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Saturday, January 9th, 2021 11:40 am
home assistant has released its own open source hub
Due to so much current stress I've been skipping out on my posting here. I really am not feeling doing an update on life at this time, but I want to spread this far and wide.
I talked about starting to use open source Home Assistant for my home automation needs with a Raspberry Pi. since then I updated to an 8 GB Pi and added booting from an SSD.
Now there's something a thousand times better: Home Assistant Blue - $150
This is Home Assistant's own Automation Hub built by them. You do not need to build anything, like a Pi; it's a single board computer with 4 USB hubs, 1 ethernet, 1 HDMI, with a 128 eMMC hard drive and 4G RAM with Home Assistant pre-installed and a very cool blue case.
It's plug and play. Literally, you plug it in and turn it on; that's it.
Below the cut is a copy of my tumblr post on a reblog about open source that breaks down everything you need to know
If you want to try but are still intimidated by the work to put together/work with a Pi, Home Assistant has your back, and I’m so excited to tell people about this.
Home Assistant Blue - $140.00
This is your all-in-one solution to open source home automation, built by open source developers, and buying it supports open source!!
This is what you get:
- the single board computer with 4 USB ports, one ethernet port, case, drive, and Home Assistant installed and ready to go.
- This is plug and play; all you gotta do is plug it in and then go to local address on your own computer to set up. That’s it; there is no other work required but buying shit for it to control.
A Pi kit with all the pieces you need is roughly $80 - $100; an SSD runs around $30 to whatever; the SSD case you need so you can attach it to the Pi can run from $8 to whatever.
This price is roughly $10-$25 higher (maybe) than buying a pi kit plus SSD hard drive and hard drive case, but not when you factor in the lack of work involved.
a.) You do not need to put the Pi together by hand. It’s easy and actually almost foolproof, but it can be intimidating if you’ve never done anything like that.
b.) You don’t need to flash an SD card or SSD with the latest version of HA; Home Assistant is already installed and ready to go.
c.) Home Assistant Blue, unlike a Pi, doesn’t run off an SD card: it comes with a hard drive installed. The only way to make a Pi run off a hard drive is to do a fairly basic firmware update but still, extra work. You don’t have to do it.
d.) This was literally designed for Home Assistant by the people who developed Home Assistant.
e.) Also, you get a kick ass official Home Assistant case in blue.
This is, I cannot emphasize enough, a really fucking good deal.
Here is what doesn’t come with it:
- No wifi module, but for Home Assistant, it should have it on ethernet anyway. You don’t need it.
- No bluetooth module - you can buy one for under $20, but honestly, I have yet to have anything use mine but to tell me the MAC of my headphones. With the exception of something that only runs bluetooth that you want to control, you don’t need it.
- No z-wave module - you can buy a usb dongle for under $40 or use an existing z-wave hub (example: SmartThings Hub). You probably need this if you use SmartThings,
- No zigbee module - you can buy a usb dongle for under $40 or use an existing zigbee or z-wave/zigbee hub (example: SmartThings Hub)
Pi kits don’t come with the last two either, so again, we’re talking a $15 difference for less work, less stress, and something designed and built to run Home Assistant.
Now, real talk on zigbee and z-wave:
Get a consumer grade hub and don’t start with open source when it comes to controlling z-wave and zigbee if you’re not ready to sit down and work out the pieces. It’s not hard, it’s super learnable, there are tutorials everywhere, but if you’re just starting out and aren’t used to diy, make it easy on yourself.
Your goal is to get total open source, but you can and should do it in steps as small and easy as you need; don’t over think it. This should be functional and fun, and I promise you, this is so much fun if you don’t assume you should know everything all at once. You can and will learn everything–I promise you, it’s great–but do it at a sane pace and not one where you throw anything against the wall like some people I maybe heard about but never did that myself even like, once.
I do this as my major hobby on weekends–I’m downloading info on how to build my own humidity and temperature sensors from parts–but I’m still using my SmartThings Hub until I get a weekend free of anxiety attacks and stress to learn how to pair z-wave and zigbee from first principles.
Consumer grade hubs mean it’s plug and play; you make sure the devices you have are compatible–or buy your hub and then your devices that are compatible–then set up. It’s easy.
