Thanks for the shout-out! Good to see Home Assistant through a new set of eyes... I think you're definitely on track with your conclusions, and I'm glad to see larger creators getting into it!
Thanks Aaron! I appreciate your support as I began this journey. Channels like yours are invaluable to the rest of us trying to figure out this crazy world of Home Assistant!
Home Assistant is the only system that is making actual real world progress in connecting all of the various different manufactures and it offers super flexible options which are not available from the big names.
@@rogerhuston8287 I was also happily impressed at how many devices it just detected and setup, it still takes a bit of learning and its not for the guy who simply wants to tell Alexa to turn on his ceiling fan or whatever but its easy enough to be useful for a lot of people now.
I was 100% homekit before. Then added homebridge for unsupported devices. Then added Home assistant. Now everything I add is Home assistant first then I send it to homekit with bridge features. I also sent all my automations in HA. Homekit is now just a simple dashboard for our phones.
Home assistant came with quite a big learning curve, but once I wrapped my head around automations and scripts my home actually feels smart. The same button press doing different things based on time of day, if guests are over, on who’s at home, whether power is cheaper or expensive and so much more. For many automations I have completely left buttons out of it. Things just happen on their own based on conditions and you don’t need to do anything. So flexible and infinitely customisable.
I think the way you are using home assistant is great. Home assistant provides a very stable and flexible backbone for anyone who is interested in home automation, regardless of how in depth you want to go. It definitely takes some time to get it up and running (setting up integrations, remote access, voice assistants, and automations), but once it's established, it just chugs along in the background without any intervention in my experience. I've set it up in multiple family member's houses without problems for multiple years now.
Long awaited video 😂. Love that it’s not in depth and gives people an overall perspective. Being able to integrate non native devices was main reason to get into HA.
Hey Shane, as always a great video. For years, I’ve considered home assistant, but have never taken the plunge. Watching this video it seems like a fun new way how to run your home and now that I’m working from home. This is something that I definitely would love to try. One positive thing that I really enjoyed about the video was that we can use it at the back end without interrupting HomeKit. And since my wife now loves HomeKit. Happy wife happy wife, happy home.
Super stoked to see they have made Home Assistant easier to get up and running. I have to admit, I wish they still sold the all-in-one plug and play Home Assistant Yellow. Getting ready to buy a Mac Mini at the first of the year, which would allow me to take advantage of Home Assistant. Only thing, I need to ensure I have a UPS system for all controller devices so that during a power loss when it comes back on, everything is not powering on at those odd times of the early morning hours.
I’ve been tinkering with HA for a while now and it has been terrifying me (not really!) but now I’m diving in full head first and making the switch, it’s time to get my place actually smart… thanks again for everything you do and I hate you already for pushing me further down the rabbit hole!!! hahah I love you man!
It is a time sink, but I love it! If you have Matter devices, put them in Home Assistant and then share them to HomeKit. Make sure to get a Raspberry Pi 5, and use an NVME Ssd internally to run it in the Yellow. That makes it way faster. Also back up to a network resource such as a NAS. You can automate it.
I have a love hate relationship with HA. I love all the insane things I can do with it, but I hate that trying to make those insane things work takes hours, days, weeks....and then it usually breaks shortly after lol. You're spot on with your first impressions of it.
I made the same “switch” earlier in the year after hitting a total limit of automations in Apple Home so I literally could not do any more with it. But it’s the best thing to happen in my smart home! I can do SO much more now! And I still use Apple Home in conjunction for its easy interface and to keep my HomePods relevant. I’m currently working on a video myself explaining how I like using both together 😊 And if you get into building your own WLED strips in future, be sure to let me know and I’ll send you some controllers my Dad and I designed which make it SUPER easy to get started with.
The CM5 just landed, it should be a drop in replacement for CM4, and deliver a 2 to 3x speedup. If you find you need more performance, that's a decent option. It might need a bit more cooling, that's the only thing.
“Time suck” is the perfect way to describe HA. I had it several years back and slowly transitioned everything to native apple home. I then switched to HomeBridge for the few devices I have left that are not native apple home compatible after my HA setup updated and cratered itself. I didn’t have it in me to start over. I only have a few things left running on HomeBridge now that thread is becoming more prevalent.
Great vid Shane! You have a gift on being able to explain the smart home world for the rest of us, and now, making your Home Assistant experience easier for us to understand. This video was a huge help. Maybe you can compare Home Assistant to Homey Pro at some point down the road. Homey Pro is powerful and more user friendly, but I think it’s too limited on common US smart home devices at this point. I’m thinking by end of 2025 both systems will develop to a point of a meaningful comparison. I agree with a lot of the RUclips content creators like you who prefer to use HomeKit as their Front-end UI. Home Assistant is a perfect option for the back-end like you suggested in case more advanced automations are needed. This beauty of HA is that it’s open source, private and free. Your online presence is helping a lot of us… Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words! 🙏 We actually discussed my thoughts on Homey Pro vs. Home Assistant at length in a recent live stream. I think you are right on your assessment regarding compatibility. You can watch the replay of the stream here (look for chapters to skip to that particular conversation): ruclips.net/user/live5e6N-S438EU
I think the reason the HA yellow standard stopped being provided was because of the lack of CM4 modules and their difficulty in sourcing. However now that the CM5 module is released they may start providing this again. I just upgraded to a rp5 and it is so much faster than the rp4. Also with the govee lights, I have the Govee Curtain Lights (H70B1) and I have not been able to get them running. Do you have a set of these and did you get them working?
