I recently learned about Home Assistant here on Lemmy. It looks like a replacement for Google Home, etc. However, it requires an entire hardware installation. Proprietary products just use a simple app to manage and control devices, so can someone explain why a pretty robust dedicated device is necessary as a replacement? The base model has a quad core processor, 4 gigs of ram, and a 32 gig hard drive. Admittedly it’s no gaming PC, but it’s no arduino either.
What actually happens when I turn on a smart switch in my home? Does that command have to be sent to a server somewhere to be processed? What really has to be processed, and why can’t a smartphone app do it?
Edit: I am still getting new replies to this (which are appreciated!), but I wanted to share what I’ve learned from those who have posted already. I fundamentally misunderstood how smart switches work. I had very wrongly assumed that when my phone is connected to the WiFi, it sends a signal over the local network to toggle the switch, which is connected to the same network, and it turns on/off. While there are technologies that work like this (zigbee, kinda?), most smart home devices rely on a cloud server to communicate the signal. This enables features like using the switches from outside the home network, automation, voice controls, etc. The remote server is what’s being replaced.
so can someone explain why a pretty robust dedicated device is necessary as a replacement?
The cloud is just someone else’s computer, so when you cut the cord from the cloud, you gotta run your own server.
And you don’t need to buy a (robust) device to run HA, just install it on a spare system and start playing with it. I started building mine about 1.5yrs ago when I bought a house and I think I only gave mine like 2 CPU and 8gb ram.
What actually happens when I turn on a smart switch in my home? Does that command have to be sent to a server somewhere to be processed?
Yes, you have to have something that accepts your commands and sends the action to the end device. Just like your Google home did.
What really has to be processed, and why can’t a smartphone app do it?
Because that’s not how things work. Your app has to talk to a server to send the commands, Google home has cloud servers and a local bridge. HA has an app that you can use to control your stuff, same as Google Home.
Smart Home apps are worthless without hardware required to connect the app to your home.
Proprietary products just use a simple app to manage and control devices
They have a dedicated set of servers your devices and app are connecting to, that’s what home assistant is essentially replacing.
It’s not just app > device, it’s app > server > device.
in a nutshell
This is how the control and information exchange of smart devices work:
Phone App -> [Server] … [Server] -> Smart Device and vice versa
There’s no way around this concept.
Now, Google gives you the phone app and the (public) server part. but these only work with their servers and apps, keeping you locked in.
HA gives you the same, a server and an app, but allows you to keep the server private (access via vpn for public)
Also who guarantees that Google Home will be there in the next few years? HA will still keep running even if it ever gets abandoned.
Technically there is. If the device uses BLE or the phone has some built in hardware shenanigans. There is also a local gateway via ble. I’d argue a simple gateway is not a “server”. Scheduling can be done by the device via internal non-volatile storage and RTC
Gateway is a more specific name for a server.
Like web host is a more specific name for a server.A server isn’t anything fancy, it just serves a service.
If that is just a relay between your phone and local devices, that’s what it’s servingSure, but I was talking about the basic concept of how things work in general to keep it simple for OP.
My homeassistant is running on a pi2 with 2GB RAM. it doesn’t need much.
But yes, it is a central place for processing and recording data, either from phone, imstalled electrical hardware or other devices.
It doesn’t take much to run home assistant. I just have a raspberry pi going and it never fails. I plan to upgrade it to something more powerful in the future, but for now it is more than capable of running home assistant for me with no issues.
Obligatory if you install HA on a raspberry Pi. Use the SSD option as you will wear out an SD card or usb key pretty quickly since those devices aren’t intended for constant writes from things like logging and generally don’t have any wear out leveling.
I ran all my home assistants on Pis with the SD card + external database and never had issues.
And I’ve had SDs fail within a month.
The idea of Home Assistant is not to be a replacement for anything. It rather connects all things. It is a smart home control center, or hub.
Compare it to a Homematic, or maybe Aquara hub, etc. but still more feature rich and expandable with many more protocols and device categories.
Proprietary single switches etc. use only their own protocol.
Google Home is limited to a few protocols.
Thanks. That helps.
Yes, Google runs their servers in the cloud. If you host it yourself, it runs off a device in your house.
But you don’t need to use their own hardware. You can run on whatever you like, and it probably doesn’t actually need all four vCPUs.
HA doesn’t require 4/4/32, that’s just the hardware the HA people sell. (which, given that your phone may be 8/16/128, is hardly “robust”). Generally, the Home Assistant crowd kind of target an audience that’s probably already running some kind of home server, NAS, or router, and HA can probably be installed on that device.
Theoretically, there’s no reason the HA server couldn’t be installed on your phone, except then your smart home functions would only work while your phone is in the house and not sleeping. Kind of defeats the point of a lot of it, unless you’re just thinking of smart home like “remote control for everything.” Regardless, much smaller niche for an already-small market, and apparently not a priority for the dev team.
