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Not to sound negative, it reads like the author quickly dismissed HA without a great reason so they could build their solution. There's a lot of home devices b

Not to sound negative, it reads like the author quickly dismissed HA without a great reason so they could build their solution. There's a lot of home devices beyond ZigBee, with a large community supporting them. Beyond ZigBee, we will see Matter devices also cropping up over time. I do like the idea of being in control of one's automation software. The risk that I've seen though is when one ends up spending more time on building the software than the automation, which can happen when one writes their own integrations from scratch (i.e. not using Z2MQTY, ESPHome, HA, etc). With that all said, I like HA as the central programmable hub, but have come to dislike the proliferation of ecosystems that require add-ons I'm mostly looking at Sonoff devices that tie you to ewelink and phone home in opaque ways. I'm personally probably going to go with Matter for store-purchased and DIY devices. I'm already nearly done with our first DIY devices at home. A light strip for the kitchen, that has some sensors for useful automation. Not rolling my own solution makes it easier for me to build a few devices for friends later.

theshrike79 3y ago
HA is _very_ good for integrating stuff, mostly due to it being the de facto standard for DIY home automation. Basically if something has any kind of API that can be accessed in any way, someone has already made a HA integration for it. On the other hand, it's absolutely crap at doing complex automations. The Web UI gives me heartburn any time I need to make it do anything else than simple "if temperature is over 40 on this, do this" things. The UI does make complex automations _possible_ for non-programmers. But for me, every time I click on the UI or attempt to "program" using the convoluted YAML syntax I keep thinking "this would've been like 5 lines in an actual language...". Thus: I use Node RED for the more complex stuff paired with an external program I made that connects to the HA Mosquitto server and pokes stuff directly when needed.
- katbyte 3y ago
  Yea I kinda wish you could just write code for it. I’d even accept writing it in python as that’s what ya is written in (as I too don’t like python)
- dingledork69 3y ago
  Pyscript adds rich Python scripting to HASS : https://github.com/custom-components/pyscript https://github.com/custom-components/pyscript An example script: @state_trigger("security.rear_motion == '1' or security.side_motion == '1'") @time_active("range(sunset - 20min, sunrise + 20min)") def motion_light_rear(): """Turn on rear light for 5 minutes when there is motion and it's dark""" task.unique("motion_light_rear") log.info(f"triggered; turning on the light") if light.outside_rear != "on": light.turn_on(entity_id="light.outside_rear", brightness=255) task.sleep(300) light.turn_off(entity_id="light.outside_rear") It's what made me ditch node red after going down the same path.
  - Denvercoder9 3y ago
    There's also NetDaemon for those who prefer C#: https://netdaemon.xyz/ https://netdaemon.xyz/
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    Can anyone comment on whether Pyscript vs AppDaemon is the better path? It felt like to me as someone that codes as a living PyScript was the better choice, but I also only ever used Python in college and grad school, and just haven't had the time to investigate a difference between the two and wanted to just get started. Using PyScript seems easy but it also feels like its just the main authors preferred way of working and is pretty buggy outside of how he likes to work in Jupyter notebooks The Home Assistant community seems to have the entire gambit of people who can't code at all, the people who never coded professionally and make riduclously complex things like the fabled Excel accountants, to the professional developers doing stuff for fun, but nobody actually shares anything worthwhile outside of awful YAML and youtubes about awful YAML.
    - mrmlz 3y ago
      I'm currently using AppDaemon for a couple of webparsing-scripts. That has worked just fine without touching it for... well over a year by now. But i have a nagging feeling that i should probably use PyScript instead.. If anyone has a more thorough analysis i'm open to hear it..
toast0 3y ago
Their reasons for dismissing HA seem sound to me. Python is a negative for some people. Suggesting to run in docker is a negative for some people. Personally, I gave in and installed HA in a VM, because it seemed like the least effort way to use HomeKit capable devices without purchasing Apple products, and I was able to connect the HomeKit things, but I can't figure out how to do what I want with them, so I not sure what I got. Ideally, I want to make my 'smart' thermostats a bit smarter ... better coordination between zones, different minimum fan runtime rules than I can get from the thermostat, loosen the setpoints when the tv is on or someone is on the phone, so the hvac noise is less bothersome, etc. But I can't figure out how to get HA to track the fan runtime, so all that complexity is like ugh, I'd be better off doing it myself, except the homekit stuff isn't sensible either.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Yeah I thought not liking the way of self-hosting it especially was fair enough. And I suppose language is too even if I don't mind in this case - Java certainly puts me off OpenHAB (and anything else it's used for).
  - bpa77 3y ago
    I've been running openHAB for 3 years with over 100 Z-Wave devices (every light and window in the house, auto-sensing everything), 25 touch screens (one in every room) and wifi/ethernet integration with everything else you can think of (eg UPS, TV, Sonos, Sonnen batteries, Envoy solar interters, air conditioners, sprinkler systems etc). It's never failed and the community is helpful. Irrespective of whatever it's written in, the versatility and 365 x 24 reliability is absolutely rock-solid.
piceas 3y ago
The risk is real and reasonable if one is willing to rationalise it as a hobby / learning / playing with hardware and a trivial amount of soldering. In my case I wanted to play with sensors and the pico w. A pi with a sprinkling of c#, Nats, and influxdb connects, controls Ikea stuff, and reports all the things. Micropython on the pico is not my favourite part of the process but it might have been faster for me than just writing in c.
- lloydatkinson 3y ago
  That’s cool - I’ve done something very similar and used the Worker Service project type along with Quartz .NET for scheduling.