Great video as always! And on point conclusions… I am actually starting out in the UK, installing Home Assistant for people (and even companies) that are in the grey area you spoke about. Where you like the idea but it’s just not going to become your hobby. With all smart home tech it takes real time to build the knowledge required to setup a smart home that does what you want, without becoming an extra burden/annoyance. And that’s what I aim to specialise in, since I’ve been working for years doing just that for my family (especially with our son who was born with a disability right around the time I got really into all this stuff). I always appreciate your videos, the time and work that goes into them, and how well you articulate your points and advice. I’ve learnt a lot from your videos, but if there’s anything you want to learn about running Home Assistant and HomeKit side by side, you’re more than welcome to hit me up too (and maybe I’ll finally hop into your discord now there’s a Home Assistant section).
Great video, and I agree with your conclusion that Home Assistant isn’t for everyone, but great for people that enjoy tinkering. Glad to see you’re enjoying your HA journey! ❤
I'm also starting to look at HA. I don't want to spend nights integrating my smart home, but using HA in the back office and HomeKit in the front office does seem like a good idea. In any case, I'll be sharing my experience too. And thank you for this video, Shane.
Welcome to the HA club! I’ve been using HA for about 5 years after finding the automations in HK very limited. I still use HK as a front end for the family and it allows us to use Siri to trigger stuff
If you want your HA dashboards to look a bit more like Home, there's a theme called "iOS Themes - Dark Mode and Light Mode" on HACS that should make things look a bit more familiar. Might also help with the spousal acceptance factor.
I make HomeKit bridges for each category (lights, climate, sensors, Alarm, ect) I find this is the easiest for when you add new devices and entities later.
I get it for complex home automation, but I’m just not pushing the limits of homekit myself. I have lots of lights/switches, HVAC/climate control devices, locks, and cameras, and homekit just works flawlessly for me personally. The idea of spending more time to get basically the same thing (if you’re okay with buying mainly Matter devices anyway) it’s a good value proposition for me.
When you were configuring your devices into Home Assistant, did that not also reset them in HomeKit? Because you have to put them into pairing mode which is kind of like a factory reset, right? I really hope the answer is “no” 😅
I've also noticed a lot of videos talking about Home Assistant, and have been wondering about it, so I'm happy to see you're tackling an overview of it. But just imagine what this video would be like if you had to avoid saying "Home Assistant" the way you have to avoid saying "Alexa". 🙂
Thanks Garance! That would have taken a lot of editing if I had to mute every time I said "Home Assistant!" 😅 Nothing worse than a RUclips video trigging your smart speakers!
Glad you had Paul in the video, was waiting for it 😊 watch yours and all the other channels you showed. I use home assistant but always watched your video as a lot of the products you feature are compatible.
@ShaneCreates Yeah I like this time of year for home automation some collaborations and challenging each other. Sometimes a video of each others favourite automation or product of the year.
I really like my homey, I got a bridge right now which is the bare minimum when it comes to the supported devices, but I really only got reputable big brands in my smart home and they all pretty much got official support with the bridge so I don't need the homey pro yet. But I really have had no problem what so ever with homey, and with the new dashboards feature coming out soon, been testing the beta. It will be even better!
Shane, one thing that I agree with you is running HomeKit along side with Home Assistant. One important thing is when you add Home Assistant, you could have just left the configuration of all your devices until you got more comfortable with the system. Then configure only the ones you need to work with, and leave the rest until you want too. One quick not I will make with you regarding Apple Devices with the Companion App. Sometimes the information interval between them is not always accurate. More so, for example if you are hoping that the sensor created for your phone in HA for charging status is not always accurate. In my case I setup a dummy switch in Homekit that is shared back to HA. Then I created a Shortcut on my iPhone to turn that switch off or on depending on if I placed the phone on the charger. I had created a automation that once the phone was on the charge between certain hours that it knows i am in bed and turns the lights off.
Hi Shane! It would be great if you could do a more detailed video on using HK as the front end and HA as the backend. No one presents Home Kit as well as you do! This video was perfect timing as I just received my HA Green this week!
As I understand the yellow standard was discontinued due to issues sourcing the Raspberry PI CM4 modules following the post-covid supply chain issues. Though the benefit of the yellow kit now, is the ability to use the new RPi CM5 module instead, and get a ~>30% performance increase for the same price.
What are your thoughts of Comtroller for Homekit vs Home Assistant? Looking into options to advance automation, but have been able to manage most of my needs with Homekit compatible devices, so I'm interested in what may be good or better options
I couldn't agree more with your conclusions! I LOVE Home Assistant and my apartment is very highly automated (with considerable effort!) BUT my partner would KILL me if I installed it at her house! She likes the Hue lights in her bedroom and loves the video doorbell/external security cameras I installed but if it gets more complicated than that.........😂 We're a "LAST" couple (Live Apart Stay Together) so lord knows what'll happen if we ever decide to cohabitate!!! Good work Shane on an honest and valid analysis of where Home Assistant lives in the smart home world. 👍👍
I can install home assistant on my unraid server so that's covered. My ATV's work as thread routers so would I need another thread router just for home assistant? I don't have any zigbee devices. I'm 100% in on homekit.
Would love to see examples of real world automations that can be done in HA but not in Apple Home directly. Would also love to know if HA supports Ring Doorbells with HKSV. I currently use Scrypted for this purpose. (I would really rather not be running both)
I wonder (given the raspberry Pi compute module 5 announcement just a few days ago) whether the standard kit wasn’t available as they were trying to use up their CM4 stock to switch to CM5 when it’s available?
Shane I'm looking forward to you setting up HA for a security system - including door sensors. Thanks for the review. I'm a new HA user and it is a bit overwhelming what HA can do.