Also, the point of HA is usually to avoid 3rd party servers, so you don’t just need something that runs HA, you need something that can receive data signals that may not be over wifi. Unless you can connect 3rd party receiver dongles to your phone, it’ll end up limiting which devices you can use on your network.
THIS.
Home Assistant is the brain of the operation. Your smart phone is just an arm or hand in the operation. It’s the same for any of the services you perceive to be just using your smart phone. They actually call out to servers owned by the various companies, and then return requested operations to your devices at home. So with Home Assistant you have the opportunity to use devices and a server that all remain in your own network. Your data and information aren’t being sent to a third party. This, of course, depends on the devices you buy.
But that’s the power behind Home Assistant.
While there are technologies that work like this (zigbee, kinda?),
Yes, there are many. You probably know them as “remote control”. Your TV, your garage door…
Home Assistant can also control them via gateway devices, turn them into “smart” devices and include them in larger automation scenarios.
Home Assistant can be installed as a Docker container instead of going with the whole dedicated machine route.
I have a proxmox hassio VM with 2gb ram and it runs everything smart in my house. The main purpose would be for automations IMO. Like when my phone chargers at night the house lights, TVs locks all shut down and the cameras go into alerting mode. Home assistant is amazing since you don’t have to have 5 apps to control stuff and your data is completely private unlike when using Google home etc. When buying IOT devices I would say stick with zigbee, zwave and only buy WiFi stuff if it works locally without having to have internet wccess.
Wifi smart devices can have that sort of completely local control, not just zigbee. LIFX devices use local control if you don’t connect them to the cloud. However, you’re then limited in lots of ways, such as you can’t then use a smart switch from a different manufacturer to control the lights. Home Assistant takes over the job of Google/Apple Home, which allows different manufacturer’s devices to all work together harmoniously. Those services also provide things like automations, turning the lights on when your smartphone arrives within a geofence for example. HA can do even better because those automations will work across Android as well as iOS. It also maintains the advantage of just one app to control your entire home.
As well, as far hardware, I think you’re misunderstanding a bit. Nabu Casa, the org that controls the open-source HA project, sells a couple of pre-built devices that run home assistant already. They’re designed as turn-key solutions for people with less technical know-how, and provide a bunch of expansibility so people don’t waste money needing to upgrade. The proceeds from those go back into supporting the projects costs. But you can go out and buy a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (512mb RAM) for $15 and it’ll happily run the kind of basic setup you’re after. But you will almost immediately run into it’s limitations if you try to do anything more complicated.
My HA server is running on an x86 VM with 2c/4t and 8gb of RAM to itself. Have a full music server running on it serving ~6 devices around the house though. Edit: 6 fixed devices. It can also be cast to a bunch of places from mobile devices. My music collection is in FLAC so it’s transcoding to lossy on the fly where needed.
Okay — can anyone — and I mean anyone, please explain to me that allure of the so called home assistant. Our home was built in 1965. Its housed many families very comfortably. It houses our family very comfortably. Our kids are heading off to college. Tra la la. We have holidays, happiness, and we contribute to the community at a variety of events. We sleep well. Eat well. We host parties of up to fifty people sometimes… we have a yard.We have a dog, two cats, fish etc. All the things that happen in a home.
We are happy.
We have no so called smart products. We use a terrestrial radio in the kitchen on the daily. We stream from the rip-off services when we desire. We are up on the shows etc. So we have internet — each of us has a phone and a device for working. I just don’t get it.
What is the allure of the so called smart home etc?
Can anyone, I mean anyone, please explain to me that allure of so called cats. We are happy and have no cats. I just don’t get it
I’m sure they have an app to help you understand.
It’s just a minor convenience, not sure why that’s confusing.
I can set the temperature from anywhere, that’s nice.
Imagine… setting it while at home.
For many, just a hobby. If it doesn’t strike you as something you need or want, then maybe it isn’t
That’s true. It doesn’t.
I like the idea that some folks have entirely private systems run by raspberry-pi. That sounds fun.
But what can it do more easily than an mid 20th century home can do?
But what can it do more easily than an mid 20th century home can do?
One word: Automations. Everything from lights to irrigation, HVAC to surveillance cameras, fishtanks to plant monitoring, managed by a single, extensible open source platform, hosted locally in your own home.
Of course that is not trivial. If you don’t see your smart home as a hobby you enjoy putting time and effort into then the smart home scene is not for you, especially not Home Assistant.
Sounds like you are in a fine place with your home, so you are probably not the target audience here.
Nope. Just like living. Not sure what all the hoo-haw’s about. Never felt so old in my life.
Who doesn’t like hand feeding the fish? Why even have them?
Also, notifications. I’m a fairly forgetful person, so I set up notifications to let me know if I left windows open or devices on before I go to bed or leave for work.
Sounds convenient.
