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There's a decent amount of friction for a European resident trying to use HA. The landing page has two products with pricing in dollars and nothing else w.r.t.

There's a decent amount of friction for a European resident trying to use HA. The landing page has two products with pricing in dollars and nothing else w.r.t. hardware. Click "Getting started" and there's still no sign of what to buy. Click "Installation" and then there are 9+ platforms (and multiple subplatforms) but no quick and realistic comparison of features or pricing. Is a NUC12WSHi3 a better deal, more energy efficient, and better equipped to handle wake words than an ODROID-M1 4GB/16GB-uSD/256GB-NVMe Addict? Will I need to buy an add-on microphone? Do I need just one box/bridge for multiple stories of a large house and then some supporting hardware? Can I finally throw my Amazon devices into the electronics trash bin at Penny? Even among HA products... It looks like I can get a Green from the official German supplier for 110 euros, from a different European vendor that I search on Google Shopping or Idealo for 103 euros, or from Slovakia for around 100 euros. It's all of the inconsistencies and friction that keep me from using HA. I have a solid theory on Linux distros: the landing page is a good indicator of how much of a pain it will be to install and use. I suspect that's also true with HA. 8fingerlouie mentioned Homey. When I go to that landing page, there's a flag to switch region and a big Buy button. It's only a few clicks to switch to their non-Pro bridge, and the pricing is consistent on the page and with any vendor I search online. ----- In any case, I'm not using a Home device until they remove Google from the wake word. I'm not using Alexa for its invasive behavior (most notably Amazon Sidewalk) and because the Philips skill mysteriously broke a few days ago, confusing the hell out of family members accustomed to a house full of working Philips lights with customized Alexa phrases. I'm not using Siri or Cortana ever. I'd love to move on to a better platform and would even pay a premium to get an industrial controller like my workplace. Such a platform either needs a dedicated installer-maintainer or exists only in my imagination.

