a static IP and | wireguard. | vladgur wrote: | I have so far failed at setting up wireguard in my home, much | less making it work with HASS. | | Can you share some pointers? | tristanperry wrote: | Great article, thanks for posting. I've been on a smart home | journey myself, but I'm still currently relying on Alexa for most | integration and a Hue Bridge. It works well for the 30-40 devices | I currently have. | | I totally agree that Home Assistant is probably the way forward | for many power users, but it doesn't quite feel beginner-friendly | enough yet (although the HA devs do seem to be making some great | improvements in this area). | | I'm still undecided on Matter and Thread. Both are naturally | great technologies, but I can't see Google/Nest opening up to | Amazon/Ring and vice versa. Not in any meaningful way, at least. | My hunch is that Matter will help smaller smart home companies, | but not make much difference for the pre-existing 'walled | gardens' that the market has. I hope that I'm wrong though. | | (Disclaimer: I blog and do YouTube videos as Smart Home Point, | but I mainly cover consumer friendly products - and hence I | haven't delved into Home Assistant too much) | mmerickel wrote: | The promise of thread versus reality I feel will be a big | problem - I'd love to be wrong though. I'm on the outside of | things (haven't used thread, only read about it... use zigbee a | lot though). But the way I understand it is that once you join | a device to a particular bridge you will still need to use that | bridge's ecosystem to communicate - even though the device has | its own IP address. For example, when a thread device joins to | homekit and establishes an encrypted handshake, it's not like | I'll be able to use that device's IP address to talk to it. | It's not going to trust me - only homekit. But at least it'll | be able to talk to any homekit bridge on the network and avoid | a SPOF if I unplug one of my homepod minis. | 0ld wrote: | HA is nice, and I've been running it on RPi for a few years, | mainly to make my air purifiers work in the way I want, plus some | light switches and a motion detector | | The only annoying thing are random breaking changes which make me | overhaul my configs a couple of times per year | summari wrote: | empiricus wrote: | I use Home Assistant in my new house, and it kind of works. But | the amount of effort needed to control a cheap wifi on/off plug | did not impress me positively. It is basically one bit of | information, but it goes through who knows how many layers of | software and configurations. Took me a couple of hours to make it | work.. | | I also use the standard thermostat component, which is basic | beyond belief. The kind of control that is implemented in the | cheapest hw thermostat you can buy. I mean, this is pure | software, with 20 more lines of code you could implement a pid | controller or smth. I looked into developing my own component, | but the documentation for HA development also seems lacking at a | quick look. | alex3305 wrote: | I am using Home Assistant for my home automation for about 4 | years now, before just lurking. For me Home Assistant is about | quantity, not quality. Look at the massive amount of | Integrations, currently sitting at almost 2000 [1]. Which is | really impressive, but not even half of them are apparently | used [2]? | | Another example of this was when Blueprints were introduced | [3]. I really, really love the idea of having templated | automations, and I even introduced them into my setup. But | sharing Blueprints is clunky, not mentioning updating | Blueprints, which is borderline impossible from UI. Or at | least, I haven't figured it out yet. | | I still wouldn't recommend Home Assistant to a non-technical | person, as some aspects are really hard to work out. Even if | you're *Ops person. | | 1. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ 2. | https://analytics.home-assistant.io/#integrations 3. | https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2020/12/13/release-202012... | nouveaux wrote: | Home Assistant is the Linux Desktop of consumer applications. | Tons of power under the hood and it is not designed with the | end user in mind. Home Assistant has accomplished something | literally no one else has, including Google, Amazon and Apple. | Home Assistant has the best integration across the most number | of devices. It is also extremely reliable and you can run it | without the cloud. | | If you want easy to install, I would suggest using Alexa with | Alexa compatible devices. Amazon has really made Home | Automation easy. | | I agree that Home Assistant documentation is really bad. If you | are technical and want to stick it out with Home Assistant, | there are Python bridges you can use to write your own custom | code. | criddell wrote: | When your power goes out for a few minutes, what state does | everything go into when it resumes? | jaywalk wrote: | For things like smart bulbs, that's usually set on the device | itself. For a smart switch, it's usually just going to be off. | | However, with HA you could easily create an automation to set | everything how you want it when the power comes back on. It | could even be conditional based on the time of day or whatever | else you want to consider. | idatum wrote: | Good article that gets into the details of leveraging Home | Assistant (HA) to glue together various types of sensors and | switches, etc. | | I think categorizing HA users into 2 groups of either technical | or non-technical is too coarse. You have to add another dimension | that captures how much a user is willing to automate their home | (making it "smart"). | | I'm technical, but my goal is to make things as seamless as | possible. For example, my Z-Wave wall switches are the type that | allow the original switch to override what the remote command | sent. These in-wall Z-Wave switches are embedded in the switch | box and the existing switch is then low voltage. | | The same for my thermostat. Any household member can override | locally. I detect the change and make sure I hold that new value | over any automations that run that day. | | In the end, my HA setup is pretty minimal with no HA add-ons and | a few integrations, such as Z-WaveJS2MQTT