Personal example: SmartThings Hub.
You can get a SmartThings Hub that controls zigbee and z-wave for about $40 - $60, but you’ll need to pay $5 a month for remote access to use it. But that $5 also covers remote access to Home Assistant when you’re not home, too, so you probably want to add that to your budget anyway.
Setup for a SmartThings Hub is like an hour or less. Pretty much two thirds of the existing home automation shit is compatible with SmartThings, but there’s Wink, Vera, and several others, so sit down and google a bit.
You can feel free to email, DM, ask, or whatever me if you’re jumping in and want some advice, help, or just someone you can say “WTF” to or “Can I make this purple????” (You probably can.) or just want a learning buddy. I’m not a developer, I don’t even have a college degree, everything I know I learned by fucking up in many creative ways, this is just my hobby, but I’m a QC analyst and work in User Acceptance Testing and lead testing for the mobile app for my state because when you’ve crashed your own system sixteen times in a month because you wanted to see what those batch jobs and config files did, you get surprisingly good at analyzing for problems or finding them by accident.
You cannot surprise me with weird problems; I’ve reviewed miles of javacript code at work that calling spaghetti would be very kind to find the reason for an error that turned out to be even weirder than the problem and this was written by professionals making six figures. Again, I crashed my home server sixteen times in a month fucking with config files I didn’t understand because why the fuck not. You gotta feel at least ten times more competent just reading that sentence and realizing that actually happened. I think I wrote about it in my DW under the tags “my relationship with electronics” or “coding”. It’s honestly alarming when you sit and think about it too long.
(And now I get paid to do that: they call it stress testing, and gave me database and batch permissions so I can do it in new and scary ways. I love my job, God.)
This is incredible fun, and my goal in life is to show everyone how much fun and accessible this can be to anyone.
More importantly, however, automation can be a gamechanger for people with physical disabilities/differences, the neuroatypical, the elderly, and the more people who jump aboard, the more we can make open source and non-corporate options mainstream. The more we do now, the easier it gets for those who come after us.
Home Assistant also has addons for running your own DNS server, DHCP server, database, Samba, HDMI CEC scanner, SSH, code editors, ABD server, Tor, encryptors, Plex, and I think the equivalent of pi hole (either official or community) and that's just to start. It can do kind of everything.
Official Stuff
Official Integrations
Official Add-Ons
Community Supported (non-official):
HACS
The number of community integrations you can get in HACS are an order of magnitude more than the official and then there's the UI stuff. And then there's the ones not even in HACS yet which you can find if you just google "Home assistant" and "Your Thing" which are like--well, a lot lot lot.
If I can get enough people interested in trying, I want to start a DW comm where people can ask questions, post tutorials, code, or just get support and help. It can be intimidating to start something like this, but help and support make everything easier and fun, and I'd love love love to work with/help/talk/support and/or be main venting person to anyone who jumps in.
I talked about starting to use open source Home Assistant for my home automation needs with a Raspberry Pi. since then I updated to an 8 GB Pi and added booting from an SSD.
Now there's something a thousand times better: Home Assistant Blue - $150
This is Home Assistant's own Automation Hub built by them. You do not need to build anything, like a Pi; it's a single board computer with 4 USB hubs, 1 ethernet, 1 HDMI, with a 128 eMMC hard drive and 4G RAM with Home Assistant pre-installed and a very cool blue case.
It's plug and play. Literally, you plug it in and turn it on; that's it.
Below the cut is a copy of my tumblr post on a reblog about open source that breaks down everything you need to know
If you want to try but are still intimidated by the work to put together/work with a Pi, Home Assistant has your back, and I’m so excited to tell people about this.
Home Assistant Blue - $140.00
This is your all-in-one solution to open source home automation, built by open source developers, and buying it supports open source!!
This is what you get:
- the single board computer with 4 USB ports, one ethernet port, case, drive, and Home Assistant installed and ready to go.
- This is plug and play; all you gotta do is plug it in and then go to local address on your own computer to set up. That’s it; there is no other work required but buying shit for it to control.
A Pi kit with all the pieces you need is roughly $80 - $100; an SSD runs around $30 to whatever; the SSD case you need so you can attach it to the Pi can run from $8 to whatever.
