The Absolute Marvel of Home Assistant

How a free and open-source tool quietly became the best thing in my house.

A few months ago, I made a video on my smart home, and mentioned how I use Home Assistant, but I didn’t go into detail, because I knew most people would tune out.

But I’ve used it for 5 years now, and I still can’t get over how good it is.

It wasn’t always this good, though.

I won't bore you with the details, but 10 or years ago, Home Assistant was CLI only (no web interface), everything ran on YAML, and it only supported a handful of devices.

But the idea was the same then as it is today: a free, fully local, open-source platform to control all your smart home devices without needing Apple Home, Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.

Not only that, but to do so without needing a different hub for every product. No more Aqara hub, Hue hub, or whatever random bridge companies try to lock you into.

You know how when you buy a smart home product on Amazon, it likes to tell you that XYZ hub is “required”?

Not when you use home assistant AND the device runs on an open standard like Zigbee or Matter.

This lets you shop based on features and price, not ecosystems. The way it should be.
All while saving you money, as you don’t need 10 hubs in your closet.

And what’s crazy is that you can still integrate it with Apple Home, Alexa, or Google Assistant if you want to. There are even native features for it. It’s completely open, and you’re not locked out of anything.

I can’t believe the amount of people that NEED an internet connection to control their home, privacy concerns aside, it’s maddening to have an internet/power outage and not be able to control your home.

A good smart home shouldn’t even use the internet, let alone need it.

And usually, when something’s this flexible and private, you expect to give up convenience, or functionality.

But Home Assistant runs laps over any other ecosystem. The automations you can build are on a completely different level.

That was the main thing that pushed me over the edge.

It happened when I moved into this place and wanted to properly control the ACs. But the manufacturer’s app only let me do what the remote could: on, off, mode, temperature, etc. That’s it. No scheduling, no intelligence.

But I wanted to turn them to fan or cool given my room temperature, for them to shut off when I go to bed and start up again when I wake.

Simple stuff. Yet, only Home Assistant could make it happen. Locally. Reliably

And I recently switched to Raycast, I have a video coming on it soon, and was amazed at the Home Assistant extension. All of a sudden, I can control everything in my smart home from the launcher.

An entire page only shows you what you can do until the letter “c”.

What’s insane to me is that I can see every camera in my home with 2 key presses using the “cameras” command

My favorite command is “custom entities”. This lets me choose my favorite devices that I want to be able to control fast.

And setting this up takes 2 min, and it’s well documented here. All you need is your Home assistant IP and the Access Token.

You can install home assistant on cheap mini pcs, raspberry pis, an old computer you have lying around or any NAS appliance.

If you’re in the market for a new ecosystem to choose, the choice has never been this easy.

Monthly Picks

A handful of new finds that I think are worth sharing

- Hagglezon - For my friends in the EU - this lets you shop for the same Amazon product across all the EU stores, Germany tends to be the cheapest imo.

- Folder Preview - This lets you preview inside folders (and even .zip files). Pretty useful.

- Literally a radio - I can’t believe I’m saying this, but after the massive 12h outage we had in Portugal and Spain, I immediately bought a radio. During that day, I had to be sitting in the car to get the news. A $10 radio is all I wish I had. I had never been in an outage, let alone a >12h one. It can happen anywhere, and at least you’ll know what’s going on.

Thanks for reading!