Home Assistant is an open-source home automation project developed by a worldwide community of very clever people, with a strong focus on performance, reliability and protecting your privacy. If you’ve spent any amount of time researching smart home tech and the world of the “Internet of Things”, chances are, you will have seen a reference to Home Assistant somewhere, partly due to the vast number of system integrations it can support.
Home Assistant has long been a powerful force amongst smart home aficionados, but it is sometimes criticised for being too complicated for the “average Joe” due to the product’s heavy reliance on code (YAML) for its configurations. However, over the past year or so, the developers of Home Assistant began moving a lot of this configuration to the web UI in an effort to greatly simplify the system – for all users. Thanks to this effort, tasks which used to be technically demanding can now be accomplished with the click of a few buttons.
Today, Home Assistant has reached a significant milestone in user-friendliness, and it’s only getting better. Combine this with an ever-growing list of supported smart home platforms, advanced automation tools, blazing fast performance and a rapid development lifecycle, it can arguably rival the features and capabilities of any commercially available product in this space.
In this article, we want to highlight some of the reasons why we think Home Assistant is such a fantastic product, and discuss some of the unique features it brings to the modern smart home…
Home Assistant has long been a powerful force amongst smart home aficionados, but it is sometimes criticised for being too complicated for the “average Joe” due to the product’s heavy reliance on code (YAML) for its configurations. However, over the past year or so, the developers of Home Assistant began moving a lot of this configuration to the web UI in an effort to greatly simplify the system – for all users. Thanks to this effort, tasks which used to be technically demanding can now be accomplished with the click of a few buttons.
Today, Home Assistant has reached a significant milestone in user-friendliness, and it’s only getting better. Combine this with an ever-growing list of supported smart home platforms, advanced automation tools, blazing fast performance and a rapid development lifecycle, it can arguably rival the features and capabilities of any commercially available product in this space.
In this article, we want to highlight some of the reasons why we think Home Assistant is such a fantastic product, and discuss some of the unique features it brings to the modern smart home…
Your Local Assistant
Home assistant does something most home automation platforms don’t – it runs your entire smart home locally This offers a few distinct advantages:
- Performance. Home Assistant is fast. Really fast. When you send a command to turn on a light (for example) Home Assistant can communicate directly with your light switch over your local network. The command doesn’t need to be routed through some cloud server on the other side of the world, so there’s no latency.
- Master of your domain. Home Assistant puts you in complete control of what your smart home can access, when and by whom. When a smart home hub or controller runs locally, there’s no dependency on the availability of remote services, or what features those service owners want you to use. This means, you’re not limited in what you can do with your devices and automations. Also, if your internet stops working, or when your favourite smart home service provider suddenly goes out of business – as we’ve seen far too often – your system will keep on truckin’.
- Privacy. Home Assistant is especially focused on preserving your privacy. All your personal data and all your configuration is stored locally. Everything. No 3rd parties involved at all!
- Security. Zero dependency on the internet also means fewer potential security vulnerabilities and attacks from the outside world. Home Assistant also ships with multi-factor authentication, user access controls and assignable access tokens, to optionally strengthen your system’s security even further.
“But, wait.... what if I want remote access or use a cloud-only integration?”
As you'd probably expect, there are a number of ways to enable remote features in Home Assistant if you want to. The point is, this is never imposed. Home Assistant doesn’t require you to register an online account or expose your installation to the Internet, just to sign in and use it. Again, how you choose to use Home Assistant is entirely up to you.
Install Anywhere
Home Assistant will run almost anywhere and it has support for a variety of technologies including Linux, Windows, macOS, Rasberry Pi, ODROID, virtual environments and more. Home Assistant gives you the freedom to spec your system your way, to ensure it meets your own individual performance and capacity requirements for now, and the future.
Integrations
At this moment, Home Assistant supports a staggering 1800 smart home integrations, and the list continues to grow. This means, you can get all your smart devices to work together, irrespective of their manufacturer or the technology they use. For example, you could create a “watching TV” automation, which dims your Z-Wave room lights and activates your Philips Hue strip lights, when your Samsung Smart TV is switch on.
1800 Integrations... and counting!
Home Assistant will also discover new Integrations for you automatically, and in a lot of cases, installing these and setting them up is as simple as hitting a button in the UI.
Home Automation
Home Assistant offers some of the most advanced automation capabilities we’ve seen in any rules-based engine of its kind. And don’t worry, most of this power is now achievable through the UI. Scenes and Scripts (re-usable routines) are also fully exposed in the UI.
At the end of last year, Home Assistant took all of this one step further with Blueprints. Basically, a Blueprint is a pre-created automation with user-definable options. This makes it possible to reduce the complexity of creating a new automation, down to simply choosing the devices you want it to act upon.
For example, a light-based motion Blueprint would simply ask the user to select an available sensor to trigger the automation, and the light(s) to be controlled. You don’t need to know anything about the underlying logic. It’s an incredible new feature and the first of its kind.
Blueprints are shared through a dedicated Blueprint Exchange and you can search and download them to your Home Assistant instance for free.
At the end of last year, Home Assistant took all of this one step further with Blueprints. Basically, a Blueprint is a pre-created automation with user-definable options. This makes it possible to reduce the complexity of creating a new automation, down to simply choosing the devices you want it to act upon.