This price is roughly $10-$25 higher (maybe) than buying a pi kit plus SSD hard drive and hard drive case, but not when you factor in the lack of work involved.
a.) You do not need to put the Pi together by hand. It’s easy and actually almost foolproof, but it can be intimidating if you’ve never done anything like that.
b.) You don’t need to flash an SD card or SSD with the latest version of HA; Home Assistant is already installed and ready to go.
c.) Home Assistant Blue, unlike a Pi, doesn’t run off an SD card: it comes with a hard drive installed. The only way to make a Pi run off a hard drive is to do a fairly basic firmware update but still, extra work. You don’t have to do it.
d.) This was literally designed for Home Assistant by the people who developed Home Assistant.
e.) Also, you get a kick ass official Home Assistant case in blue.
This is, I cannot emphasize enough, a really fucking good deal.
Here is what doesn’t come with it:
- No wifi module, but for Home Assistant, it should have it on ethernet anyway. You don’t need it.
- No bluetooth module - you can buy one for under $20, but honestly, I have yet to have anything use mine but to tell me the MAC of my headphones. With the exception of something that only runs bluetooth that you want to control, you don’t need it.
- No z-wave module - you can buy a usb dongle for under $40 or use an existing z-wave hub (example: SmartThings Hub). You probably need this if you use SmartThings,
- No zigbee module - you can buy a usb dongle for under $40 or use an existing zigbee or z-wave/zigbee hub (example: SmartThings Hub)
Pi kits don’t come with the last two either, so again, we’re talking a $15 difference for less work, less stress, and something designed and built to run Home Assistant.
Now, real talk on zigbee and z-wave:
Get a consumer grade hub and don’t start with open source when it comes to controlling z-wave and zigbee if you’re not ready to sit down and work out the pieces. It’s not hard, it’s super learnable, there are tutorials everywhere, but if you’re just starting out and aren’t used to diy, make it easy on yourself.
Your goal is to get total open source, but you can and should do it in steps as small and easy as you need; don’t over think it. This should be functional and fun, and I promise you, this is so much fun if you don’t assume you should know everything all at once. You can and will learn everything–I promise you, it’s great–but do it at a sane pace and not one where you throw anything against the wall like some people I maybe heard about but never did that myself even like, once.
I do this as my major hobby on weekends–I’m downloading info on how to build my own humidity and temperature sensors from parts–but I’m still using my SmartThings Hub until I get a weekend free of anxiety attacks and stress to learn how to pair z-wave and zigbee from first principles.
Consumer grade hubs mean it’s plug and play; you make sure the devices you have are compatible–or buy your hub and then your devices that are compatible–then set up. It’s easy.
Personal example: SmartThings Hub.
You can get a SmartThings Hub that controls zigbee and z-wave for about $40 - $60, but you’ll need to pay $5 a month for remote access to use it. But that $5 also covers remote access to Home Assistant when you’re not home, too, so you probably want to add that to your budget anyway.
Setup for a SmartThings Hub is like an hour or less. Pretty much two thirds of the existing home automation shit is compatible with SmartThings, but there’s Wink, Vera, and several others, so sit down and google a bit.
You can feel free to email, DM, ask, or whatever me if you’re jumping in and want some advice, help, or just someone you can say “WTF” to or “Can I make this purple????” (You probably can.) or just want a learning buddy. I’m not a developer, I don’t even have a college degree, everything I know I learned by fucking up in many creative ways, this is just my hobby, but I’m a QC analyst and work in User Acceptance Testing and lead testing for the mobile app for my state because when you’ve crashed your own system sixteen times in a month because you wanted to see what those batch jobs and config files did, you get surprisingly good at analyzing for problems or finding them by accident.
You cannot surprise me with weird problems; I’ve reviewed miles of javacript code at work that calling spaghetti would be very kind to find the reason for an error that turned out to be even weirder than the problem and this was written by professionals making six figures. Again, I crashed my home server sixteen times in a month fucking with config files I didn’t understand because why the fuck not. You gotta feel at least ten times more competent just reading that sentence and realizing that actually happened. I think I wrote about it in my DW under the tags “my relationship with electronics” or “coding”. It’s honestly alarming when you sit and think about it too long.
