Installing a few smart plugs, switches, or light bulbs and controlling them through your smartphone does not make your home smart. A smart home should be smart enough to make decisions, automate your devices, and send notifications and alerts based on events, time, or information from various sensors.

Although some manufacturers provide a few basic options in their apps to automate their smart devices, they are connected to the cloud servers and fail to work if the network or internet is down, making them unreliable. Besides, they may also log or collect your activity data on their cloud servers, such as when, where, or how you use your smart devices.

What Is Home Assistant, and Why Would You Want to Use It?

Home Assistant (HA) is a free, open-source home automation software that helps you build a localized smart home with complete privacy. It’s a flexible, reliable, and more secure solution than its cloud-based alternatives, such as Homebridge, SmartThings, or Alexa Routines.

home assistant dashboard on a ipad app

HA lets you control and access your smart home devices on the local network. Thus, your smart home is not dependent on the cloud servers or internet connection and will continue to work irrespective of internet availability. Since it’s local, it is also faster and more consistent.

You can integrate all your compatible smart devices, such as plugs, switches, lights, and sensors, with Home Assistant, control them individually or in a group, and create automation.

You can also build DIY smart switches, lights, and sensors for Home Assistant and use them to automate your home with complete privacy.

However, if you are already using smart devices at your home or office, there are good chances that they may work with Home Assistant as it supports 1900+ devices and services. If the devices are connected to your network, the Home Assistant will automatically scan and detect known devices, which you can set up and control through Home Assistant web or app UI.

What Can Home Assistant Do?

Home Assistant is like a smart hub that you can use to add all your smart devices, integrate them as entities, and control them from a single web interface or HA app on a smartphone or tablet. It can also enhance the functionality of smart devices and provide more features.

Home Assistant also allows you to control your devices through Alexa or Google Home Assistant smart speakers, although it requires a Nabu Casa subscription.

If you have smart devices installed in your home or office that you currently control through different mobile apps, you can integrate them into Home Assistant to control them individually or in a group.

You can add rule-based automation where you can create routines or trigger devices based on time, event, conditions, and actions. You can also add automation scripts to define or specify a sequence of actions that Home Assistant will execute when the script is turned on.

For example, you can build a smart water/salt level sensor using an ultrasonic sensor and an ESP8266 board to measure the tank volume and send notifications to your smartphone and voice alerts via Alexa smart speaker when the tank level reaches a certain depth.

remaining water in the tank home assistant

Similarly, you may also build a DIY smart household energy monitoring device that reports real-time power usage to the Home Assistant interface. It records all logs and tracks daily energy monitoring on an hourly basis. You can also add the cost per KWh of energy to see your electricity bills.

home assistant energy dashboard with usage and approximate bill

If you have a traditional air conditioner or HVAC unit, you can use Home Assistant to add Wi-Fi control and make your air conditioner smart without touching the unit.

We have already covered several guides on building DIY smart devices for Home Assistant to automate your home. You can check out our DIY section to learn more.

We highly recommend you build DIY smart devices as they don’t require internet or third-party servers to work and integrate with Home Assistant natively. Using ESPhome and Tasmota firmware, you can quickly build and deploy smart switches, lights, and sensors in 3D printed cases for a neat look.

What Are the Potential Drawbacks of Home Assistant?

There are some caveats of using Home Assistant that you must consider before deploying one at your home.

  1. With Home Assistant comes a steep learning curve. You will have to go through the extensive documentation to learn Home Assistant and perform hits and trials to ensure things work.
  2. Home Assistant receives regular updates which address security bugs and add improvements. When a major update comes, the old tutorials or guides may no longer work or become outdated and require a different approach or some manual tweaking that you may have to find out.

However, there’s a huge community to help you if you get into trouble or need help fixing. You may find most solutions already resolved by others. Besides, once you set up a few devices, you will understand most things related to integrating and controlling your smart devices.

What Do You Need for a Home Assistant Installation?

You can install Home Assistant on the following devices:

  1. Windows
  2. Mac
  3. Linux
  4. Intel NUC-based systems (old laptops)
  5. ASUS Tinkerboard
  6. Odroid
  7. Raspberry Pi 3 or 4

To access the Home Assistant dashboard for controlling devices, you can use the Home Assistant app available for iOS, iPadOS, and Android smartphones or use a web browser on any compatible device.

How to Install Home Assistant

Although there are four different ways to install Home Assistant, it is recommended that you follow one of the following two methods to install Home Assistant on compatible hardware:

Home Assistant Operating System (With Supervisor)

This version of Home Assistant comes with a supervisor to manage the Home Assistant Core and Add-Ons. It’s much easier to set up and doesn’t require you to tweak any settings manually or via the command line. You can install HA OS on single-board computers, such as Tinkerboard, Odroid, or Raspberry Pi. We recommend you use this method to install and set up Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 with at least 4GB RAM.

Home Assistant Container (Without Supervisor)

You may also install the Home Assistant on a Docker container. However, this doesn’t come with Supervisor and Add-Ons. You must manually install the required add-ons via Command Line or Terminal. You can use this method to install HA on Windows, Mac, or Linux PCs and old laptops.

Home Assistant for a Secure & Private Smart Home

With Home Assistant, you can build a smart home that’s truly private and more secure than cloud-based solutions. You can buy smart devices or build them by yourself and integrate them with Home Assistant. If you want to keep your activity data private, consider deploying Home Assistant for home automation and smart device control.