5 ms·

Founder of Home Assistant here. Happy to answer any questions.

Sjenk 8y ago
Is it possible to combine this with snips.ai? So you have voice control on the device it self or run snips on another device and let it send commands to the home assistant device?
- balloob 8y ago
  You can flash our operating system Hass.io[1] to a Raspberry Pi, install an MQTT broker and Snips via the Hass.io UI, connect a microphone and speaker to the Pi, upload your Snips assistant and you should be good to go. See the instructions [2] [1]: https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ [2]: https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/snips/ https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/snips/
  - sashManiac 8y ago
    This is really cool! Using a few snips integrations so will definitely check this out. And if you want to connect a light for example, snips makes it quite easy for you via their documentation: https://snips.gitbook.io/documentation/home-automation-platforms/home-assistant https://snips.gitbook.io/documentation/home-automation-platf...
  - Sjenk 8y ago
    Awesome, thanks for the reply!
kop316 8y ago
First, I wanted to say I really enjoy Home Assistant! I was wondering, how has development been since you have been with Ubiquiti?
- balloob 8y ago
  Being paid by Ubiquiti to work full time on Home Assistant is awesome. I no longer work early mornings, late evenings and weekends. It has allowed me to start larger projects (user system, Lovelace) and able to break them down in smaller pieces that can then be picked up by both me and contributors. Still struggling a bit with finding the right work/life balance now that my hobby has become my job but it's going in the right direction.
  - my_usernam3 8y ago
    Try going the left direction. Way more fun.
  - gerdesj 8y ago
    It shows. I pointed my new HA at our Unifi controller and suddenly a huge number of attributes were available on each wifi connected device. I don't care who pays for it but Ubiquiti are not daft: Amazon, Apple, Google etc have all got their feet under the table with their hardware "assistants". UBNT can't compete directly with that but they sponsor Home Assistant. Your salary plus a few other bits and pieces is not much cash in the grand scheme of things but the value gained is close to priceless (I would suggest). Oh and did I say thanks for your work? Absolutely bloody awesome.
gypsysoul 8y ago
Yeah curious to know too if Home Assistant is compatible with snips.ai? They're also heavy on privacy and essentially developed from the ground up with privacy being built into it BY design
- sashManiac 8y ago
  I BELIEVE so, but site should have more specifics: https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/ Their github is stacked with useful information as well - seems they're eager to get more users on board asap.
- balloob 8y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17827484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17827484
  - gypsysoul 8y ago
    Thank you! Snips is the bomb, been tinkering around with it past week or so and really enjoying it. What are your thoughts / experiences towards snips? Anything cool I should try out
    - bear_in_mind 8y ago
      Depends on how experienced you are with raspberry Pi. Good to start with their more basic tutorials? Found this https://snips.gitbook.io/getting-started/ https://snips.gitbook.io/getting-started/
    - gallokot 8y ago
      I am using it for basic stuff mostly and the experience was very positive. Also have a dev friend that introduced me to snips, who ordered a maker kit and can’t wait to code some stuff for the platform
      - borisian 8y ago
        If only there were giveaways or competitions to win one. It's not too pricy but my wallet disagrees atm
CedarMadness 8y ago
Are there plans for an Android app similar to the iPhone app? It's the one thing I miss about Smart Things
- balloob 8y ago
  I don't expect an official app. There are some 3rd party ones. Our frontend is a PWA which integrates very well into Android. Actionable push notifications can be achieved with the notify.HTML5 platform[1]. Nice writeup what you can achieve here[2]. The only thing that cannot be achieved with the PWA is sending location updates for presence detection. But that can easily be achieved with OwnTracks [3] sending updates over HTTP. [1]: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/notify.html5/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/notify.html5/ [2]: https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i-use-home-automation-for-work-6bf32ea21a6?gi=ed11e8d2e7b3 https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i-use-home-automation-for-wo... [3]: https://owntracks.org/ https://owntracks.org/ [4]: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker.owntracks_http/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker.ownt...
hirundo 8y ago
My initial experience with Home Assistant has been very frustrating. I filled my house with HomeSeer HS-WD100+ and HS-WS100+ wall dimmers/switches. I thought I was safe as they are best sellers in zwave devices. But Home Assistant doesn't seem to support them without elaborate workarounds that, as a noob, I haven't been able to penetrate. The forums have been talking about a solution coming soon ... for years now. In the meantime I'm stuck with a house full of home automation that I can't automate. I may be too dumb for this, but I do manage to survive as a full time developer, in linux, using yaml daily. Yet the learning curve on Home Assistant has been brutal. Can Home Assistant improve on this? Can we someday buy best selling devices and expect them to work with it? I realize that Home Assistant is not intended to be and will never be as noob friendly as the proprietary consumer hub software. But can it at least get friendly enough for a professional dev to figure out how to turn on a light without several weeks worth of head banging?
- balloob 8y ago
  On the YAML front: we've added support for configuring integrations via the UI, no YAML involved[1]. However each integration will need to be adopted individually for this. YAML will still be around for power users and people who like to use version control. For Z-Wave: the current integration is based on openzwave, a reverse engineered implementation of the Z-Wave protocol with an irregular release interval. As we depend on their releases, it's out of our control. However, there is hope :) Sillicon Labs (owner Z-Wave) has recently published an official SDK for Z-Wave[2]. Once Home Assistant Cloud is generating money, the plan is to pay a developer to integrate it into Home Assistant. Once we're on an official stack, I expect our Z-Wave story to improve significantly. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpKe-FW9Yk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpKe-FW9Yk [2]: http://zwavepublic.com/developer http://zwavepublic.com/developer
  - gbrayut 8y ago
    Glad to hear there are plans to improve it. I'd be willing to do a patreon or monthly donation just for better zwave! Keep up the great work!
rileyt 8y ago
I can't thank you enough for what you have started. I have been using HA for over a year now and enjoy it more every month. Have you guys thought about, or talked with anyone else who has thought about trying to make HA, or a subset of the HA functionality, accessible to non-technical people? I often show my setup to friends and family and the first thing they ask is "how do I do this?", and I normally have to tell them they can't really do it themselves.
- balloob 8y ago
  It's in progress. We added a framework to allow integrations to be configured via the UI and are working on adopting the integrations to work with this. We're also adding users to limit permissions for certain accounts. These things take time, but we'll get there. I hope 2019 :-)
clutchdude 8y ago
Not much to add other than thanks! Home Assistant was a key piece of not having to fiddle with lights while moving to a living room to do an early morning feeding for a baby.