theshrike79 3y ago

HA is _very_ good for integrating stuff, mostly due to it being the de facto standard for DIY home automation. Basically if something has any kind of API that can be accessed in any way, someone has already made a HA integration for it. On the other hand, it's absolutely crap at doing complex automations. The Web UI gives me heartburn any time I need to make it do anything else than simple "if temperature is over 40 on this, do this" things. The UI does make complex automations _possible_ for non-programmers. But for me, every time I click on the UI or attempt to "program" using the convoluted YAML syntax I keep thinking "this would've been like 5 lines in an actual language...". Thus: I use Node RED for the more complex stuff paired with an external program I made that connects to the HA Mosquitto server and pokes stuff directly when needed.

katbyte 3y ago
Yea I kinda wish you could just write code for it. I’d even accept writing it in python as that’s what ya is written in (as I too don’t like python)
dingledork69 3y ago
Pyscript adds rich Python scripting to HASS : https://github.com/custom-components/pyscript https://github.com/custom-components/pyscript An example script: @state_trigger("security.rear_motion == '1' or security.side_motion == '1'") @time_active("range(sunset - 20min, sunrise + 20min)") def motion_light_rear(): """Turn on rear light for 5 minutes when there is motion and it's dark""" task.unique("motion_light_rear") log.info(f"triggered; turning on the light") if light.outside_rear != "on": light.turn_on(entity_id="light.outside_rear", brightness=255) task.sleep(300) light.turn_off(entity_id="light.outside_rear") It's what made me ditch node red after going down the same path.
- Denvercoder9 3y ago
  There's also NetDaemon for those who prefer C#: https://netdaemon.xyz/ https://netdaemon.xyz/
- Larrikin 3y ago
  Can anyone comment on whether Pyscript vs AppDaemon is the better path? It felt like to me as someone that codes as a living PyScript was the better choice, but I also only ever used Python in college and grad school, and just haven't had the time to investigate a difference between the two and wanted to just get started. Using PyScript seems easy but it also feels like its just the main authors preferred way of working and is pretty buggy outside of how he likes to work in Jupyter notebooks The Home Assistant community seems to have the entire gambit of people who can't code at all, the people who never coded professionally and make riduclously complex things like the fabled Excel accountants, to the professional developers doing stuff for fun, but nobody actually shares anything worthwhile outside of awful YAML and youtubes about awful YAML.
  - mrmlz 3y ago
    I'm currently using AppDaemon for a couple of webparsing-scripts. That has worked just fine without touching it for... well over a year by now. But i have a nagging feeling that i should probably use PyScript instead.. If anyone has a more thorough analysis i'm open to hear it..

toast0 3y ago

Their reasons for dismissing HA seem sound to me. Python is a negative for some people. Suggesting to run in docker is a negative for some people. Personally, I gave in and installed HA in a VM, because it seemed like the least effort way to use HomeKit capable devices without purchasing Apple products, and I was able to connect the HomeKit things, but I can't figure out how to do what I want with them, so I not sure what I got. Ideally, I want to make my 'smart' thermostats a bit smarter ... better coordination between zones, different minimum fan runtime rules than I can get from the thermostat, loosen the setpoints when the tv is on or someone is on the phone, so the hvac noise is less bothersome, etc. But I can't figure out how to get HA to track the fan runtime, so all that complexity is like ugh, I'd be better off doing it myself, except the homekit stuff isn't sensible either.

OJFord 3y ago
Yeah I thought not liking the way of self-hosting it especially was fair enough. And I suppose language is too even if I don't mind in this case - Java certainly puts me off OpenHAB (and anything else it's used for).
- bpa77 3y ago
  I've been running openHAB for 3 years with over 100 Z-Wave devices (every light and window in the house, auto-sensing everything), 25 touch screens (one in every room) and wifi/ethernet integration with everything else you can think of (eg UPS, TV, Sonos, Sonnen batteries, Envoy solar interters, air conditioners, sprinkler systems etc). It's never failed and the community is helpful. Irrespective of whatever it's written in, the versatility and 365 x 24 reliability is absolutely rock-solid.

piceas 3y ago

The risk is real and reasonable if one is willing to rationalise it as a hobby / learning / playing with hardware and a trivial amount of soldering. In my case I wanted to play with sensors and the pico w. A pi with a sprinkling of c#, Nats, and influxdb connects, controls Ikea stuff, and reports all the things. Micropython on the pico is not my favourite part of the process but it might have been faster for me than just writing in c.

lloydatkinson 3y ago
That’s cool - I’ve done something very similar and used the Worker Service project type along with Quartz .NET for scheduling.