I started to build out but saw there wasn't support for my Genie garage door without adding a 3rd party controller. With that being my most used device I quickly jumped out the rabbit hole. Wanted to test it out though.
i would start with home assistance but from the beginning their Home Assistant Yellow Standard is not available. so troubles starts from them. but thanks for your reviews
ONE OF US Definitely agree with your assessments. HA is definitely a bit of a power tool for sure, but it's been getting so much better over the time I've been using it (a few years now I think). Very curious to see what the future of the platform will be in time! Personally, HA's my backend for the smart home and where all of my automations live, but I do use the Home app as my typical frontend since it integrates a bit more cleanly into iOS. It's something that I certainly appreciate about its flexibility.
I think you kind of glossed over the fact that it took you days and many, many hours to get this set up. And also How many hours of reading? And that many of your things were very hard to get integrated. I do really like the dashboards. but a lot of us just want things to. run automatically and don't. use dashboards much
It’s because everyone is so sick of Alexa trying to sell them something. These days Alexa is super invasive. I can’t wait to get rid of it forever. Trying to figure it out myself now.
I have Alexa and Siri competing for my home domination. Would this help to combine them both so I can use one voice assistant to operate everything? I also hate the need for so many apps to setup different devices. Would this take care of that too?
Not only will you be able to control both the Homepod and Alexa with Home Assistant, but you will also be able to expose whatever devices you want to either one. If you want light A in Homekit but not in Alexa, you have the choice to do so. There will be no need for extra apps on your phone unless you are adding a new device. Like me, for instance, I don't have the Alexa app on my phone because I can control Alexa through Home Assistant. I have a few routines that can be triggered by the Home Assistant without using any voice commands or having any smart devices to use as triggers in my routines. I can use whatever I want to trigger the routines I have in Alexa without the need of the app. This comes in handy for the devices that Home Assistant doesn't have an integration for yet. I'm not sure you can do this with Homekit as I'm not a Homekit user myself. You can do something similar like this with Google. You will get a great experience either way once you get past the learning curve of figuring out everything Home Assistant has to offer, and I mean it is a lot. I have been using them for 3 years, and I have barely scratched the surface and unleashed the full potential of Home Assistant yet, and I am still learning new things damn near every week. Home Assistant will bring out the hobbyist in you, have you tinkering with everything to make it smart that you didn't even know you could make smart.
Fyi you do not need a Bluetooth proxy to integrate Bluetooth devices with home assistant. I'm using a cheap Bluetooth daniel from Amazon that just plugs into USB A and the built-in home assistant Bluetooth integration. I eventually did start using Bluetooth proxies to extend the range of my Bluetooth network. But if the Bluetooth device is close by your ha box then it should be fine.
Thanks Shane. I like yourself have played with home assistant but I also like things just to work and keep things simple for me and my family, without having to spend my whole life working out how to get something working. I still have my home assistant running but have not used it in anger at all. I still fall back to HomeKit 😂
I agree with you Shane but i want the setup where Homekit/Apple stuff is my front end, and Home Assistant is the backend brains. I dont think you even touched on the HA community is getting into LLM , so that will be an option in the future and that will be critical for us yo have that choice because you know for sure we wil be facing premium subscriptions to that capability with alexa, Gemini and siri.
I’m interested. I’ve wanted to get into HA for one specific integration but was hard to get motivated just for that. I wasn’t interested in completely switching over but I have a feeling that once I got into it then I’d end up running with it. I’m curious to watch this video.
Home assistant can be a pain, but a small pc running HAOS is a complete game changer - I assume HA Green/Yellow is an even better experience For me it’s been set and forget for the most part for a while now. It’s come a long way You also drew the short straw with Govee btw. There is an integration that just requires an API key, and kicks all your lights into Home Assistant directly (not using MQTT) Though it kinda highlights the issue of a range of experiences dependant on which information you come across when searching for third party features
I also like having Apple Home as the main area, running everything important as I know there is redundancy built in if one hub goes offline. Then running home assistant for the extra stuff and “nice to haves”
Ok, so I just bought (as in yesterday) a Homey Pro. My life is insanely busy with two adolescents in organized sports, martial arts, and more, and actively growing my company that takes up nearly every waking moment. I’m guessing that sticking with Homey Pro for now is a recommended path from someone who has now used both?
I'm a big fan of Homey Pro as well. In my last live stream, I discussed the pros and cons of Homey vs. HA from my personal experience. Check out the replay here: ruclips.net/user/live5e6N-S438EU I think the learning curve is much easier with Homey Pro, but currently you are more likely to run into device compatibility limitations with Homey. That said, there were many times that I found myself missing Homey Pro's advanced Flows (automation UI) while I was loosing sleep working on automations in Home Assistant.
@@ShaneCreatesFrom my understanding, using Node-RED as a supplement/replacement for HA automations is a very similar experience to Homey Flows. Might be worth looking into. I haven't used it all too seriously myself but I've heard very good things about it.
Nice Shane! I switched from Apple Homekit to Home Assistant about a year ago and love it. But it is not without flaw as is the case for any platform. I knew if I continued to support your channel you would come around 🤣. Seriously though, feel free to reach out if you have any quick questions and I will help with what I can or refer you to one of the many experts I may be aware of.
Wait until you figure out how to get your GMC App data into HA and have it send you notifications when your tires are low or your fuel % is below a threshold.
Adopted home assistant when it first came out where you only could use the hue light system & wemo.My main system was domotiz at that time now i am fully HA.
Funnily enough, Thread devices fail to pair over HomeKit with my HomePod Mini. Three different devices with three different brands. I’ve returned two, gave one to my friend who uses Home Assistant and it paired and worked immediately.
It very well could be a thread or an IP issue. For example, my Home Assistant instance is using the Apple Thread network, so that must be stable. I hear lots of folks that need to make adjustments on to their network to get Matter and/or Thread devices paired. iPv6 is required.
@ Yeah I have absolutely no idea. I’m at a loss. My router does support iPv6. It’s currently turned off. Though I have enabled it before. My friend who has Home Assistant actually doesn’t have his enabled either yet it works fine. Apple has no clue, Eve had no clue, Arre had no clue. It just doesn’t work for me unfortunately.
