I did it.
I dove head first into Home Assistant1 and home automation.
For a long time I had been a fan of smart home products. I’ve accrued a collection of LIFX2 smart bulbs over the years and have put them to various use throughout the home, but I only scratched the surface of what can be done.
Local Control
Home Assistant’s homepage describes itself as such:
Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts.
My continued interest and support is driven by the idea of local control and privacy that Home Assistant offers. In typical smart home products, you may use a specific app for the product (e.g. The LiFX app) or a third-party app (Google Home, Apple Homekit). Usually this involves connecting them to the internet or ‘cloud’, thus metaphorically inviting these companies into your home.
Local control describes a device that doesn’t need to reach out to an external server or cloud. It may be local to the device only, or it may be local to your home network. The key difference is that you as the homeowner (and never-ending tinkerer) choose where your data is transmitted, stored, and created. A typical CCTV setup is a great example of a locally controlled system.
I won’t delve more into the privacy concerns, but to anyone who has yet to embark on this journey, I would definitely recommend local-only cameras to start. Reolink3 is often praised on the Home Assistant subreddit as a great local camera product.
Automation
With Home Assistant, I’m able to control smart devices agnostic to the manufacturer’s app or web portal. This opens up some big doors for automation that is typically hard to do otherwise by being able to program actions and events across any connected device.
As an example, I’ve turned our ‘dumb’ washer and dryer into smart devices with a couple vibration sensors. When the load is completed, notifications are sent to both my partner’s phone and mine. If that doesn’t catch our attention, it’s also announced via our kitchen tablet and Text-To-Speech.
There’s so much more that’s possible and checking my Home Assistant instance, I currently have 31 automations active in our home. Occasionally, I’ll think of a new automation and be able to get it going within Home Assistant in minutes. It’s awesome.
Now that you’re informed and sold on HA, back to my plight. I’m in deep.
I have sensors on every window and almost every door. I’m reading the Home Assistant subreddit and forums each day for new inspiration and supportive software. I’m forever tweaking my dashboards and gobbling up every product that Apollo Automation4 cooks up.
It’s almost a problem. But it’s oh so fun and it scratches that tinkering itch that pesters me throughout the day. Another unintended side effect is that it pushed me into self-hosting more and more of the services I rely on (that’s a whole different blog post waiting to be written). It’s a hobby that is both demanding and fulfilling.
I’ll be writing more on HA in the future and likely documenting some of my favorite integrations, tricks, and automations. Stay tuned!