The little smart home platform that could
The little smart home platform that could
With a new ownership structure, Home Assistant is making its next big move
- Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability.
- The foundation will own and govern all Home Assistant entities, including the cloud, and has plans for new hardware and AI integration.
- Home Assistant aims to become a mainstream smart home option with a focus on privacy and user control, while also expanding partnerships and certifications.
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I like the idea of Home Assistant. I just can't be arsed to set it up.
I was of the same mindset for a long time; SmartThings, Hue and Google Home all worked well enough together to do what I wanted. But holy shit, Home Assistant is on another level and I only wish I'd installed it sooner.
The only real downside is that it makes home automation somewhat addictive and, by extension, expensive. I spend quite a lot of my time thinking about how to automate more of the things, and have a never ending list of stuff that I want to add to my setup.
Oh it's not as bad as your making it. My water sensors were only about $20 - $30 shipped and I mean if you're going to make an order you might as well get that $30 z wave extender so the fence gate sensors I spent $40 on have good coverage. I pair those with about $100 in temperature and humidity sensors for the attic, garage and freezers. I mean I needed to justify the SDR I picked up for like $45 you know. My $20 garage opener has also made life that much simpler. Wait how much have I spent already?
I can quit any time, I swear!
Addictive is right. I'm in the process of building myself a smart mailbox with a couple proximity sensors and an ESP32. It's been quite the undertaking, and quite expensive if you count the tools I bought for the project.
If you're down on the "editing YAML until you're blue in the face" part, they've pretty much transitioned entirely to a good UI for that. Going into the yaml is rare now. I was of the same opinion a year or so ago, but tried it and it's improved immensely in the last year for configuring things. There's room left for improvement, but it's usable now.
The first time I did it, it was a shitshow. Then I started over and it worked fantastically. YMMV