For example, a light-based motion Blueprint would simply ask the user to select an available sensor to trigger the automation, and the light(s) to be controlled. You don’t need to know anything about the underlying logic. It’s an incredible new feature and the first of its kind.
Blueprints are shared through a dedicated Blueprint Exchange and you can search and download them to your Home Assistant instance for free.
Web UI and Customisable Dashboards
The Home Assistant web UI is where you configure your integrations, build your automations and monitor and control your home. It’s fast, easy to navigate and has a modern look and feel.
The default dashboard, where all your integrations and devices appear, is called Lovelace, and is generated automatically as new elements (or entities) are added to your system. They are laid out logically based on assigned areas (a.k.a. rooms) or by type.
The default dashboard, where all your integrations and devices appear, is called Lovelace, and is generated automatically as new elements (or entities) are added to your system. They are laid out logically based on assigned areas (a.k.a. rooms) or by type.
A default Lovelace dashboard (dark mode)
What’s unique about this UI though, compared with other home automation platforms, is you can develop your own customisable dashboards, to enable you to present the information you need, and control the devices you want, your way. You can even assign specific dashboards to certain family members only, providing a stripped-down user experience when required. Click here to see a live demo of some customised Lovelace dashboards.
Add-on Store
Home Assistant also provides its own Add-on store which offers even more ways to extend the platform’s capabilities. You can choose from "official" add-ons (verified by the Home Assistant developers) and community authored ones as well. The possibilities for expanding your system through add-ons are enormous and allowing you to only install what you need, when you need it, prevents the software from being a big, bloated affair.
If you want to take things even further, there’s HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) which lets you install custom integrations, UI widgets, themes and more; all developed and made available free, by the Home Assistant community.
If you want to take things even further, there’s HACS (Home Assistant Community Store) which lets you install custom integrations, UI widgets, themes and more; all developed and made available free, by the Home Assistant community.
Home Assistant Add-on Store
Companion Apps
The Home Assistant iOS and Android Companion apps are also free and mimic the web UI, offering a consistent user experience across all your devices. They’re also fast and responsive.
Another unique feature here is that these apps can report all manner of device sensor readings back to Home Assistant, enabling you to use these in your automations. For example, you might create a “bed time” scene that’s triggered when your phone’s “do not disturb” setting is enabled. Way cool.
Another unique feature here is that these apps can report all manner of device sensor readings back to Home Assistant, enabling you to use these in your automations. For example, you might create a “bed time” scene that’s triggered when your phone’s “do not disturb” setting is enabled. Way cool.
Usability
As we mentioned in the intro, the current version of Home Assistant is far more user-friendly than it used to be, and it has obviously been designed with new users in mind. You can expect a learning curve but honestly, what home automation system doesn’t have one of those?
You don’t need to know how to write code, but you may occasionally need to copy and paste or edit some existing code snippets to setup certain integrations, or to control a special device. Most of the time though, everything you need to do can be accomplished without this.
There are also countless resources on the Internet ready to lend a hand if you get stuck. This is another advantage of using a system that’s developed and loved by a massive world-wide community.
You don’t need to know how to write code, but you may occasionally need to copy and paste or edit some existing code snippets to setup certain integrations, or to control a special device. Most of the time though, everything you need to do can be accomplished without this.
There are also countless resources on the Internet ready to lend a hand if you get stuck. This is another advantage of using a system that’s developed and loved by a massive world-wide community.
Sounds Amazing… What’s The Catch?
Home Assistant unifies the smart home by bridging the gap between disparate smart devices and making them work together. It offers a platform dedicated to automating your home in the way that you want, and it does it faster and more securely than most.
Naturally, nothing is perfect. For Home Assistant, this is almost the point!
Home Assistant is an ever-evolving product. It needs to be so it can keep up with the rapid changes we’re seeing in the smart home industry. For this reason, it will never be a finished product and for some people, this can be a difficult concept to wrap their heads around.
Naturally, nothing is perfect. For Home Assistant, this is almost the point!
Home Assistant is an ever-evolving product. It needs to be so it can keep up with the rapid changes we’re seeing in the smart home industry. For this reason, it will never be a finished product and for some people, this can be a difficult concept to wrap their heads around.
A new version of Home Assistant is released every month and sometimes, this can cause things to break or not go the way you expect. There are several controls in place to avoid this (and you’re not forced to upgrade from one version to the next) but the benefit of regular updates is that you are continuously getting an improved product, with more features and the latest support for the newest smart home devices.
Some concepts and terminology used within Home Assistant may seem foreign at first, even if you’ve used home automation software before, but once you become more familiar with it, you’ll appreciate why certain design decisions have been made and the benefits they provide.
Some concepts and terminology used within Home Assistant may seem foreign at first, even if you’ve used home automation software before, but once you become more familiar with it, you’ll appreciate why certain design decisions have been made and the benefits they provide.
Read Home Assistant founder's vision for the perfect home automation
We think there’s good reason so many people are talking about Home Assistant and we'd encourage anyone who is serious about home automation to take a look at it for themselves.
In the meantime, happy automating!
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