Is it possible to combine this with snips.ai? So you have voice control on the device it self or run snips on another device and let it send commands to the home assistant device?

balloob 8y ago
You can flash our operating system Hass.io[1] to a Raspberry Pi, install an MQTT broker and Snips via the Hass.io UI, connect a microphone and speaker to the Pi, upload your Snips assistant and you should be good to go. See the instructions [2] [1]: https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ https://www.home-assistant.io/hassio/ [2]: https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/snips/ https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/snips/
- sashManiac 8y ago
  This is really cool! Using a few snips integrations so will definitely check this out. And if you want to connect a light for example, snips makes it quite easy for you via their documentation: https://snips.gitbook.io/documentation/home-automation-platforms/home-assistant https://snips.gitbook.io/documentation/home-automation-platf...
- Sjenk 8y ago
  Awesome, thanks for the reply!

kop316 8y ago

First, I wanted to say I really enjoy Home Assistant! I was wondering, how has development been since you have been with Ubiquiti?

balloob 8y ago
Being paid by Ubiquiti to work full time on Home Assistant is awesome. I no longer work early mornings, late evenings and weekends. It has allowed me to start larger projects (user system, Lovelace) and able to break them down in smaller pieces that can then be picked up by both me and contributors. Still struggling a bit with finding the right work/life balance now that my hobby has become my job but it's going in the right direction.
- my_usernam3 8y ago
  Try going the left direction. Way more fun.
- gerdesj 8y ago
  It shows. I pointed my new HA at our Unifi controller and suddenly a huge number of attributes were available on each wifi connected device. I don't care who pays for it but Ubiquiti are not daft: Amazon, Apple, Google etc have all got their feet under the table with their hardware "assistants". UBNT can't compete directly with that but they sponsor Home Assistant. Your salary plus a few other bits and pieces is not much cash in the grand scheme of things but the value gained is close to priceless (I would suggest). Oh and did I say thanks for your work? Absolutely bloody awesome.

