Smart home - Home Assistant

mushtafa

mushtafa

mushtafa

Soldato
Joined
17 May 2013
Posts
2,986
Location
West Sussex, UK
Looking at ditching Smartthings and looking at Home Assistant.

Are there any users here who can give advice?

I also see Hubitat being recommended as well - how does this compare?

I've had a Google, but there is so much info out there, it's a bit of a minefield at the moment.
 
I've been using Home Assistant for a few years now. It's hard to give advice without being specific, I will say it's very daunting at first, it will take months of setting up and tinkering to get things right, but it is almost limitless as to what you can do with it.

The best advice I can offer for Home Assistant is to have some sort of end goal, what do you want to integrate, what automations do you want etc. One of my goals with Home Assistant was to have everything controlled locally and not having to rely on any cloud services, as well as having automated lights around the house depending on time, motion sensors and door contacts.

A good place to look is the Home Assistant subreddit for some good ideas and just a view of the possibilities. If you're after automation of lights then choose a system to use such as Philips Hue, then you can add that as a HA integration and start setting up automations. If you want smart switches, buttons, sensors etc then look into anything that's Zigbee or Zwave compatible and you can also connect them directly to HA.
 
Thanks for that. I found a decent Facebook group which has kept me busy reading all day.

I'd also like to keep everything local as the Smarttthings keeps going offline all the time is too unreliable.
 
mushtafa said:
Looking at ditching Smartthings and looking at Home Assistant.

Are there any users here who can give advice?

I also see Hubitat being recommended as well - how does this compare?

I've had a Google, but there is so much info out there, it's a bit of a minefield at the moment.
Click to expand...

I started a thread a short while back for other HA users to discuss integrations/projects.

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/home-assistant.18910108/

Worth having a look through there. I know I need to add an update as I've added a lot since then.
 
I have nothing to add really other than home assistant is excellent and I've been using it for years. MOre and more components can be added and configured in the UI rather than having to muck around with YAML.

The community is excellent as well and the official forums and discord are a great resource if you get stuck
 
Another Home Assistant fan here. It IS daunting to start off with but once you start to play around and find your way through the interface, you’ll find it’s far more intuitive than it looks.

HA is very expandable. Unless it’s a completely locked down system, HA will have an integration that allows it to connect with whatever device you wish.

The advice above regarding an end goal is worth paying attention to. If you just want to automate lights, heating, air conditioning, use zigbee buttons, etc then the own brand Home Assistant Blue device is what you want especially for an easy start. If you want to add security cameras via Frigate or MotionEye then aim for a more capable device such as a NUC or a well resourced VM.
 
I installed the HA docker on my unraid server and had a butchers. It's certainly not plug and play! Not been able to open it outside the network yet, or integrate Smartthings. I'll keep playing and breaking it
 
I haven't used the docker. I've got mine installed as a VM on Unraid as I found it gave a smidgin more flexibility on network integration and general usage.
 
I've been using HA for the past 9+ months, got 2 tablets wall mounted in my house (1 on each floor)
I don't have everything smart related but smart lights are controlled through the tablet, I can see the status of my smart door Lock (locked or not locked), some of the data which people love I never found a reason to have but one of the main benefits I went down the HA is because of my smart thermometer. There were only really 2 ways to control the settings which was going to the ground floor to make adjustments to the temp or boosting the hot water or doing it on the phones on the app but not everyone happens to have their phones in their pockets.

As I get more uses for smart integrations in my house I'll add them to home assist but I don't add every item into my HA if that makes sense.
 
mushtafa said:
I installed the HA docker on my unraid server and had a butchers. It's certainly not plug and play! Not been able to open it outside the network yet, or integrate Smartthings. I'll keep playing and breaking it
Click to expand...
I started with a Hue bridge and then used the HA integration to just 'pull in' everything on that bridge into a Home Assistant docker, also running on Unraid. After a while the bug has bitten, now contemplating just installing Home Assistant OS on a Pi so that I can get access to HACS etc.
 
mushtafa said:
I installed the HA docker on my unraid server and had a butchers. It's certainly not plug and play! Not been able to open it outside the network yet, or integrate Smartthings. I'll keep playing and breaking it
Click to expand...

HA in docker is crippled because you lose Supervisor and have to manage a lot of depedencies manually.

It's far nicer running HAOS in a VM or baremetal on something like a Pi.
 
mikehhhhhhh said:
HA in docker is crippled because you lose Supervisor and have to manage a lot of depedencies manually.

It's far nicer running HAOS in a VM or baremetal on something like a Pi.
Click to expand...


I keep reading and seeing 'supervisor' in guides and wondered why I didn't have it.

If it's going to be easier/better I'll look at a Pi or NUC
 
mikehhhhhhh said:
Could you not just run it in a VM on your Unraid server?

I currently have it on a Pi but my plan is eventually to move it to a VM on my NAS.
Click to expand...

I have Home Assistant running as a VM on my Unraid server with no issues. It was so long ago that I can’t remember how I set it up but I’m sure there was a VM image that I downloaded to use.
 
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