@@ShaneCreatescame to comment on this thread stuff. I use HA (on an old HA blue) as my main system, but rely on an Apple thread network (with an apple TV as a border router) without any thread radio for HA. It works well. Enjoyed the video.
at what point is it when one should get an Aqura hub? i have several cameras, door bell, door and light sensors and it seems as of late, once i added a couple more cameras to replace some older Wyze ones, things have been bouncing offline more frequently.
HA (Home Assistant) is for those whole like to work to get their stuff to work. It's too much of a HA (headache) for most people. So far the easiest plug and play option is Homey Pro. Home Assistant is more like Linux PC/Android Phone, extremely customizable (limited to your imagination and understanding) but can be a huge learning curve. Homey Pro is more like Windows PC/Apple Phone, extremely simple and just works. Aka plug-and-play (almost).
i've integrated homebridge with lot of devices until now. How i can run home assistant side by side without needed to migrate the ones that already added to homebridge but still can access those devices from home assistant? It is painful to recreate the automation again lol
If I understand it correctly, Homebridge should show up as a HomeKit Controller, which you can then add into Home Assistant. That should Just Work™ as expected.
That depends entirely on what network tech you land on. HA is just a central controller, in order to do anything it needs a radio (usually an USB dongle with either Zigbee or Z-Wave protocols) and then devices to match that. You can of course use both. Z-Wave is the best bet for needing longer distances. Both those protocols are so called mesh protocols, meaning any mains-connected units in the network act as routers and pass signals along. So your house becomes a spiderweb of connections. As long as you have enough mains powered smart sockets, light switches and whatnot between you and the furthest corner of your house, you can reach. Zigbee is only 10 meter range, Z-wave is up to 1.6 kilometers in the latest standard... but that's line of sight and theoretical. But 50-100 meters should be fine. And again, with enough devices every 5-10 meters apart you can deal with a large area.
If you use home assistant do you need all those hubs that’s required, I’m just starting out with smart stuff and don’t want to waste money on hubs if it’s not needed
It may depend. Something like Lutron Caseta would still require the Caseta bridge because they use a proprietary wireless protocol to communicate with their devices. On the other hand, you could potentially eliminate the need for other hubs like Aqara and Switchbot and connect their child accessories directly to Home Assistant since they use zigbee or bluetooth.
7:00 The reason is that it is very hard to get your hands in large quantities of Raspberry Pi 4, ever since that things around 2019, 2020, 2021 that had us spending a lot of time at home. Home Assistant found dozens and dozens of devices for me, it was almost scary. My NAS, Plex server, TVs (all of them, even though they're different brands), smart outlets, my printer, every Roku, I think Chromecast, every For TV, motion sensors, my lock, my cameras, phones (with SO MANY METRICS). I got Zigbee a few months later. Good to know about the Bluetooth. I've never touched YAML (the code) HACS is sweet. Home Assistant is WAY more versatile that Apple HomeKit, but I use both. Home Assistant started as a way to use non-supported devices in HomeKit for me and now I use it more I only run into issues when I try to do advanced things. People should have basic knowledge of how things around them work. I HATE drywall, but I've put up drywall. Morning happens in my house that I don't have a baseline understanding of
The reason is the compute module 4 have a very very bad delivery cycle, due to being popular. And also now there is compute module5. And the price of the 4 is up and down like a vegas lap dance girls underwear, so for a 3rd party to secure quantity and have as part of a solution makes the price very tuff to keep the margin.
Proud to be in that intro 🤣
only 4 likes?!?! also hi
Thanks for the shout-out!
Good to see Home Assistant through a new set of eyes... I think you're definitely on track with your conclusions, and I'm glad to see larger creators getting into it!
Thanks Aaron! I appreciate your support as I began this journey. Channels like yours are invaluable to the rest of us trying to figure out this crazy world of Home Assistant!
Home Assistant is the only system that is making actual real world progress in connecting all of the various different manufactures and it offers super flexible options which are not available from the big names.
Agree, but it's not an easy button. Barrier to entry is still high. Getting better, but still a long way to go.
This OP's comment 100%
@@rogerhuston8287 I was also happily impressed at how many devices it just detected and setup, it still takes a bit of learning and its not for the guy who simply wants to tell Alexa to turn on his ceiling fan or whatever but its easy enough to be useful for a lot of people now.
I agree that Home Assistant is the "well, if I have to" option. The video explained it clearly. It's not for everyone.
@@sirobin171 💯 Home Assistant is what big tech should have done and what matter keeps threatening todo
I was 100% homekit before. Then added homebridge for unsupported devices. Then added Home assistant. Now everything I add is Home assistant first then I send it to homekit with bridge features. I also sent all my automations in HA. Homekit is now just a simple dashboard for our phones.
I’ve been on a journey doing the same! I now use HomeKit as the family-friendly dashboard, and leave the complicated stuff to Home Assistant.
@@babu981 lol I do the same now too
Home assistant came with quite a big learning curve, but once I wrapped my head around automations and scripts my home actually feels smart. The same button press doing different things based on time of day, if guests are over, on who’s at home, whether power is cheaper or expensive and so much more. For many automations I have completely left buttons out of it. Things just happen on their own based on conditions and you don’t need to do anything. So flexible and infinitely customisable.
Dying at the Paul Hibbert clip. 🤣Classic.
Finally, you becoming one of us ❤
I think the way you are using home assistant is great. Home assistant provides a very stable and flexible backbone for anyone who is interested in home automation, regardless of how in depth you want to go. It definitely takes some time to get it up and running (setting up integrations, remote access, voice assistants, and automations), but once it's established, it just chugs along in the background without any intervention in my experience. I've set it up in multiple family member's houses without problems for multiple years now.
