I want to learn more about home automation. I currently have Apple TV as HomeKit hub, some Eve Energy devices, Google Nest Hub Max, Google Hello Doorbell and a couple of old Nest Cam. I am using Apple Home App, also set up Homebridge on the M1 Mac Mini.
I also have dabled into Homey and Home Assistant. They take very different approach. Based on my preliminary observation, Homey is a lot more visual (like the use of flow for programming), Home Assistant is a lot more nerdy, using YAML for configuration, etc. Apparently Homey is more restrictive (like IOS versus Android), HA is more like Android, more configurable but need more work.
Just wondering other have more advice or experience to share using either or both platform, especially which is better future proofing using HomeKit, Google and better support for thread and Matter . At this moment, I am slightly more inclined to use Home Assistant and order the Home Assistant Sky Connect, not sure there could be any issue using them in Australia
Over the last few months I have moved pretty much all of my smart home tech into Home Assistant as it is far more flexible than HomeKit. I can make more more complex automations that can trigger several different devices in one automation, and I can also get equipment from different manufacturers working together more easily.
Getting to grips with Home Assistant was more challenging that HomeKIt, however, there are a number of very good YouTube channels who focus on Home Assistant and how to setup different automations. These channels do update their content as changes are made to the way Home Assistant works. In more recent releases the developers are trying to move away from people having to edit YAML files to get everything working. There are still some YAML commands that have to be used for more complex automation, however, many things can now be accomplished through the UI.
These are the YouTube channels that I find really helpful when I want to try different things with Home Assistant. I hope you find them as helpful as I have.
I’ve slowly transitioned my automation to Home Assistant over the past months, picking up the transition device by device. It’s been a journey, and certainly a bit of a learning curve, but absolutely worth it.
I really like the part where even if my internet is completely down, and I can’t log in to any cloud service, my home automations still work, and everything works as it should. And that is key to the “spouse / family approval” factor, which is by far the most important factor in home automation.
this is good to know, I did not expect this but I agree this is very important. My wife always complains that I am making thing very complicated for her
I have moved everything to Home Assistant as well - I had a number of smart home devices that weren’t Homekit compatible, so this was a better option.
For me, the big draw of HA was the statistics as well as the automations.
I’ve a Sonoff Zigbee USB stick and this has replaced my Hue hub for all my Zigbee devices and allows easy control. It’s very configurable which is helpful - I’ve got Hue emulation so I can still use Alexa’s to provide voice control etc. Yes, it’s a bit of work, but it’s quite effective and has given me another hobby!
I have now got Home Assistant fully supervised server running on a Debian Box based on Intel NUC
However, I just discovered that there is a warning saying that I am running “unsupported system with unsupported software”
I checked some forum discusions that seems to indicate that this is because I have other containers (such as nextcloud, photoprism in the same docker". However, there are other conflicting information and it does not seem to be a black and white issue to me.
Just wondering others have experienced this issue. Should I gave up on having a supervised session?
Afraid I can’t help there, as my home assistant is on a separate mini PC, similar to your NUC now. I didn’t have any issues when I tested it on my Synology in a Docker mind but I used that for a couple of weeks before I switched. It was alongside a Pi Hole docker container but I don’t recall seeing any warnings.