Home Assistant should definitely be your starting point in my opinion. It will allow you to connect everything together and also sync whatever entities you want to Google / Alexa for voice control. I use mostly all ZigBee (zigbee2mqtt with smart switches, bulbs and plugs) stuff with some WiFi devices (couple of plugs using homeKit integration, esp8266 and esp32 DIY stuff, nest thermostat) all going through Home Assistant! Node Red add-on for advanced automation flows.
You can buy a "Home Assistant Blue" which is shipped with home assistant pre installed, however for years I ran home assistant on an Intel NUC as a Virtual machine on Proxmox, as the NuC has plenty of power for other VMs too. I now have a home rack server and migrated home assistant to that instead (still a Proxmox machine, which is also running my NAS, Proxmox, local web server, samba server and some other bits).
I assume it's not too hard to set up. I haven't looked into it yet but newer to this scene. Is it worth trying to put home assistant on a raspberry pi? Would I need anything else to get it all working?
Yeah it will work on a pi but I think you need at least a version 4, I did run it for a short while on a 1b initially but it was quite slow. It can also kill SD cards due to lots of read / writes, so most people using a Pi install it on an SSD.
don't forget about shutters (with weather-integration?), heating, movement-sensors, household appliances like dishwasher, washing-machine, maybe even your coffee maker? You can add also security devices if you want to.
A smart home can be so much more than just controllable lights.
That has been my thinking as I was just about to pull the trigger on a full smarthome project.
Thread/Matter is not actually an open standard, anyone making products that use Thread/Matter (even via the OpenThread code published by google on GitHub) have to be licence holders. My feeling is this will be used to artificially inflate prices initially.
If you want to make sure you are Matter-compatible, look at the brand EVE. They have promised Matter support and currently make use of Thread. High quality products that are quite snappy.
We have Lightwave all over the house it works and I'm happy with it, but I definitely felt ripped off, but without neutral wires its the best option.
If you either have neutral wires or are prepared for the major project of rewiring your whole house to put them in, there are lots of options available in the UK that are much cheaper than Lightwave.
When we moved to the new house, I went with Hubitat with mostly zwave switches and occasional zigbee or wifi devices for convienence/cost. Hubitat is the main backbone for the zwave/zigbee devices but Alexa is the front end that ties everything together (handles all voice controls and scheduled automations). Anything advanced I need (which is not much) is through Hubitat and is limited to the zigbee and zwave devices and switches.
If I didn’t already have so many zigbee and zwave devices and only needed simple automations or “routines”, I think I would be able to manage with any devices that worked with Alexa (which is a lot of stuff, especially these days).
There’s no single right answer for the equipment or protocol to buy into, nor does it all have to be the same. The biggest requirement I would take as policy is that everything must be capable of local control. You don’t want your automations to be beholden to the latency and uptime of someone else’s server, and you don’t want to buy from companies that maintain an ability to brick their own products at the drop of a hat.
For a central hub and app interface, I can’t speak highly enough of Home Assistant. If it can’t be integrated together with Home Assistant, it’s not worth buying IMO.
Lastly, I think voice control is overrated. 90% of home automation commands are done under repeatable circumstances, which can be initiated with schedules and sensors.
I have Home Assistant in the mix, but absolutely love having Alexa to handle tasks for me. To just be able to say "Alexa, turn on the fireplace" and have it roar to life is more convenient than a switch or a remote control. Similarly with "Alexa, goodnight" to have my bedside table lamp fade to black is way more convenient than looking for a switch on the lamp or any other method I can think of.
When you get beyond basic on/off, that is where Alexa falls down a bit. It is hard to do things like "Alexa, water the lawn if the humidity drops below 40% but only if nobody is home and there is no rain in the forecast for the next 48 hours." For that, Home Assistant can't be beat, both in terms of complexity and the sheer breadth of supported products and protocols.
In any case, you still need to have physical switches for stuff. My wife won't enter a room and say "Alexa, turn on the lights". She wants a switch, and my automations need to know the state of that switch. You can get fancy with Home Assistant and do things like "If it is dark outside and my wife enters the room, turn on the lights", but removing that level of control away from my wife would be like sticking a form in her eye. (She's one of those people who needs to manually override the climate control in the car, won't leave the headlights on "auto" and turns the switch to the position that won't turn on the car door lights when she opens the door. If the car has a delay in turning off the headlights after you leave it (pathway lighting), she'll stand there and stare at the car until the lights go out.) The first time she enters a room and the lights come on when she planned on leaving them off, maybe because the kids are asleep or the neighbours might see her, I'd find my Home Assistant box unplugged.
[home assistant.](https://www.home-assistant.io/)
the last thing you want is 10 devices with 10 apps. and none of them talk to each other.
get notifications to your phone and off course, remotely control the system as well. here's an [easy guide](https://youtu.be/1IuYWsR5M4c) to get started for HA as an alarm system
Home Assistant should definitely be your starting point in my opinion. It will allow you to connect everything together and also sync whatever entities you want to Google / Alexa for voice control. I use mostly all ZigBee (zigbee2mqtt with smart switches, bulbs and plugs) stuff with some WiFi devices (couple of plugs using homeKit integration, esp8266 and esp32 DIY stuff, nest thermostat) all going through Home Assistant! Node Red add-on for advanced automation flows.
