Home Assistant: Take Control of Your Smart Home (and Your Privacy!) [YouTube Release]

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Forum Post With Home Assistant Notes

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Chapters
00:00 Why Home Assistant
00:55 Installing Home Assistant
01:38 More Home Assistant Resources & Channels
03:12 Zigbee, Zwave, and WIFi
06:30 How I am using Home Assistant
07:04 iphone and Android support
07:47 Home Assistant Intergrations
10:30 Building Automation
12:18 Managing the Dashboard
14:40 Better Smart Switch Choices
16:03 Automation With Zigbee Buttons
16:48 Voice Integration

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Many of us in the Home Automation market are in complete agreement that you need to remove cloud dependencies as much as possible. One reason is security and the other is reliability. As a long time Automator myself from starting with X10 and a StarGate, then though various hubs such as Vera, SmartThings, and now Hubitat for the past 3 years I would say nothing in my home will stop working in the case of losing internet.

I do have one instance of Home Assistant running and it’s role is for one thing and that is to bring local control of the Ecobee thermostat into my Hubitat. When I saw your video, I couldn’t tell if you are using the Ecobee API integration or the HomeKit integration. Ecobee only supports local control if using the Homekit integration. If you are using the API you are still dependent on the internet for controlling it but the great thing about Ecobee it will function automatically even with no internet.

My comments on Home Assistant is that the platform can become a full-time job, and I think the developers realize this. They have been updating it to have fewer breaking changes month to month and simplification of the implementation of rules on the platform. But they have a lot a road to travel to unwind all the stuff that was bolted into the platform over the years.