I have tried Home Assistant several times. Each time I try it, I get it installed on a VM under my Proxmox hypervisor and start configuring my devices. I’ll use my most recent try as an example. I have several Wyze WiFi power switches, and two “Smart Life” (Toya internally) combination thermometer/switch devices. The Toya devices integrated with HA after I signed up for a Toya developer account and did a bunch of configuring. I was able to read the temperature values, but switching the devices on/off did absolutely nothing. I didn’t even try the Wyze devices; apparently Wyze doesn’t integrate with HA.
I’m not opposed to buying new “smart home” devices, but I want something that actually works properly. What I’m looking for are:
- Devices that don’t require internet access and an external API; I want to control them directly over my LAN.
- Devices that have built-in integration with HA.
Is there a list of devices that just “work” with HA? I’ve looked at the list of available integrations that “technically” work, but they often require signing up for API access with a 3rd-party company and jumping through hoops to get the devices working. I want something where I can assign it a static IP or DHCP lease and HA just talks to it. I was able to get my BlueIris DVR integration working, and it can double as a motion sensor, so I’m specifically looking for plug-in switches, thermometers, sensors, etc.
Yes, Matter/Thread may change things but, as it stands, Zigbee is the format that seems to be absolutely solid and available in the lower-priced end of the mark (so you can get handfuls of sensors for not much).
If a friend asked for my advice to get a smart home up and running, I’d say grab a ZBDongle-E (discussion here) and whatever Zigbee devices you like. With the latest versions of HA being so much more user-friendly than when I started out, it is about as easy as it gets without buying some fancy bespoke system. I got all my Zigbee devices up and running in about the same time it took to get a single Bluetooth device onboard, so just stick with Zigbee and you can’t go far wrong, at least in my experience.