Anyone else running Home Assistant?

[Cyberpyr8]

I have jumped into the world of Home Assistant to control all the smart things in my house.

I was wondering if anyone on here uses it and was looking for some suggestions on how to get the most from it. I have almost all of my devices in the system and I created a few dashboards. I am using the iOS app and have a carplay dashboard I find very useful. I'm still in the process of moving my automations over from Google Home to HA. Just wondering what else anyone on here (the land of tinkerers) have come up with.

[Painthappy]

I'm not familiar with this "home assistant". I'll have to check it out. I have samsung "smart things" that controls my house light and what-not. It seems like it is being less and less supported sadly. Having certain lights come one 15 minutes before sunset and a going off at a certain time is really nice to have.

[RuleOfSines]

Hm, I haven't yet but am interested now. I use a Hubitat C8 to manage my smart home devices, and an Apple Home integration to get the voice control. I think last time I looked at Home Assistant it didn't have an offline voice recognition capability yet.

[Cyberpyr8]

Yeah I have Wyze, Govee, Tuya (Smart Life), Meross, Litter-Robot and a Husqvarna Automower. This let's me add and control it all. I have been using Google Home to control stuff but it's limited compared to HA.

I have mine running on a VM on an old Dell PC. It's working fast for the limited hardware.

[RuleOfSines]

Does it function without an internet connection? That was one of the big reasons I got the Hubitat C8 to manage my devices.

[RAZRBAKK]

All locally hosted, so you're in control.

[Cyberpyr8]

The URL is local. I would imagine it would but I haven't tried it yet.

[Tarsun2]

i have a few different systems but am slowly trying to consolidate. have one system is nice. Very little automation for me though.

[RAZRBAKK]

I run HA on an old thinkpad. Currently using a Conbee II as my Zigbee connection. Looking to upgrade my main device to either one of the HA appliances or build a mini-pc out. I'd say it's worth investing in decent hub to run everything. My Conbee seems to have some interference issues and can be a little slow to react.

Beyond that, I haven't expanded my IoT device library very much, but will be over the next year. I currently run a bunch of IKEA Tradfri lights and have plans to add a weather station to the mix once I move into a place with a yard.

[RAZRBAKK]

Cyberpyr8 Yeah, I've heard about some issues with connecting certain devices. I try to stay opensource as much as possible. My plan is actually to buy the sensors individually and build one out with either an esp32 or a Raspberry Pi and then hardwire it right into my network.

I'm not anti-smarthome, but I have a pretty limited number of things in the house I care about connecting.

[Cyberpyr8]

RAZRBAKK I get it. I said when I moved into this house that I wasn't going to go crazy with smart devices. Yet here I am back at 70-80 devices. But I like to have stuff go on and off throughout the day and night without intervention. The difference with this house is that I used more dumb bulbs and more smart switches and plugs.

[RAZRBAKK]

Cyberpyr8 I'll report back in a year, I might be pushing the same number 😂

[Cyberpyr8]

For any of you thinking about building a home lab or multi computer VM farm, I just addded this little guy. For $180 with tax it was a steal. Came with Windows 11 on it. I installed Proxmox and now have my Home Assistant in a proper VM. I also added a Windows 11 VM. This thing rocks!

https://a.co/d/cGfvnZE

[Siress]

I run HAOS on a HA Yellow with a software defined radio antenna attached for automated meter reading. It's easily my favorite appliance. I have 36 integrations for everything from the usual smart home stuff like door/window sensors, light switches, power outlets to stuff you wouldn't expect like the utility meters (electric, gas, water), weather logging, my bathroom scale, my car, the security system... it just integrates so well with everything that it becomes a de facto command center for control algorithms. I really cannot say enough positive things about it. That said, I do not make it directly accessible from the internet. It's just too much integration to trust it to be exposed online. So I have it setup on my tailnet (see tailscale.com, it's free for small uses like this) for indirect remote access.

[Cyberpyr8]

Yeah I'm using it for everything too. I have it behind 2 firewalls on a separate router so I am not too worried about anyone getting to it. I have about 80 devices on it and all my automations and integrations have been migrated there as well. It's nice having multiple brands of devices and one console to control it all. I have given my wife a dashboard so she can use it and she actually likes this better than any voice controls we have tried. I like that I can use it from my car as well.

[vijil]

I use google home - which is plugged in to a bunch of smart stuff. Garage door, aircon, mower, washer, lighting.

Apparently Google Home is getting gemini AI smarts at the end of the month. Looking forward to it. This thing is dummmb.

[Siress]

It's possible, though hardware demanding, to implement an AI assistant with HA as well. What I find more impressive, though, is that it's easy to configure for simple voice commands that help with daily living.