Welcome to the rabbit hole.
LOL! That Paul Hibbert is one crazy lad! 😂 I love him
Welcome to the community! I use HA the same as you as backend and HK as frontend for the family. Works like a charm!!
Long awaited video 😂. Love that it’s not in depth and gives people an overall perspective. Being able to integrate non native devices was main reason to get into HA.
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching!
Also, the Home Assistant support community ROCKS!!
Your life will never be the same again.
Hmmm, bit of an ambiguous message. . . . . .
I agree. After using home assistant my virginity grew back. Never knew that could happen.🤔
@@TenshiR 😂 I head Paul's voice in my head saying the same thing while I was up at 3am working on my Home Assistant configuration. 😅
@@ShaneCreates 🤣🤣🤣🥲
Yeah you won’t get sleep trying to figure why your automation doesn’t work or you just thought of something else you can automate 😂
Hey Shane, as always a great video. For years, I’ve considered home assistant, but have never taken the plunge. Watching this video it seems like a fun new way how to run your home and now that I’m working from home. This is something that I definitely would love to try. One positive thing that I really enjoyed about the video was that we can use it at the back end without interrupting HomeKit. And since my wife now loves HomeKit. Happy wife happy wife, happy home.
Super stoked to see they have made Home Assistant easier to get up and running. I have to admit, I wish they still sold the all-in-one plug and play Home Assistant Yellow. Getting ready to buy a Mac Mini at the first of the year, which would allow me to take advantage of Home Assistant. Only thing, I need to ensure I have a UPS system for all controller devices so that during a power loss when it comes back on, everything is not powering on at those odd times of the early morning hours.
I’ve been tinkering with HA for a while now and it has been terrifying me (not really!) but now I’m diving in full head first and making the switch, it’s time to get my place actually smart… thanks again for everything you do and I hate you already for pushing me further down the rabbit hole!!! hahah I love you man!
haha sorry not sorry! I was pushed down this rabbit hole so I might as well bring you with me! 🤣
I appreciate the support!
It is a time sink, but I love it! If you have Matter devices, put them in Home Assistant and then share them to HomeKit. Make sure to get a Raspberry Pi 5, and use an NVME Ssd internally to run it in the Yellow. That makes it way faster.
Also back up to a network resource such as a NAS. You can automate it.
I have a love hate relationship with HA. I love all the insane things I can do with it, but I hate that trying to make those insane things work takes hours, days, weeks....and then it usually breaks shortly after lol. You're spot on with your first impressions of it.
I made the same “switch” earlier in the year after hitting a total limit of automations in Apple Home so I literally could not do any more with it. But it’s the best thing to happen in my smart home! I can do SO much more now! And I still use Apple Home in conjunction for its easy interface and to keep my HomePods relevant. I’m currently working on a video myself explaining how I like using both together 😊
And if you get into building your own WLED strips in future, be sure to let me know and I’ll send you some controllers my Dad and I designed which make it SUPER easy to get started with.
Never clicked on a video so fast*
😆 thanks for watching brother!
NO WAY I was thinking the same thing
Simp
The CM5 just landed, it should be a drop in replacement for CM4, and deliver a 2 to 3x speedup. If you find you need more performance, that's a decent option. It might need a bit more cooling, that's the only thing.
Welcome to the Rabbit-hole, would love to see a update video in 1 year to see how deep you have gone.
“Time suck” is the perfect way to describe HA.
I had it several years back and slowly transitioned everything to native apple home. I then switched to HomeBridge for the few devices I have left that are not native apple home compatible after my HA setup updated and cratered itself. I didn’t have it in me to start over. I only have a few things left running on HomeBridge now that thread is becoming more prevalent.
Great vid Shane!
You have a gift on being able to explain the smart home world for the rest of us, and now, making your Home Assistant experience easier for us to understand. This video was a huge help.
Maybe you can compare Home Assistant to Homey Pro at some point down the road.
Homey Pro is powerful and more user friendly, but I think it’s too limited on common US smart home devices at this point.
I’m thinking by end of 2025 both systems will develop to a point of a meaningful comparison.
I agree with a lot of the RUclips content creators like you who prefer to use HomeKit as their Front-end UI. Home Assistant is a perfect option for the back-end like you suggested in case more advanced automations are needed. This beauty of HA is that it’s open source, private and free.
Your online presence is helping a lot of us…
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the kind words! 🙏
We actually discussed my thoughts on Homey Pro vs. Home Assistant at length in a recent live stream. I think you are right on your assessment regarding compatibility. You can watch the replay of the stream here (look for chapters to skip to that particular conversation): ruclips.net/user/live5e6N-S438EU
Nice video, Shane. I'm also dipping my toes into Home Assistant. There are definitely more enjoyable hobbies worth exploring.
Man $150 for the yellow and the $60 for the pie!!!! I knew I should’ve gotten into HA years ago. Great video Shane!!!
I think the reason the HA yellow standard stopped being provided was because of the lack of CM4 modules and their difficulty in sourcing. However now that the CM5 module is released they may start providing this again. I just upgraded to a rp5 and it is so much faster than the rp4.
Also with the govee lights, I have the Govee Curtain Lights (H70B1) and I have not been able to get them running. Do you have a set of these and did you get them working?
I am using Homekit Bridge to enable things so I can use it in homekit as I very much prefer and I want to use my Homepods and such.
Great video as always! And on point conclusions…
I am actually starting out in the UK, installing Home Assistant for people (and even companies) that are in the grey area you spoke about. Where you like the idea but it’s just not going to become your hobby.
With all smart home tech it takes real time to build the knowledge required to setup a smart home that does what you want, without becoming an extra burden/annoyance. And that’s what I aim to specialise in, since I’ve been working for years doing just that for my family (especially with our son who was born with a disability right around the time I got really into all this stuff).