M95D 3y ago
HomeAssistant is software and is free. All the hardware that you see on that page are ads.
redrove 3y ago
I'm European as well but I fail to see what's preventing you from buying hardware and deploying HASS. There's so many SBCs available now, in ARM or even x86 form (Zima Board). Pick one and deploy HASS on it. Pricing in USD be damned.
- PennRobotics 3y ago
  _I_ can buy hardware and set it up. That does not mean it's easy to use for the whole family when I'm not there.
michh 3y ago
I'm in Europe and this hasn't been my experience _at all_. I recently started using HA. I bought a HomeAssistant Yellow box which was very easy and got delivered to me speedily from within Europe. I set up my device and the web interface allowed me to link it to their cloud offering, where I could subscribe to the plan in euros - because it knew I was in The Netherlands. But it also works just fine without the subscription.
- PennRobotics 3y ago
  Good to know. I wasn't aware there's a cloud. From what I can tell, Yellow wouldn't be necessary if I have a Hue bridge. I definitely don't need GPIO. Most important to me is usability by others, so what would be the most inconvenient failure modes?
chpatrick 3y ago
I just run it myself on an old laptop I had lying around, you don't need to buy anything.
gempir 3y ago
That's a feature not a problem. It's free software you can run it anywhere you like. And they give you some advice and "ads" which stuff to buy which it runs best one.
hypfer 3y ago
> Even among HA products... It looks like I can get a Green from the official German supplier for 110 euros, from a different European vendor that I search on Google Shopping or Idealo for 103 euros, or from Slovakia for around 100 euros. > It's all of the inconsistencies and friction that keep me from using HA. Come on man that point is just bogus. Samsung TVs, Noctua Fans or any other conceivable good are also sold by multiple vendors with different prices, yet no one complains about that being "inconsistent". Especially not to Samsung/Noctua/whoever
- PennRobotics 3y ago
  I have to send a buggy audio interface from Munich to Czech Republic, because that's where I bought it for cheaper. For one, there's the environmental factor of sending shit from A to B to C. Second, it's a major hassle waiting a week instead of a day for each leg of shipping. I'd rather buy local but not if it's costing 10% more. And I'm quite certain there are people who grumble that they need to buy a certain threshold of goods at Costco (perhaps the most prominent price discriminator) before a membership is worth it.
russfink 3y ago
I'm convinced Amazon is going to phase out Alexa because it's not making them money. After visiting the Home Assistant website and reading these comments, I have a mixed reaction. Can someone explain by examples what it is and how it works? I see some videos where people are raising desks and turning on lights. How does that work? Besides Green or Yellow (not entirely sure what the differences are), are there modules you have to buy? Can I control it from a phone? Can I control my Alexa outlets with it, or do I have to buy all new outlets? If there's a "cloud," how does that align with the goal of privacy and everything being stored locally? What is a "YAML" file and why would I need to mess with it? And can I talk to it like Alexa? Half the site seems to say yes, the other half no. I'm probably going to hold out for something more friendly that inevitably will come out just as Alexa is being lowered into the grave.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  There are two main approaches to voice with Home Assistant: 1) Their native Home Assistant voice stuff combined with either their ESPHome project or their "voice satellite" software implementations that run on a Raspberry PI (or whatever) with any microphone attached. Either of these provide wildly different results. It turns out you can't just slap a microphone on something and get quality voice and speech recognition from 15 feet away (or even much less) under typical conditions. I learned this the hard way many many years ago. 2) My project Willow[0]. Our approaches could not be more different in terms of implementation and each has advantages and disadvantages. That said, between my 20 years of experience with the intersection of voice, networks, etc and thousands of users using Willow in the real world for six months I certainly believe our approach is substantially better in terms of a user experience competitive with the commercial big tech stuff. HA voice is essentially at initial release and they will undoubtedly be making improvements but my experience (confirmed by initial user feedback and my own testing) tells me they will probably need a complete re-architecture at some point. Basically, I took my 20 years of experience with this stuff and combined it with "inspiration" from the big tech implementations and made it local and private. I love Home Assistant and have very deep respect for the team but they clearly don't have much real-world experience with voice (which is a very unique animal). Their architecture and the end result demonstrates that. I want to be very careful to not sound overly critical or harsh but decades of experience and the resulting accumulated knowledge makes a huge difference. They only just started learning voice and it's very painful process. [0] - https://heywillow.io/ https://heywillow.io/
diffeomorphism 3y ago
Nonsense. HA is software not hardware. Get any pc, raspberry pi, whatever, install, follow the pretty interface instructions. I have no idea why you think European has anything at all to do with that. > then there are 9+ platforms (and multiple subplatforms) but no quick and realistic comparison of features or pricing. No. It is simply "what hardware or OS do you have? Click here".
- PennRobotics 3y ago
  I don't want to run HA on hardware I already have. I want to put a small box with new hardware on my bookshelf where my Google Home used to live until it was replaced with Alexa, which got removed three weeks ago. If HA is not hardware, why do they have multiple hardware platforms for sale? And what is actually the best value for a dedicated HA device? That is unclear. Why would you need more extensible storage or a variety of RAM possibilities for HA? That is not clear from the first few pages. I'm sure I can take a spare RPi from my bottom desk drawer and get HA running before lunch tomorrow. I also know that's a waste of a RPi if there's purpose-built hardware (and by that, I mean power profiled, no useless Arduino-layout pins, no SSH configuration, ideally no manual installation at all). If I'm not around and HA stops running because RPis sometimes have weird clock issues or someone closes the power cord in a desk drawer (RIP old laptop) or a service was misconfigured or SD flash storage sometimes goes haywire, are my family members going to be in the dark, literally, while I'm away? A site that doesn't spoonfeed you the step-by-step, dummy-proof onboarding (a la Hue) usually indicates that the product will require equally esoteric maintenance. My partner only thinks of Raspberry Pi as a food, and I know of it as a collection of known and yet-to-be-discovered vulnerabilities that runs about 300 mA too much all the time. I have a NUC. It's a royal pain in my ass because it's my primary device and if you don't have a very precise combination of drivers and BIOS settings, it overheats and/or refuses to wake from sleep. (It's actually a replacement; the first overheated one too many times.) I will never, ever run HA on a NUC. Same deal with Docker: Every time I touch containers, I discover the Who's Who? of certificate errors, "jessie/bionic were last in vogue 5 years ago; no version pin, no run" (yesterday's error), "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it", system clock is wrong, etc. I'm not so cruel to subject my family to opening up a terminal or finding the right manpage anytime the smart home starts acting dumb. ----- As far as residency mattering... Dollars are on the home page. Only after clicking a few links to buy can I find a variety of countries for buying a Yellow or Green, but the place where I live is not actually the best option, price-wise. Unless someone from mediarath is going to phone me up and walk me through the setup or throw in the perfunctory bag of Goldbären, there's no point in paying extra when the guy a few borders over will ship it for less. People in Denmark seem to be getting screwed worse, at 126 euros per Green. It's one thing if this was an American or European product, but they're all COO China (and it's still not even breakeven to buy bulk from the Chinese vendor, it would be the U.S. price before tax and customs---ultimately more than the Danes).