(And now I get paid to do that: they call it stress testing, and gave me database and batch permissions so I can do it in new and scary ways. I love my job, God.)
This is incredible fun, and my goal in life is to show everyone how much fun and accessible this can be to anyone.
More importantly, however, automation can be a gamechanger for people with physical disabilities/differences, the neuroatypical, the elderly, and the more people who jump aboard, the more we can make open source and non-corporate options mainstream. The more we do now, the easier it gets for those who come after us.
Home Assistant also has addons for running your own DNS server, DHCP server, database, Samba, HDMI CEC scanner, SSH, code editors, ABD server, Tor, encryptors, Plex, and I think the equivalent of pi hole (either official or community) and that's just to start. It can do kind of everything.
Official Stuff
Official Integrations
Official Add-Ons
Community Supported (non-official):
HACS
The number of community integrations you can get in HACS are an order of magnitude more than the official and then there's the UI stuff. And then there's the ones not even in HACS yet which you can find if you just google "Home assistant" and "Your Thing" which are like--well, a lot lot lot.
If I can get enough people interested in trying, I want to start a DW comm where people can ask questions, post tutorials, code, or just get support and help. It can be intimidating to start something like this, but help and support make everything easier and fun, and I'd love love love to work with/help/talk/support and/or be main venting person to anyone who jumps in.
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From:This is amazing!
(Still way outside my skill set -- although does it provide a platform for hosting a federated instance of Mastodon? One of my pipe dreams is "something a lot easier than Discord to support social interaction at online conventions.")
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Interested! Questions.
From:The Blue device is "limited edition"; do you have a sense of how fast they are selling out? Should I jump on this, like, this weekend or run the risk of not being able to get the cool case?
I do not own any smart devices currently (lights, plugs, sensors, etc.); what I want to do is stuff like:
* voice-activated "play my work playlist" or "play classical music" and stuff like that (right now all our household's music is on an Ubuntu machine on the network, connected to the big TV in the living room)
* voice interaction to set a timer for n minutes
* scheduled audio reminders (I could set these via some kind of app? it could integrate via CalDAV with my existing calendar?)
What else would I need to buy and set up, along with this HA Blue thing, in order to do stuff like this?
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Re: Interested! Questions.
From:The Blue device is "limited edition"; do you have a sense of how fast they are selling out? Should I jump on this, like, this weekend or run the risk of not being able to get the cool case?
The ones with the cool case itself is limited edition, so probably ASAP. From what I saw, I think shipping with the case is about two months out.
voice-activated "play my work playlist" or "play classical music" and stuff like that (right now all our household's music is on an Ubuntu machine on the network, connected to the big TV in the living room).....
Home Assistant comes packaged with Hey Ada, which is HA's own voice control.
You'll need to hook up a microphone and speaker to HA Blue. Tiny USB microphones are super cheap, but I'd look for a speaker/microphone you can attach to it so you only need to use one USB and get good range.
I do not own any smart devices currently (lights, plugs, sensors, etc.)
This is where I say "what's your budget" and "what's your budget over x months" and specifically, other than voice stuff, what do you want to do? Excluding voice control stuff.
Options:
1.) Control ALL THE LIGHTS
2.) Number one and put open/close sensors on doors/windows.
3.) Number two and add motion sensors to turn onyour bathroom when you walk in/turn onyour closet when you walk in, turn on whatever with motion, etc.
4.) Whatever.
You do not have to make TOTAL ALL DECISION now. You can just decide where to start.
Right now, as a novice, I'd get the tried and true consumer level and either wifi based or things with hubs. When possible, get one with a hub; wifi based are okay for a few, but they kill your bandwidth and can be cranky; hubs once you pair your lightbulb with zwave or zigbee stick.
This doesn't mean you can't slowly move everything over to open source as you get comfy and more experienced, but even if you do dev for your job and hobby, this is a process.
We'll start with entry level: lightbulbs.
Lightbulbs:
I'm going to tell you what I use in order of cheapest to most expensive. Iv'e tested all these and trust them.
