Hello, welcome to another weekly (err..semi-weekly post). I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I know I have. I know this topic is long overdue since, I mean, common if we are talking about smart homes, so picking a platform is the first thing you want to start thinking about. Today, I will be talking about one of the smart home platforms. If you are starting to get into the smart home and want complete control, then I’m sure you probably have heard of it. It is called Home Assistant, and today I will walk you through why I picked Home assistant as my primary smart home platform. Sound interesting? Then let’s get started, shall we?

What is Home Assistant?

“Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect for running on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.” that is the description on the front page of the Home assistant website, so I copied and pasted them 🤣. The description is not wrong, but for someone who does not know about smart homes, that would not answer their question of what is home assistant. Let me try to put it in a simpler term (or at least more detail).

I’m sure you have heard of smart homes and smart devices before. It usually comes with a device, and you control them by installing an app on your phone. The problem is that you need multiple apps to control everything around the house, which could be messy once you pass a certain threshold in the number of smart devices you own. That is also why most people tend to buy smart devices from the same brand so that everything works seamlessly, with less hassle, and can be controlled by just one app. That is the ideal situation, but we know there is no perfect company (or at least I know of). They can’t cover everything and ensure a good quality/user experience. So for a smart home junkie and tech enthusiast like you and I, we want the best product for our money, and that will result in a mix and match of multiple brands. We will need a platform to connect all the devices to put everything together and ensure everything is working correctly and seamlessly. We could do that with Google Home or Amazon Alexa, which act as the glue for all the fragmented devices we have around the home. However, Google Home and Amazon Alexa are not perfect. They are very limited in their capabilities and what they can do. Google Home was barebone in terms of its automation capability compared to Amazon Alexa. Amazon Alexa is the better one, but it is still limited in controlling smart devices. I shall not go into detail, and the pros and cons of them as this is not the time or place for this conversation.

To look for solutions to my problem, I found Home Assistant. Home Assistant is a platform where we can integrate all our smart home devices and make them work seamlessly. Home Assistant has many integrations for all the smart home brands and devices on the market, which is growing. Home Assistant gives you complete control of your home and how everything looks, and with the powerful automation script, you can customize how you want your smart devices to behave. Oh, did I mention that it is FREE? Well, now you know. In short, Home Assistant is a central platform where all your smart devices come together and work together the way you want them to.

What is the selling point of Home Assistant?

As I have mentioned, the Home assistant is the central platform where we can integrate all our smart home devices. For example, I have a smart door lock, doorbell, and security camera from Eufy. I also have smart thermostats from Ecobee. Usually, to be able to interact with them, I have to use their respective application to be able to control them. But now I don’t have to once I integrate them into my home assistant. Everything is in one place, and I can interact with them and create automation based on that as I wish. The possibility is endless. Also, later on, it will save me a lot of headaches to have everything in one place when I expand my smart home.

The next selling point for the Home assistant is how customizable it can sometimes be. I was wondering if we should give users that much power in the first place 😱. But then again, this is meant for people who love tinkering with their home and are somewhat “tech literate.” Of course, this does not prevent the average user from using it, but you have to be in the mindset that if something breaks, you have to fix it or have someone help you fix it. The home assistant community is relatively active, and I’m sure you will be able to find the solution to your question. People are creating new and improved integrations every day, so if something has not been covered, maybe in a few weeks, they might. Worst case, you could not find what you are looking for, then maybe you can create one yourself (assuming you know what you are doing, of course, 😜). Overall, this is a very open platform where you can find what you seek, take matters into your hands, and create your solution. There are not many limitations besides your imagination, so go on and work your magic.

The last thing I want to mention is that Home Assistant is FREE 😱 and can be installed on many hardware or just a simple virtual machine. So the barrier of entry is very low. Anyone can download and try it for themselves. Of course, it will require some setup, but I’m sure you can find the guide online by googling it. Most commonly, I saw people installing Home Assistant are Raspberry Pi 4 or a virtual machine or just simply using docker. If you aren’t familiar with those, that is fine too. Just know that it is effortless to get access to Home Assistant. If you have a computer or laptop, then there you go, you met the requirement 😜. All the talk about getting to the point is that Home Assistant is accessible to everyone who wishes to give it a shot. So why not? You have nothing to lose 🤷‍♂️.

What is the downside?

Nothing is perfect, of course, so Home Assistant is no exception. However, compared to its selling point, the downside is not very significant (at least to me). Still, I want to give you an objective view before you decide if you want to go with Home Assistant for your central platform of choice.

First and foremost, Home Assistant will require you to understand what you are doing, or at least you have enough tech common sense to read the instructions and follow them. I know it is a tall task for some who want everything to work right out of the box, and I respect that. User experience is essential to a product, too, so if this turns you off, then I’m not going to judge you for it.

Second, since this is a fairly open platform, sometime update will break your setup. You will have to be good with the troubleshooting process. If something breaks, you must be the one to fix it or know someone tech-savvy who can help you fix it. You wouldn’t get that much customer support, if at all 😂.

There are many ways to solve a problem, and someone else’s might not work for your case, or you want to customize it for your situation. It required you to have some understanding and some independent thinking. I know it could be some huddle as well, but for someone like myself, I love the challenge, so that wouldn’t be an issue for me.

Lastly, be prepared for constant improvement. This rabbit hole will cost you a lot of time and effort to make things the way you want. Trust me, this rabbit hole goes deep, but then again, you are having fun in the process most of the time, so that I wouldn’t count it as a downside. Only when you banged your head at a problem for hours and still couldn’t solve it, then 😂.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Home Assistant is a beautiful piece of software with a low price of FREE that will make your smart home life more manageable. You might find yourself in the wonder of how much this can do and how much this changes your smart home game. If you are currently having a smart home or considering getting into the smart home, then give Home Assistant a try. You have nothing to lose anyway 🤷‍♂️.

Well, this is all the time we have this week. Next week, I will go over the installation process for a Home assistant for my home, until next week.

-Laz