M95D 3y ago

HomeAssistant is software and is free. All the hardware that you see on that page are ads.

redrove 3y ago

I'm European as well but I fail to see what's preventing you from buying hardware and deploying HASS. There's so many SBCs available now, in ARM or even x86 form (Zima Board). Pick one and deploy HASS on it. Pricing in USD be damned.

PennRobotics 3y ago
_I_ can buy hardware and set it up. That does not mean it's easy to use for the whole family when I'm not there.

michh 3y ago

I'm in Europe and this hasn't been my experience _at all_. I recently started using HA. I bought a HomeAssistant Yellow box which was very easy and got delivered to me speedily from within Europe. I set up my device and the web interface allowed me to link it to their cloud offering, where I could subscribe to the plan in euros - because it knew I was in The Netherlands. But it also works just fine without the subscription.

PennRobotics 3y ago
Good to know. I wasn't aware there's a cloud. From what I can tell, Yellow wouldn't be necessary if I have a Hue bridge. I definitely don't need GPIO. Most important to me is usability by others, so what would be the most inconvenient failure modes?

chpatrick 3y ago

I just run it myself on an old laptop I had lying around, you don't need to buy anything.

gempir 3y ago

That's a feature not a problem. It's free software you can run it anywhere you like. And they give you some advice and "ads" which stuff to buy which it runs best one.

hypfer 3y ago

> Even among HA products... It looks like I can get a Green from the official German supplier for 110 euros, from a different European vendor that I search on Google Shopping or Idealo for 103 euros, or from Slovakia for around 100 euros. > It's all of the inconsistencies and friction that keep me from using HA. Come on man that point is just bogus. Samsung TVs, Noctua Fans or any other conceivable good are also sold by multiple vendors with different prices, yet no one complains about that being "inconsistent". Especially not to Samsung/Noctua/whoever

PennRobotics 3y ago
I have to send a buggy audio interface from Munich to Czech Republic, because that's where I bought it for cheaper. For one, there's the environmental factor of sending shit from A to B to C. Second, it's a major hassle waiting a week instead of a day for each leg of shipping. I'd rather buy local but not if it's costing 10% more. And I'm quite certain there are people who grumble that they need to buy a certain threshold of goods at Costco (perhaps the most prominent price discriminator) before a membership is worth it.

russfink 3y ago

I'm convinced Amazon is going to phase out Alexa because it's not making them money. After visiting the Home Assistant website and reading these comments, I have a mixed reaction. Can someone explain by examples what it is and how it works? I see some videos where people are raising desks and turning on lights. How does that work? Besides Green or Yellow (not entirely sure what the differences are), are there modules you have to buy? Can I control it from a phone? Can I control my Alexa outlets with it, or do I have to buy all new outlets? If there's a "cloud," how does that align with the goal of privacy and everything being stored locally? What is a "YAML" file and why would I need to mess with it? And can I talk to it like Alexa? Half the site seems to say yes, the other half no. I'm probably going to hold out for something more friendly that inevitably will come out just as Alexa is being lowered into the grave.