I always appreciate your videos, the time and work that goes into them, and how well you articulate your points and advice. I’ve learnt a lot from your videos, but if there’s anything you want to learn about running Home Assistant and HomeKit side by side, you’re more than welcome to hit me up too (and maybe I’ll finally hop into your discord now there’s a Home Assistant section).
I have been die hard Apple home only and just installed Home Assistant less than a week ago. Funny timing for this video!
If you use Apple shortcuts or want to use it - screw it, you have grown into HomeAssistant. You. Will. Love. It.
Great video, and I agree with your conclusion that Home Assistant isn’t for everyone, but great for people that enjoy tinkering. Glad to see you’re enjoying your HA journey! ❤
I'm also starting to look at HA. I don't want to spend nights integrating my smart home, but using HA in the back office and HomeKit in the front office does seem like a good idea. In any case, I'll be sharing my experience too. And thank you for this video, Shane.
I've been soooo happy since I migrated everything to home assistant, it's so much more stable.
Paul Hibbert, hell yeah! 🤣
Welcome to the HA club! I’ve been using HA for about 5 years after finding the automations in HK very limited. I still use HK as a front end for the family and it allows us to use Siri to trigger stuff
If you want your HA dashboards to look a bit more like Home, there's a theme called "iOS Themes - Dark Mode and Light Mode" on HACS that should make things look a bit more familiar. Might also help with the spousal acceptance factor.
I think they are not currently offering Yellow Standard because of availability of Raspberry Pis.
I make HomeKit bridges for each category (lights, climate, sensors, Alarm, ect)
I find this is the easiest for when you add new devices and entities later.
I get it for complex home automation, but I’m just not pushing the limits of homekit myself. I have lots of lights/switches, HVAC/climate control devices, locks, and cameras, and homekit just works flawlessly for me personally.
The idea of spending more time to get basically the same thing (if you’re okay with buying mainly Matter devices anyway) it’s a good value proposition for me.
When you were configuring your devices into Home Assistant, did that not also reset them in HomeKit? Because you have to put them into pairing mode which is kind of like a factory reset, right? I really hope the answer is “no” 😅
I highly recommend to buy a cheap mini PC and install HA-OS on it. You’ll have a lot more power for less money.
One thing I really would like to know, can you set this up along side a stable HomeKit network and not have it break your existing setup?
I’m making the switch with some speed bumps. Excited to see if you can overcome them with an Apple mindset.
I've also noticed a lot of videos talking about Home Assistant, and have been wondering about it, so I'm happy to see you're tackling an overview of it.
But just imagine what this video would be like if you had to avoid saying "Home Assistant" the way you have to avoid saying "Alexa". 🙂
Thanks Garance! That would have taken a lot of editing if I had to mute every time I said "Home Assistant!" 😅 Nothing worse than a RUclips video trigging your smart speakers!
Cool vid!! I use hoobs which is equivalent but adds a layer of support considering they certify certain plugins.
Glad you had Paul in the video, was waiting for it 😊 watch yours and all the other channels you showed.
I use home assistant but always watched your video as a lot of the products you feature are compatible.
Thanks for the support! Paul is awesome! And so are all the others!
@ShaneCreates Yeah I like this time of year for home automation some collaborations and challenging each other. Sometimes a video of each others favourite automation or product of the year.
@ShaneCreates Thanks for taking the time to reply aswell.
I really like my homey, I got a bridge right now which is the bare minimum when it comes to the supported devices, but I really only got reputable big brands in my smart home and they all pretty much got official support with the bridge so I don't need the homey pro yet. But I really have had no problem what so ever with homey, and with the new dashboards feature coming out soon, been testing the beta. It will be even better!
Awesome! Glad you joined the HA gang!
I use my Govee lights with the Govee mqtt add on , which give me the ability to set all my effects!
That's what I ended up going with as well. It works great!
Shane, one thing that I agree with you is running HomeKit along side with Home Assistant. One important thing is when you add Home Assistant, you could have just left the configuration of all your devices until you got more comfortable with the system. Then configure only the ones you need to work with, and leave the rest until you want too. One quick not I will make with you regarding Apple Devices with the Companion App. Sometimes the information interval between them is not always accurate. More so, for example if you are hoping that the sensor created for your phone in HA for charging status is not always accurate. In my case I setup a dummy switch in Homekit that is shared back to HA. Then I created a Shortcut on my iPhone to turn that switch off or on depending on if I placed the phone on the charger. I had created a automation that once the phone was on the charge between certain hours that it knows i am in bed and turns the lights off.
Nice! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Shane! It would be great if you could do a more detailed video on using HK as the front end and HA as the backend. No one presents Home Kit as well as you do! This video was perfect timing as I just received my HA Green this week!
Thanks for the kind words! I appreciate the suggestion. I will certainly consider this for future video topics. 😃
As I understand the yellow standard was discontinued due to issues sourcing the Raspberry PI CM4 modules following the post-covid supply chain issues. Though the benefit of the yellow kit now, is the ability to use the new RPi CM5 module instead, and get a ~>30% performance increase for the same price.
That makes sense. Thanks!
What are your thoughts of Comtroller for Homekit vs Home Assistant? Looking into options to advance automation, but have been able to manage most of my needs with Homekit compatible devices, so I'm interested in what may be good or better options
I couldn't agree more with your conclusions! I LOVE Home Assistant and my apartment is very highly automated (with considerable effort!) BUT my partner would KILL me if I installed it at her house! She likes the Hue lights in her bedroom and loves the video doorbell/external security cameras I installed but if it gets more complicated than that.........😂 We're a "LAST" couple (Live Apart Stay Together) so lord knows what'll happen if we ever decide to cohabitate!!! Good work Shane on an honest and valid analysis of where Home Assistant lives in the smart home world. 👍👍
Thank you Michael!