gypsysoul 8y ago

Yeah curious to know too if Home Assistant is compatible with snips.ai? They're also heavy on privacy and essentially developed from the ground up with privacy being built into it BY design

sashManiac 8y ago
I BELIEVE so, but site should have more specifics: https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/ Their github is stacked with useful information as well - seems they're eager to get more users on board asap.
balloob 8y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17827484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17827484
- gypsysoul 8y ago
  Thank you! Snips is the bomb, been tinkering around with it past week or so and really enjoying it. What are your thoughts / experiences towards snips? Anything cool I should try out
  - bear_in_mind 8y ago
    Depends on how experienced you are with raspberry Pi. Good to start with their more basic tutorials? Found this https://snips.gitbook.io/getting-started/ https://snips.gitbook.io/getting-started/
  - gallokot 8y ago
    I am using it for basic stuff mostly and the experience was very positive. Also have a dev friend that introduced me to snips, who ordered a maker kit and can’t wait to code some stuff for the platform
    - borisian 8y ago
      If only there were giveaways or competitions to win one. It's not too pricy but my wallet disagrees atm

CedarMadness 8y ago

Are there plans for an Android app similar to the iPhone app? It's the one thing I miss about Smart Things

balloob 8y ago
I don't expect an official app. There are some 3rd party ones. Our frontend is a PWA which integrates very well into Android. Actionable push notifications can be achieved with the notify.HTML5 platform[1]. Nice writeup what you can achieve here[2]. The only thing that cannot be achieved with the PWA is sending location updates for presence detection. But that can easily be achieved with OwnTracks [3] sending updates over HTTP. [1]: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/notify.html5/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/notify.html5/ [2]: https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i-use-home-automation-for-work-6bf32ea21a6?gi=ed11e8d2e7b3 https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i-use-home-automation-for-wo... [3]: https://owntracks.org/ https://owntracks.org/ [4]: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker.owntracks_http/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/device_tracker.ownt...

hirundo 8y ago

My initial experience with Home Assistant has been very frustrating. I filled my house with HomeSeer HS-WD100+ and HS-WS100+ wall dimmers/switches. I thought I was safe as they are best sellers in zwave devices. But Home Assistant doesn't seem to support them without elaborate workarounds that, as a noob, I haven't been able to penetrate. The forums have been talking about a solution coming soon ... for years now. In the meantime I'm stuck with a house full of home automation that I can't automate. I may be too dumb for this, but I do manage to survive as a full time developer, in linux, using yaml daily. Yet the learning curve on Home Assistant has been brutal. Can Home Assistant improve on this? Can we someday buy best selling devices and expect them to work with it? I realize that Home Assistant is not intended to be and will never be as noob friendly as the proprietary consumer hub software. But can it at least get friendly enough for a professional dev to figure out how to turn on a light without several weeks worth of head banging?

balloob 8y ago
On the YAML front: we've added support for configuring integrations via the UI, no YAML involved[1]. However each integration will need to be adopted individually for this. YAML will still be around for power users and people who like to use version control. For Z-Wave: the current integration is based on openzwave, a reverse engineered implementation of the Z-Wave protocol with an irregular release interval. As we depend on their releases, it's out of our control. However, there is hope :) Sillicon Labs (owner Z-Wave) has recently published an official SDK for Z-Wave[2]. Once Home Assistant Cloud is generating money, the plan is to pay a developer to integrate it into Home Assistant. Once we're on an official stack, I expect our Z-Wave story to improve significantly. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpKe-FW9Yk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpKe-FW9Yk [2]: http://zwavepublic.com/developer http://zwavepublic.com/developer
- gbrayut 8y ago
  Glad to hear there are plans to improve it. I'd be willing to do a patreon or monthly donation just for better zwave! Keep up the great work!

rileyt 8y ago

I can't thank you enough for what you have started. I have been using HA for over a year now and enjoy it more every month. Have you guys thought about, or talked with anyone else who has thought about trying to make HA, or a subset of the HA functionality, accessible to non-technical people? I often show my setup to friends and family and the first thing they ask is "how do I do this?", and I normally have to tell them they can't really do it themselves.

balloob 8y ago
It's in progress. We added a framework to allow integrations to be configured via the UI and are working on adopting the integrations to work with this. We're also adding users to limit permissions for certain accounts. These things take time, but we'll get there. I hope 2019 :-)

clutchdude 8y ago

Not much to add other than thanks! Home Assistant was a key piece of not having to fiddle with lights while moving to a living room to do an early morning feeding for a baby.