and MQTT being the most | used. This way I rarely hit any issues upgrading HA. | 01100011 wrote: | As a SWE I was initially skeptical about using software to | control more aspects of my environment but I finally gave in and | gave HA a shot. It took some work but I managed to cobble | together a system using a RPI and ZWave which seemed to work | reliably. I slowly added more features like HVAC and controlling | my aquarium top-off pump. Everything worked reliably until I went | on vacation and the switch controlling the aquarium top-off pump | inexplicably fell off the network. I watched the water level | slowly drop from 400 miles away over my webcam feed with no way | to fix it. Moral of the story is beware of automation and always | consider your failure cases. Building up these sorts of systems | is fun and rewarding initially but can become a time sink and a | liability if you're not careful. | reacharavindh wrote: | May be my day job of handling servers and services at scale makes | me say this... | | I'd like my home, appliances and equipment to be dumb and simple. | A basic level of automation by making all power switches | controllable from a central private endpoint would be nice, but | hooking that up to a non self-hosted service is a big No for me. | | I'm about to buy a home. It will be fun to find that simplicity | in automation for myself. | nomel wrote: | > making all power switches controllable from a central private | endpoint would be nice | | This is what Zigbee and Z-Wave are for, and I would say one one | of the main points of using home assistant: to keep it all | local. The Nabu Casa stuff just allows you to access your | _required local_ home assistant setup (RPi, VM, whatever) | without having to mess with DMZ to allow direct connections. | Self hosted in the whole point of it all. | | If you buy smart devices that require cloud connections, then | home assistant can also work with many of those, but it ends up | being a much worse experience when turning your lightbulb on | requires sending an http request halfway around the world and | back. | crooked-v wrote: | I'd personally recommend the Lutron Caseta line. They use a | proprietary RF system so if you want full automation or phone- | based control you need their hub, but even without one you can | just use them as normal switches, pair switches and remotes, | pair switches with motion sensors, etc just as built-in | behavior. | | They've also covered basic usability issues that a lot of other | smart switches overlook, like having a hard disconnect on every | switch, so you don't need to go to the breaker box just to | change a lightbulb. | FanaHOVA wrote: | I tried to build a company around this in ~2014, we built our own | boards and everything, and had a fork with HASS that had more | defaults based on our hardware. Too bad it didn't quite work out | as a business. | | The 3D designs for the hardware cases are still on GitHub: | https://github.com/Smart-Torvy/3D-Objects | gh02t wrote: | Ubiquiti also briefly employed the founder of Home Assistant in | 2018 and paid him specifically to work on it. People speculated | that they were considering releasing some sort of product built | on HA, but it never materialized. | | It's maybe for the better from a user/community POV, but I'm | surprised there hasn't been more commercial interest. HA in its | current form is still probably a bit too technical for mass | market, but I would think a company could easily spruce it up a | bit and instantly have a fairly strong software ecosystem and a | lot of good will as long as they handled it right. | KennyBlanken wrote: | > On caveat is that I have started running into some reliability | issues (occasional device unavailability) once I exceeded 50 or | so devices. This seems to be common for Zigbee networks, | | It's patently ridiculous that you could add a lightbulb to your | network and be unable to get in your front door the next day | because now you have too many devices. | | Even more so when you consider that the standard is twenty years | old and should be extremely mature. | | This is the problem with all this home automation stuff...all of | them, Zigbee, Zwave, wifi - seem to crap out as soon as you have | a decent number of devices. WiFi seems the least robust for high | device count, but why haven't Zwave and Zigbee figured out how to | get their systems to work for a large number of devices, a | decade-ish into things? | | Security is also something of a joke for both zigbee and z-wave. | | > I'm excited about the upcoming Matter and Thread standards | which are likely to replace/augment Zigbee (and Z-wave) as true | interoperable home automation connectivity standards. | | Interoperable, but you'll be forced by vendors to use _someone | 's_ online services. There is no way Matter and Thread will be | designed in such a way that you will have freedom from paying | _somebody_ every month _and_ give data that will eventually make | its way to marketers. | | Edit: the author's upstairs window automation devices are | ludicrously dangerous from a fire safety standpoint as there | appears to be no easy way to open them if the device breaks or | loses power. Folks, do not remove manual control from windows. | It's not just dangerous, it's likely illegal. Windows and doors | MUST be operable, easily, by one hand. | secabeen wrote: | > It's patently ridiculous that you could add a lightbulb to | your network and be unable to get in your front door the next | day because now you have too many devices. | | I am not aware of any keypad zigbee or z-wave door lock that | depends on that network to unlock in standard config. Yes, you | could set it up that way, to unlock based on presence | detection, etc, but that's on you. The standard setup is a | local code list on the lock, with updates and status reported | to home automation to enable integration. Most locks also have | a standard key backup as well, so you're doubly protected. | vetinari wrote: | Similarly with radiator valves; they operate locally. You | program them with a mode (normal/off/away) and schedule | (given temp at given time) upfront, and then they maintain | the required temperature. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-17 23:00 UTC)