I can install home assistant on my unraid server so that's covered. My ATV's work as thread routers so would I need another thread router just for home assistant? I don't have any zigbee devices. I'm 100% in on homekit.
Would love to see examples of real world automations that can be done in HA but not in Apple Home directly. Would also love to know if HA supports Ring Doorbells with HKSV. I currently use Scrypted for this purpose. (I would really rather not be running both)
You should download mushroom or bubble card form hacs, so you have better looking and customizable cards
I wonder (given the raspberry Pi compute module 5 announcement just a few days ago) whether the standard kit wasn’t available as they were trying to use up their CM4 stock to switch to CM5 when it’s available?
Shane I'm looking forward to you setting up HA for a security system - including door sensors. Thanks for the review. I'm a new HA user and it is a bit overwhelming what HA can do.
I started to build out but saw there wasn't support for my Genie garage door without adding a 3rd party controller. With that being my most used device I quickly jumped out the rabbit hole. Wanted to test it out though.
i would start with home assistance but from the beginning their Home Assistant Yellow Standard is not available. so troubles starts from them. but thanks for your reviews
ONE OF US
Definitely agree with your assessments. HA is definitely a bit of a power tool for sure, but it's been getting so much better over the time I've been using it (a few years now I think). Very curious to see what the future of the platform will be in time!
Personally, HA's my backend for the smart home and where all of my automations live, but I do use the Home app as my typical frontend since it integrates a bit more cleanly into iOS. It's something that I certainly appreciate about its flexibility.
Great video on the topic…..thanks for all the good info.
Glad you like it 😊
Great timing I recently jumped from HomeBridge to Home assistant, need Shane to hold my hand again.
i use home assistant as a back end for my HomeKit, also use it for its dash boards
Sounds like you getting hooked I played with it too. It is fun. Good luck with it
Please do a video on the Govee neon rope lights. No matter what I do, they REFUSE to connect to Homekit.
I think you kind of glossed over the fact that it took you days and many, many hours to get this set up.
And also How many hours of reading? And that many of your things were very hard to get integrated.
I do really like the dashboards. but a lot of us just want things to. run automatically and don't. use dashboards much
It’s because everyone is so sick of Alexa trying to sell them something. These days Alexa is super invasive. I can’t wait to get rid of it forever.
Trying to figure it out myself now.
I have Alexa and Siri competing for my home domination. Would this help to combine them both so I can use one voice assistant to operate everything? I also hate the need for so many apps to setup different devices. Would this take care of that too?
Depending maybe on what you have, but yes.
Not only will you be able to control both the Homepod and Alexa with Home Assistant, but you will also be able to expose whatever devices you want to either one. If you want light A in Homekit but not in Alexa, you have the choice to do so.
There will be no need for extra apps on your phone unless you are adding a new device. Like me, for instance, I don't have the Alexa app on my phone because I can control Alexa through Home Assistant. I have a few routines that can be triggered by the Home Assistant without using any voice commands or having any smart devices to use as triggers in my routines. I can use whatever I want to trigger the routines I have in Alexa without the need of the app.
This comes in handy for the devices that Home Assistant doesn't have an integration for yet. I'm not sure you can do this with Homekit as I'm not a Homekit user myself. You can do something similar like this with Google.
You will get a great experience either way once you get past the learning curve of figuring out everything Home Assistant has to offer, and I mean it is a lot. I have been using them for 3 years, and I have barely scratched the surface and unleashed the full potential of Home Assistant yet, and I am still learning new things damn near every week. Home Assistant will bring out the hobbyist in you, have you tinkering with everything to make it smart that you didn't even know you could make smart.
Fyi you do not need a Bluetooth proxy to integrate Bluetooth devices with home assistant. I'm using a cheap Bluetooth daniel from Amazon that just plugs into USB A and the built-in home assistant Bluetooth integration. I eventually did start using Bluetooth proxies to extend the range of my Bluetooth network. But if the Bluetooth device is close by your ha box then it should be fine.
Thanks Shane. I like yourself have played with home assistant but I also like things just to work and keep things simple for me and my family, without having to spend my whole life working out how to get something working.
I still have my home assistant running but have not used it in anger at all.
I still fall back to HomeKit 😂
I agree with you Shane but i want the setup where Homekit/Apple stuff is my front end, and Home Assistant is the backend brains. I dont think you even touched on the HA community is getting into LLM , so that will be an option in the future and that will be critical for us yo have that choice because you know for sure we wil be facing premium subscriptions to that capability with alexa, Gemini and siri.
Why you didnt use the homekit bridge to import all to homekit instantly?
I’m interested. I’ve wanted to get into HA for one specific integration but was hard to get motivated just for that. I wasn’t interested in completely switching over but I have a feeling that once I got into it then I’d end up running with it. I’m curious to watch this video.
Home assistant can be a pain, but a small pc running HAOS is a complete game changer - I assume HA Green/Yellow is an even better experience
For me it’s been set and forget for the most part for a while now. It’s come a long way
You also drew the short straw with Govee btw.
There is an integration that just requires an API key, and kicks all your lights into Home Assistant directly (not using MQTT)
Though it kinda highlights the issue of a range of experiences dependant on which information you come across when searching for third party features
I also like having Apple Home as the main area, running everything important as I know there is redundancy built in if one hub goes offline.
Then running home assistant for the extra stuff and “nice to haves”
Ok, so I just bought (as in yesterday) a Homey Pro. My life is insanely busy with two adolescents in organized sports, martial arts, and more, and actively growing my company that takes up nearly every waking moment. I’m guessing that sticking with Homey Pro for now is a recommended path from someone who has now used both?
