19
Is Home Assistant the recommended default for smart homes? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Trilogy3452@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm planning to build several WiFi connected devices for home automation: an AC remote control and air quality sensors. These devices would send data and be controlled through a local server. I'm considering two approaches: running custom software on a server PC (hardware to be determined) or integrating with Home Assistant's protocols and purchasing their hardware. Would using Home Assistant be excessive for this use case?

top 25 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

HA isn't the only option. I think there's two other open source smarthome solutions out there(?) And you could probably do with just an MQTT broker and a Python script, or something like that...

But HA isn't a bad choice. They're doing a phenomenal job. And related projects like ESPHome make it really easy to integrate microcontrollers. And if you want to do more smarthome stuff, it has a plethora of features, integrations, an app...

Extra hardware isn't absolutely necessary. I have one server at home which does NAS, and I use 4GB of it's RAM to run a virtual machine with Home Assistant. That's enough for it, including a bunch of Addons.

[-] Kirk@startrek.website 2 points 2 weeks ago

As others have said, you can run Home Assistant on anything if you want to just test it out. Their own hardware is a great choice though.

But to answer your broader question, yes. Home Assistant is the choice. It works better with literally everything else out there.

[-] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

you are Apple-centric:homebridge

There’s a mix: homebridge

You are out of mood stabilizers: arduino and an ESP32

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I’ll also vote to reconsider WiFi. Home Assistant supports a variety of local mesh networks that by default can’t connect to the cloud and whose devices are cheaper and lower power.

I use all three of zwave, Zigbee, and thread; ha works with whatever you need.

[-] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
DNS Domain Name Service/System
HA Home Assistant automation software
~ High Availability
IoT Internet of Things for device controllers
MQTT Message Queue Telemetry Transport point-to-point networking
NAS Network-Attached Storage
PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
PoE Power over Ethernet
SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
VPN Virtual Private Network
Zigbee Wireless mesh network for low-power devices

10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.

[Thread #65 for this comm, first seen 6th Feb 2026, 21:20] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[-] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 2 weeks ago

If you aren't locked in yet, I'd recommend against WiFi devices. Check Zigbee or similar. It won't clutter your LAN and is independent. You usually need some kind of central station for that but it's worth it imho.

[-] Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

Will do. Is it more for security purposes? Reliability?

[-] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 2 weeks ago

Both! Connecting Iot devices to your LAN is a security risk, since they sometimes carry malware. Many DDOS these days are performed by smart bulbs or the like. May even sniff in your network. Of course you can firewall them, but why bother with wifi at all then? Zigbee is pretty reliable and works even if your router goes down (you probably can't access Home Assistant Web interface anymore, but zigbee light switches etc will still trigger zigbee bulbs, zigbee thermeters will still report their sensor values etc).

I'm a Zigbee user so I use that in the examples but I'm sure the other options are fine as well.

[-] Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

Thank you for the info! I'm guessing that I could use a mini PC with a zigbee adapter to create my own dashboards or bridge to home assistant, unless zigbee hubs offer similar capabilities

[-] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 2 weeks ago

Home Assistant has a great integration, ZHA, which "drives" the Zigbee device. So having the Zigbee dongle on the machine HA runs on is very common. In my case it's a raspberry with a RaspBee dongle but every MINI PC will do. Recommended devices: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#recommended-zigbee-radio-adapters-and-modules

The other common setup is using Zigbee2MQTT which allows different devices that communicate over LAN. it's been the go to recommendation as it has some compatibility improvements for devices that don't properly follow the Zigbee standard. ZHA is keeping up though and is natively supported by home assistant. I'm using ZHA and check for compatibility before buying devices.

You can theoretically switch later, but you'll have to reconnect all devices which can be a hassle.

[-] Jaaaardvark@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

I've tried Domoticz when my Pi was too old for HA, before upgrading to HA. It was good enough to control only a few devices.

[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

In terms of software, yes. But HA can be run on nearly anything—there’s no need to buy their hardware to use it.

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

Adding to this, I recommend a used mini PC. There's lots of cheap used office hardware out there on eBay that is more powerful, more serviceable, and more flexible than the hardware they sell or a raspberry pi.

[-] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago

While there are some problems with used minipcs (notably drivers), i don't think they are relevant if it is only going to be used as a Home Assistant

[-] Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

That's a good point. This can help me with things like adding a DNS server (I'm assuming pi-hole can be run standalone on a mini PC)

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago

You can also install ad guard home as an add on INSIDE Home Assistant. Works great!

[-] SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

I bought a used mini PC and then set up Proxmox. This little thing is a lot more capable than the Raspberry I used before and it runs my complete home lab, excluding my NAS.

[-] i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 weeks ago

Just be careful with SD cards if you're using SBCs. Home Assistant does a lot of writing and if your SD card can't handle repeated writes you may suddenly lose everything. Keep backups to another device and have a replacement SD card ready if extended downtime is going to be a problem for you.

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

You can connect an SSD to these boards and boot from that instead of an SD card. Definitely the way to go especially considering SSDs dont really cost more than SD cards.

[-] 4am@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 weeks ago

Always run mine in a VM along with everything else, no need for special hardware.

Get yourself a PoE Zigbee and/or Z-wave receiver and you are good to go, can even live migrate HA if you are fancy

[-] white_nrdy@programming.dev 0 points 2 weeks ago

I run mine in a VM but have USB passthrough for the Zwave and zigbee sticks. I didn't know there were POE coordinators. Do you have any you recommend? I use both zwave and zigbee

[-] speculate7383@lemmy.today 1 points 2 weeks ago

I haven't tried it yet, but I see the SMLIGHT SLZB06 get recommended a lot for Zigbee

[-] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 0 points 2 weeks ago

HA will connect to almost anything, maybe there is a connector for your AC unit and there are many air quality sensors

[-] Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

My AC is offline, I was thinking I'd just put an infra red LED on a microcontroller in front of it 😅

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

I did this with ESPHome on an ESP8266 connected to an IR led for some rope lights that had IR control. The hard part is finding the codes for each control, but there's a surprising amount of info out there.

this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
19 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

56846 readers
155 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz