Home Assistant - the Smart Home Revolution You Can't Ignore

Earlier this week, I shared a Shelly user's guide to using Home Assistant, written by Marlon at Home Tech Hacker. I didn't put a lot of time into explaining why you should care, but, realistically, Home Assistant is the most important smart home platform, period.

Every smart home enthusiast owes something to Home Assistant, because, even if they're not using it, the HA community is teaching vastly more people the importance of privacy and local control every day.

I am truly fortunate to work for Shelly, a company that offers its customers a free, completely private Cloud service and mobile app. With Shelly, the customer is just that - the customer, rather than a source of data. What's more, you never even have to use Shelly's app or Cloud.

Each device incorporates local APIs, built in timers, 365 day schedules, and even scripting, allowing you to set up all automations on and between the devices, as well as using your choice of several dozen different consumer smart home hubs, premium home electronics controllers, open source platforms, and even building management software.

This is a critical example for the smart home industry, where the typical product isn't actually smart - it's just connected to something that provides intelligence, like the manufacturer's Cloud. Cloud is just a clever euphemism for "someone else's computer."

If your home's systems are controlled by products that require a manufacturer's Cloud to perform automations, you are vulnerable to several potential pitfalls - future subscription requirements, data breaches, even complete loss of service if the manufacturer goes out of business.

These concerns are significant of themselves, but are exacerbated by the headaches caused when trying to make products from different manufacturers play well together in one cohesive system.

Hands down, the best option for that single cohesive system is Home Assistant.

Imagine a software system with over 10,000 developers giving their time and skill to improve the platform - in 2023, Home Assistant had 13,500+ developers contribute to the core project, making it the second largest project on Github.

That's utterly astound, and it is easy to see why.

I can't think of a single major smart home product that can't work at some level with Home Assistant - and it is because of the strength of Home Assistant's community.

That community is a direct reflection of the founder of Home Assistant - Paulus Schoutsen. I'm a huge fan of his work and the ideals of the community he's built.

I started in the tech industry before most people had home computers, much less Internet connected software.

This may be the source of my ingrained distrust of Cloud dependencies - I prefer full functionality of everything, offline, and always immediately available.

I even go so far as to use a GPS-based NTP server on my home network.

If your home loses its Internet connection, if an Internet provider has an outage, or if a company goes out of business, shutting down its servers, how vulnerable is your technology?

Home Assistant is founded on the same view - full local control is the best choice for your home and family.

However, that's not the only important goal of the Home Assistant project. Privacy is vital. As I mentioned earlier, many companies see us not as just customers, or even primarily as customers, but as a source of revenue generating data. Many of the largest tech companies in the world build their business model around what they can learn from you, about you, and then monetize that information.

Worse, it is SO hard to escape it. Your phone, your web browser, your television - all sources of information about you and your family.

Using a locally hosted open source platform like Home Assistant keeps your smart home off that list.

And, over the years, I've been thrilled to see HA's growth, not just as a platform, but as different way of thinking about building automation, and the message resonates.

Not only that, but every few iterations of the platform, it becomes easier to use, works a little more smoothly, and becomes more accessible to the average family.

I've seen the project go from Python to Pi to Docker containers to pre-installed hubs with no assembly required. The team is making huge strides with voice assistants (a huge vulnerability that my own family doesn't want to give up) and to dashboards, the look and feel of Home Assistant for the end user.

Every few years, we see commercial smart home hubs come along and see others go away, while Home Assistant has only grown and improved.

In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before Home Assistant is as common and indispensable for the smart home as the web browser is for your computer or Instagram for your phone.