- Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability.
- The foundation will own and govern all Home Assistant entities, including the cloud, and has plans for new hardware and AI integration.
- Home Assistant aims to become a mainstream smart home option with a focus on privacy and user control, while also expanding partnerships and certifications.
Is HA not already the mainstream option for privacy and user control? Maybe I just live in a bubble, but it seems like it’s already the go-to if you care about those things.
I took it to mean they’re going to put it in prettier packaging, simplifying its use for the average Joe.
I have been using it for years and still find some things confusing. Like idk why it’s so hard to figure out how to customize the dashboard and create new widgets for it. I’ve been a professional web dev for 8 years and if I’m struggling with it, you can bet most people aren’t even going to bother. Idk what’s so hard about providing simple html, css, and js like every other web framework.
Because it’s either full-auto, or full-manual, with no wiggle room in between. That being said, they have made the right moves in hiring the right people in the community to be ICs on the project to fix stuff like this, and they are killing it. Ex: they hired the Rhasspy dev a year ago, and he has already revamped the entire voice assist workflow in HA. Great work.
I’m totally cool with that. Even as a more technically-minded user, I see a lot of things that could be way more streamlined.
I totally agree! They’ve come a long way, but making it easier to use can only help grow support for the project.
Yeah I’m not using it yet, partly because I’m not at the home server level of Linux competency, but I do want to move towards it at some point
If you want to skip ahead, there are also a few ways to get Home Assistant running that don’t need any level of Linux competency:
If you don’t want to run Home Assistant OS, and instead want to run Home Assistant as one of several applications running on a Server, that’s when you need to start getting comfortable administrating a Linux server.
For technical people… Yes.
For people who aren’t that technical? No.
Don’t get me wrong, the Home Assistant Green and SkyConnect dongle is great and massively makes maintenance for the regular joe easier (no pis or other hardware that loads from the SD/hardware considerations).
But some stuff in UX would have to improve, which it already is doing ofcourse.
You would need to make touching a config file non existent. They’ve improved this over time, but not quite there I imagine.
It’s especially true when it comes to things like HACS. I love HA but I’ve also told everyone I know that, if I die, rip all that shit out and replace all the “smart” stuff with regular stuff.
Or …… I choose stuff that work’s normally, with “smart” being an addition.
You’re not wrong and, to be fair, I’m mostly exaggerating when I say to rip out all the smart stuff.
Thermostat would stay, Alexa is being phased out but google home would stay, flood sensors I have at this time do not beep because of the stress is causes the pets just during normal testing, but those could be easily replaced.
However, I also have a ton of lighting, zigbee sensors, zigbee smart plugs, camera motion automations, alarm system automations, garage door automations, and other routines that can’t just be taken over by someone that has no desire to mess with HA. It’s not always about the functionality of the device itself, but what HA does to enhance it.
While I know I was claiming the opposite, it is actually an anxiety by of mine.
In my first townhouse I had wired in speakers, and network/cable/phone everywhere. There was a really nice structured wiring box tying it all together. It was beautiful.
When I sold, the realtor made me leave my speakers, my router, my switches, because she claimed it was part of the house and no one could use the wiring without it. What a load of BS that was, but when a home sale is on the line, no point in swearing the small stuff. After I factory reset things, what good does it do them over buying their own, wither own account, and a user manual?
As a technical person working in tech, I’ve heard of home assistant but only ever spoken to one or maybe two people that have actually tried it. It doesn’t seem that mainstream. Meanwhile, every smartphone has a proprietary assistant built in.
The assistant in your phone is not the same as home assistant.
Home assistant is mostly used to group all your smart home stuff and create automations.
Being a technical person myself, most people I know want to try it but don’t have the use for it due to living in appartments.