Sengled: this is a very affordable lightbulb choice that comes in regular, color, and color temperature, but you will need to buy the hub. Get the package of lightbulbs + hub and keep in mind they go on sale regularly. The hub is about $30, regular lightbulbs about $9 to $12, color temperature lightbulbs $10 to $20, color $20 up. They're inexpensive and very reliable
Phillips Hue: About twice the price with same variety, also need a hub.
Lifx: Most expensive and are wifi. Brightest and honestly the best, but $40 to $70 for each bulb. Hoewver, they have a ten year warranty and will replace for free; I've done it twice now.
There are tons of others, but for a beginner, start with ones that have a reputation to work out of box with minimal stress.
Next post: voice.
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Re: Interested! Questions.
From:Right now, I use Alexa and I get the feeling you aren't interested (if you are, just say so and I'll do a breakdown of all alexa devices and what you need versus what's just whatever fun stuff), but right now, Alexa is the gold standard and the best on the market. Google Assistant is a close second, and others are trying, but you aren't going to get the same results as Alexa with open source (yet); we're still in the early stages.
BUT.
That does not mean you can't get what you want; it just means you're going to be a semi-pioneer and you're going to have a blast. No, you won't have to code, but you will be helping with your use and feedback to make it better and competitive.
Here's the link to HA's Ada: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focused-voice-assistant/
What you want seems covered; the only thing I"m not sure about is connecting to your music server, but that's a matter of what program you use to serve music and looking around for open source programs that integrate with HA (like Plex).
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Re: Interested! Questions.
From:Total Open Source is the goal, but unless you're a developer who also hobbies dev, it'll quickly become grueling work. So my recommendation is for your first smart devices, pick ones that are solid (been around for years) and use the reduced harm doctrine: as you get more experienced and more comfortable, you can start working to reduce what you get from corporations.
And believe me, you will get more comfortable and get interested in doing things like "okay, how do I make my bathroom lights go off after five minutes fo no motion but stay on if I'm showering". And then you'll wake up one day and realize you wrote code to change the color of your lights if you're showering to blue and your visiting friend to red automatically because you find that hilarious.
There's a billion resources to do everything, but if you start looking immediately at hat, you will scream and run (I almost did until I remembered "start tiny and comfortable").
Here's an older entry I did on my lightbulbs: https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1027420.html
For tips on what to buy that's easily integratable into HA, check the link in teh post for Official Integrations and then click on the different ecosystems and read up on what they require. Some just need you to login to your Hue/Sengled/Whatever account, some need more.
I don't want to overwhelm you now (bit late for that, yes), but feel free to ask me anything so I can avoid scaring you. And when you have your HA Blue (or whatever) and are ready to do set up, we can totally get on Discord and chat/screenshare live/whatever works for you.
(I am so excited omg.)
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From:Decided to jump in with both feet and purchased the Blue. I'd definitely be interested in a DW comm if you set one up.
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From:I bought one, too. I wasn't going to, but if I was going to recommend it, I figured I'd better have the actual device myself so we'd have the same hardware if there were problems so I could help.
So, while you're waiting:
1.) if you already have z-wave or zigbee devices, look on the Home Assistant Integrations page and find your devices/hubs.
Don't worry if it turns out they aren't there yet; those are the 'official' aka 'come with HA' integrations; there are more that are community based that a.) are still being fine-tuned so haven't been added officially, b.) have limits on functionality, c.) aren't really fully compatible yet but work. And even if it's not there, there are workarounds. Anything z-wave or zigbee can be controlled with a z-wave/zigbee usb dongle that can attach to HA and there's a ton of resources if you're just starting with that.
2.) If you don't have z-wave or zigbee devices or you're trying to decide whether ot bother or go just wifi: wifi is great but routers have a limit on how many devices can be conected at one time and also it can mess with your bandwidth. It doesn't mean you shouldn't use wifi for anything, but be proportional; stuff like door contacts, motion sensors, lightbulbs, things that you'll use a lot of, go with zwave/zigbee.
3.) You can, if you wish, get a wifi usb adapter for your HA, but uh, don't; put that on a cord to the LAN. Better response time, better control, less stressful.
If you have any questions or anything, I'm totally here.
I AM VERY EXCITED TO HAVE FRIENDS IN HA SO MUCH.
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