kkielhofner 3y ago
There are two main approaches to voice with Home Assistant: 1) Their native Home Assistant voice stuff combined with either their ESPHome project or their "voice satellite" software implementations that run on a Raspberry PI (or whatever) with any microphone attached. Either of these provide wildly different results. It turns out you can't just slap a microphone on something and get quality voice and speech recognition from 15 feet away (or even much less) under typical conditions. I learned this the hard way many many years ago. 2) My project Willow[0]. Our approaches could not be more different in terms of implementation and each has advantages and disadvantages. That said, between my 20 years of experience with the intersection of voice, networks, etc and thousands of users using Willow in the real world for six months I certainly believe our approach is substantially better in terms of a user experience competitive with the commercial big tech stuff. HA voice is essentially at initial release and they will undoubtedly be making improvements but my experience (confirmed by initial user feedback and my own testing) tells me they will probably need a complete re-architecture at some point. Basically, I took my 20 years of experience with this stuff and combined it with "inspiration" from the big tech implementations and made it local and private. I love Home Assistant and have very deep respect for the team but they clearly don't have much real-world experience with voice (which is a very unique animal). Their architecture and the end result demonstrates that. I want to be very careful to not sound overly critical or harsh but decades of experience and the resulting accumulated knowledge makes a huge difference. They only just started learning voice and it's very painful process. [0] - https://heywillow.io/ https://heywillow.io/

diffeomorphism 3y ago

Nonsense. HA is software not hardware. Get any pc, raspberry pi, whatever, install, follow the pretty interface instructions. I have no idea why you think European has anything at all to do with that. > then there are 9+ platforms (and multiple subplatforms) but no quick and realistic comparison of features or pricing. No. It is simply "what hardware or OS do you have? Click here".

PennRobotics 3y ago
I don't want to run HA on hardware I already have. I want to put a small box with new hardware on my bookshelf where my Google Home used to live until it was replaced with Alexa, which got removed three weeks ago. If HA is not hardware, why do they have multiple hardware platforms for sale? And what is actually the best value for a dedicated HA device? That is unclear. Why would you need more extensible storage or a variety of RAM possibilities for HA? That is not clear from the first few pages. I'm sure I can take a spare RPi from my bottom desk drawer and get HA running before lunch tomorrow. I also know that's a waste of a RPi if there's purpose-built hardware (and by that, I mean power profiled, no useless Arduino-layout pins, no SSH configuration, ideally no manual installation at all). If I'm not around and HA stops running because RPis sometimes have weird clock issues or someone closes the power cord in a desk drawer (RIP old laptop) or a service was misconfigured or SD flash storage sometimes goes haywire, are my family members going to be in the dark, literally, while I'm away? A site that doesn't spoonfeed you the step-by-step, dummy-proof onboarding (a la Hue) usually indicates that the product will require equally esoteric maintenance. My partner only thinks of Raspberry Pi as a food, and I know of it as a collection of known and yet-to-be-discovered vulnerabilities that runs about 300 mA too much all the time. I have a NUC. It's a royal pain in my ass because it's my primary device and if you don't have a very precise combination of drivers and BIOS settings, it overheats and/or refuses to wake from sleep. (It's actually a replacement; the first overheated one too many times.) I will never, ever run HA on a NUC. Same deal with Docker: Every time I touch containers, I discover the Who's Who? of certificate errors, "jessie/bionic were last in vogue 5 years ago; no version pin, no run" (yesterday's error), "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it", system clock is wrong, etc. I'm not so cruel to subject my family to opening up a terminal or finding the right manpage anytime the smart home starts acting dumb. ----- As far as residency mattering... Dollars are on the home page. Only after clicking a few links to buy can I find a variety of countries for buying a Yellow or Green, but the place where I live is not actually the best option, price-wise. Unless someone from mediarath is going to phone me up and walk me through the setup or throw in the perfunctory bag of Goldbären, there's no point in paying extra when the guy a few borders over will ship it for less. People in Denmark seem to be getting screwed worse, at 126 euros per Green. It's one thing if this was an American or European product, but they're all COO China (and it's still not even breakeven to buy bulk from the Chinese vendor, it would be the U.S. price before tax and customs---ultimately more than the Danes).