It looks like I've linked you here myself. Linking people to a blogpost I wrote is often a bit akward, especially at work.
I likely shared this blog in an attempt to further a conversation. Usually the post does a better job at succinctly sharing information than I could by talking.
In any case, I hope me sharing this post doesn't come across as humblebragging, that's really the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.
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It’s been a year since I presented at the first Home Assistant conference and 18 months since I wrote about My Favorite Home Automations. A lot has changed since then - time for an update.
After starting out on a Raspberry Pi, I hosted Home Assistant from this 2011 Macbook Pro - running Ubuntu - for over 4 years. Over the years it also ran a bunch of supporting software: Prometheus, InfluxDB, Logstash, Sensu, Monit, HA Dashboard, Elasticsearch and at least half a dozen others. I’ve kept all the related ansible roles in a legacy folder on Github.
When I started playing with Home Assistant in early 2016, it already showed great potential.
Yet over the years I found myself spending a lot of times working around limitations, writing custom scripts and installing additional supporting software on an old Macbook Pro I had turned into a makeshift server. I even had the entire setup process automated using ansible.
While this worked, this approach was no longer scaling:
So when Home Assistant Blue - a compact all-in-one hardware platform running the Home Assistant Operating System - was announced, I was immediately enticed and quickly ordered one. While it took me a few months to find the time and appetite to migrate, I regret not having done so sooner because the difference is so massive.
Home Assistant Blue, banana for scale.
The benefits:
Upgrading Home Assistant and managing add-ons is so easy when running Home Assistant Operating System. I’m still getting over how much easier this is than what I had to do in the past.
HACS front-end customizations I have installed at the time of writing. HACS has made it so easy for people to share their workarounds and dashboard cards, I’m glad I can finally make use of them!
Visualization of my zigbee network (> 80 devices), using ZHA.
When I started out with home automation in 2016, I wasn’t as savvy nor comfortable going “all in” on Home Assistant without trying it for a while. As a result, I mostly bought smart devices that supported multiple ecoystems (Apple HomeKit, Google Home and Home Assistant) as a way to hedge against Home Assistant not working out.
In practice, this translated to my setup heavily relying on Philips Hue and Ikea Trådfri hubs. While this worked fairly well (and the Home Assistant integrations became a lot more reliable over the years), the indirection of using hubs remained suboptimal. I was also using a few TP Link Wifi smartplugs that I wanted to get rid off.
So earlier this year, I decided to go all-in on Zigbee and re-paired all my devices with a Conbee 2 Zigbee Gateway, while also adding a bunch more sensors and replacing some older bulbs and switches. I also added a few Z-Wave smartplugs for power monitoring use-cases.
Overall, I’m extremely happy with that move and can highly recommend it; in general devices are more responsive and automations more reliable.
On caveat is that I have started running into some reliability issues (occasional device unavailability) once I exceeded 50 or so devices. This seems to be common for Zigbee networks, and I’m still exploring a few options on how to improve that.
Philips Hue (bottom left) and Ikea Trådfri (bottom right) hubs which I’m longer using, together with the Homematic hub I still use for radiator valve control.
For power monitoring use-cases, I use Z-Wave power plugs like this Aeotec Smart Switch 7. I use Z-Wave instead of Zigbee because Zigbee plugs with power monitoring are not as common and I’ve read about various reporting issues with them.
Of course, home automation is all about sensors and actuators. With my full embrace of Zigbee and Z-Wave, I also went on a bit of a sensor purchasing spree: motion sensors, temperature+humidity sensors, door/window contact sensors, leak sensors, power monitoring plugs. While I dream of having every room fully sensorized, it seems I can always think of another sensor to add.
All this data allows for setting up all sorts of useful notifications:
Various Aqara Zigbee sensors I use. A big benefit of Zigbee over Z-wave is price. Each of these sensors costs less than 25 EUR, often considerably less when ordered in bulk and/or from China.
Software sensors for presence detection and more, via the Home Assistant mobile app.
And of course, you can build a bunch of cool dashboards with all that data as well:
Home Assistant 2021.08 (August 2021) introduced energy management. To get this data, I use a Raspberry Pi hooked up to my Smart Energy meter which supports DSMR. I’ll be switching to SlimmeLezer+ in the near future.
Environment dashboard. Usefulness? Limited. Cool-factor? A+ 😎
Sensing is awesome, but where home automation really shines is when it can do physical things around the house. This is an area where I’ve been doubling down, actuating all sorts of things:
Smart radiator valves, HomeMatic HM-CC-RT-DN.
As part of my move to Home Assistant Blue, I also fully adopted Lovelace for my wall-mounted control dashboards (running on iPad minis). I had been using AppDaemon HA Dashboard before which served me really well for the last few years, but it’s clear that Lovelace is the superior solution these days (richer widgets, UI editing, less maintenance, frequent updates).
The AppDaemon HA Dashboard I had been using for the last few years.
The main Lovelace dashboard we use today, annotated.
While improving my dashboards is something I want to spent a lot more time on, one thing I’ve been focussing on already is building “smarter” dashboards. Rather than showing dozens of sensors and controls at once, such dashboards only show what’s relevant at the time it is relevant (using a combination of conditional cards, custom button card, card mod).
Mobile notifications via the Home Assistant mobile app (also available for Android).
To goal here is to avoid dashboard fatigue*,* where you stop looking at a dashboard because it’s always showing the same information. Examples include indicators for trash pickup, open windows/doors, a running dryer/washer and vacation days.
Similarly, I’ve been paying more attention to avoid notification fatigue*,* where I stop looking at notifications on my phone because there’s so many of them and most have become irrelevant (e.g. window opened and closed hours ago). Most of this is done by auto-hiding messages after a few minutes or intelligently cleaning them up (e.g. remove a Window Opened notification when the window is closed).
For device control, I actually try to use the wall mounted dashboards as little as possible, instead relying on automations, voice control and a limited amount of physical (smart) wall switches. Wall mounted dashboards are really cool, but nothing beats a physical switch to toggle lights.
Dashboard building is a bit of a rabbit hole on its own: there are always things to improve. For inspiration, I’ve been looking at ha-floorplan, Dwains dashboard and Mattias Persson’s work.
My personal home automation journey will likely never be done. I’ve got plenty of things on my list that I’d still like to automate: door locks, remaining windows/curtains/blinds, doorbell, sense infuser, garden irrigation, the list goes on. I know what to do to keep busy :-)
Meanwhile, the home automation space is maturing rapidly. Compared to just a few years ago, things have gotten much better:
Most of all, Home Automation (and Home Assistant) is crossing the barrier where it’s no longer only attainable for IT folk and tech enthusiasts, but becoming mainstream. For me, that’s a child’s dream come through.