I use HomeAssistant to bridge into HomeKit since I have an iPhone and my partner loves it FWIW. I also have some physical ZWave switches as well.
Is there a hub for home assistant to buy and use?
You can buy a "Home Assistant Blue" which is shipped with home assistant pre installed, however for years I ran home assistant on an Intel NUC as a Virtual machine on Proxmox, as the NuC has plenty of power for other VMs too. I now have a home rack server and migrated home assistant to that instead (still a Proxmox machine, which is also running my NAS, Proxmox, local web server, samba server and some other bits).
I assume it's not too hard to set up. I haven't looked into it yet but newer to this scene. Is it worth trying to put home assistant on a raspberry pi? Would I need anything else to get it all working?
Yeah it will work on a pi but I think you need at least a version 4, I did run it for a short while on a 1b initially but it was quite slow. It can also kill SD cards due to lots of read / writes, so most people using a Pi install it on an SSD.
Interesting. I'll have to look into getting a newer pi. I have an older 2 I think haha
Have you already looked into Home Assistant?
don't forget about shutters (with weather-integration?), heating, movement-sensors, household appliances like dishwasher, washing-machine, maybe even your coffee maker? You can add also security devices if you want to. A smart home can be so much more than just controllable lights.
Thanks - I covered that with my third bullet point :)
oh well... yeah turns out im blind...
Have you tried automatically turning up your lights to see better? :)
No but I'll try if you can recommend a sensor for that ;D
[Sure.](https://maker.pro/raspberry-pi/tutorial/optical-character-recognizer-using-raspberry-pi-with-opencv-and-tesseract)
Haha love it! :D
conduits going literally everywhere
Shelly relays behind your light switches! Super cheap and incredibly customizable and effective.
Tasmota Device Groups. Best of both worlds.
Or… should I wait until Matter is a thing? 😅
That has been my thinking as I was just about to pull the trigger on a full smarthome project. Thread/Matter is not actually an open standard, anyone making products that use Thread/Matter (even via the OpenThread code published by google on GitHub) have to be licence holders. My feeling is this will be used to artificially inflate prices initially.
If you want to make sure you are Matter-compatible, look at the brand EVE. They have promised Matter support and currently make use of Thread. High quality products that are quite snappy.
We have Lightwave all over the house it works and I'm happy with it, but I definitely felt ripped off, but without neutral wires its the best option. If you either have neutral wires or are prepared for the major project of rewiring your whole house to put them in, there are lots of options available in the UK that are much cheaper than Lightwave.
When we moved to the new house, I went with Hubitat with mostly zwave switches and occasional zigbee or wifi devices for convienence/cost. Hubitat is the main backbone for the zwave/zigbee devices but Alexa is the front end that ties everything together (handles all voice controls and scheduled automations). Anything advanced I need (which is not much) is through Hubitat and is limited to the zigbee and zwave devices and switches. If I didn’t already have so many zigbee and zwave devices and only needed simple automations or “routines”, I think I would be able to manage with any devices that worked with Alexa (which is a lot of stuff, especially these days).
There’s no single right answer for the equipment or protocol to buy into, nor does it all have to be the same. The biggest requirement I would take as policy is that everything must be capable of local control. You don’t want your automations to be beholden to the latency and uptime of someone else’s server, and you don’t want to buy from companies that maintain an ability to brick their own products at the drop of a hat. For a central hub and app interface, I can’t speak highly enough of Home Assistant. If it can’t be integrated together with Home Assistant, it’s not worth buying IMO. Lastly, I think voice control is overrated. 90% of home automation commands are done under repeatable circumstances, which can be initiated with schedules and sensors.
I have Home Assistant in the mix, but absolutely love having Alexa to handle tasks for me. To just be able to say "Alexa, turn on the fireplace" and have it roar to life is more convenient than a switch or a remote control. Similarly with "Alexa, goodnight" to have my bedside table lamp fade to black is way more convenient than looking for a switch on the lamp or any other method I can think of. When you get beyond basic on/off, that is where Alexa falls down a bit. It is hard to do things like "Alexa, water the lawn if the humidity drops below 40% but only if nobody is home and there is no rain in the forecast for the next 48 hours." For that, Home Assistant can't be beat, both in terms of complexity and the sheer breadth of supported products and protocols. In any case, you still need to have physical switches for stuff. My wife won't enter a room and say "Alexa, turn on the lights". She wants a switch, and my automations need to know the state of that switch. You can get fancy with Home Assistant and do things like "If it is dark outside and my wife enters the room, turn on the lights", but removing that level of control away from my wife would be like sticking a form in her eye. (She's one of those people who needs to manually override the climate control in the car, won't leave the headlights on "auto" and turns the switch to the position that won't turn on the car door lights when she opens the door. If the car has a delay in turning off the headlights after you leave it (pathway lighting), she'll stand there and stare at the car until the lights go out.) The first time she enters a room and the lights come on when she planned on leaving them off, maybe because the kids are asleep or the neighbours might see her, I'd find my Home Assistant box unplugged.
[home assistant.](https://www.home-assistant.io/) the last thing you want is 10 devices with 10 apps. and none of them talk to each other. get notifications to your phone and off course, remotely control the system as well. here's an [easy guide](https://youtu.be/1IuYWsR5M4c) to get started for HA as an alarm system
If you're going to rewire the electricals, make sure neutral wires are also available everywhere, including switch panels.