I'm a big fan of Homey Pro as well. In my last live stream, I discussed the pros and cons of Homey vs. HA from my personal experience. Check out the replay here: ruclips.net/user/live5e6N-S438EU
I think the learning curve is much easier with Homey Pro, but currently you are more likely to run into device compatibility limitations with Homey. That said, there were many times that I found myself missing Homey Pro's advanced Flows (automation UI) while I was loosing sleep working on automations in Home Assistant.
@ Perfect. This is more than what I needed. Always appreciate the abundance of information and your depth of experience in our questions, Shane.
@@ShaneCreatesFrom my understanding, using Node-RED as a supplement/replacement for HA automations is a very similar experience to Homey Flows. Might be worth looking into. I haven't used it all too seriously myself but I've heard very good things about it.
The hexagon lights. Are they jsk-p22 or Nanoleaf lines?
Nice Shane! I switched from Apple Homekit to Home Assistant about a year ago and love it. But it is not without flaw as is the case for any platform. I knew if I continued to support your channel you would come around 🤣. Seriously though, feel free to reach out if you have any quick questions and I will help with what I can or refer you to one of the many experts I may be aware of.
I have a smart ceiling fan by Carro….doubt I could get that in Home Assistant?
Home Assistant is genuinely one of the best things I have ever set up. So much more powerful than HomeKit, which is already quite powerful.
Wait until you figure out how to get your GMC App data into HA and have it send you notifications when your tires are low or your fuel % is below a threshold.
Adopted home assistant when it first came out where you only could use the hue light system & wemo.My main system was domotiz at that time now i am fully HA.
Funnily enough, Thread devices fail to pair over HomeKit with my HomePod Mini. Three different devices with three different brands. I’ve returned two, gave one to my friend who uses Home Assistant and it paired and worked immediately.
It very well could be a thread or an IP issue. For example, my Home Assistant instance is using the Apple Thread network, so that must be stable. I hear lots of folks that need to make adjustments on to their network to get Matter and/or Thread devices paired. iPv6 is required.
@ Yeah I have absolutely no idea. I’m at a loss. My router does support iPv6. It’s currently turned off. Though I have enabled it before. My friend who has Home Assistant actually doesn’t have his enabled either yet it works fine. Apple has no clue, Eve had no clue, Arre had no clue. It just doesn’t work for me unfortunately.
@@ShaneCreatescame to comment on this thread stuff. I use HA (on an old HA blue) as my main system, but rely on an Apple thread network (with an apple TV as a border router) without any thread radio for HA. It works well.
Enjoyed the video.
you really let that paul hibbert clip play out lmao
at what point is it when one should get an Aqura hub? i have several cameras, door bell, door and light sensors and it seems as of late, once i added a couple more cameras to replace some older Wyze ones, things have been bouncing offline more frequently.
HA (Home Assistant) is for those whole like to work to get their stuff to work. It's too much of a HA (headache) for most people. So far the easiest plug and play option is Homey Pro.
Home Assistant is more like Linux PC/Android Phone, extremely customizable (limited to your imagination and understanding) but can be a huge learning curve.
Homey Pro is more like Windows PC/Apple Phone, extremely simple and just works. Aka plug-and-play (almost).
I used Reeds idea with conditional cards and ESP.... Massive!!!!
That's awesome! Really impressive stuff there.
i've integrated homebridge with lot of devices until now. How i can run home assistant side by side without needed to migrate the ones that already added to homebridge but still can access those devices from home assistant? It is painful to recreate the automation again lol
If I understand it correctly, Homebridge should show up as a HomeKit Controller, which you can then add into Home Assistant. That should Just Work™ as expected.
Mix Home Assistant + Apple Homekit is the way to go.
oh my. I'm excited to watch this one!
If I purchase one unit of the yellow, and have a multi level home… would the devices connect through multiple floors?
That depends entirely on what network tech you land on. HA is just a central controller, in order to do anything it needs a radio (usually an USB dongle with either Zigbee or Z-Wave protocols) and then devices to match that. You can of course use both. Z-Wave is the best bet for needing longer distances. Both those protocols are so called mesh protocols, meaning any mains-connected units in the network act as routers and pass signals along. So your house becomes a spiderweb of connections. As long as you have enough mains powered smart sockets, light switches and whatnot between you and the furthest corner of your house, you can reach. Zigbee is only 10 meter range, Z-wave is up to 1.6 kilometers in the latest standard... but that's line of sight and theoretical. But 50-100 meters should be fine. And again, with enough devices every 5-10 meters apart you can deal with a large area.
If you use home assistant do you need all those hubs that’s required, I’m just starting out with smart stuff and don’t want to waste money on hubs if it’s not needed
It may depend. Something like Lutron Caseta would still require the Caseta bridge because they use a proprietary wireless protocol to communicate with their devices. On the other hand, you could potentially eliminate the need for other hubs like Aqara and Switchbot and connect their child accessories directly to Home Assistant since they use zigbee or bluetooth.
7:00 The reason is that it is very hard to get your hands in large quantities of Raspberry Pi 4, ever since that things around 2019, 2020, 2021 that had us spending a lot of time at home.
Home Assistant found dozens and dozens of devices for me, it was almost scary. My NAS, Plex server, TVs (all of them, even though they're different brands), smart outlets, my printer, every Roku, I think Chromecast, every For TV, motion sensors, my lock, my cameras, phones (with SO MANY METRICS).
I got Zigbee a few months later. Good to know about the Bluetooth.
I've never touched YAML (the code)
HACS is sweet.
Home Assistant is WAY more versatile that Apple HomeKit, but I use both. Home Assistant started as a way to use non-supported devices in HomeKit for me and now I use it more
I only run into issues when I try to do advanced things. People should have basic knowledge of how things around them work. I HATE drywall, but I've put up drywall. Morning happens in my house that I don't have a baseline understanding of
Home Assistant is a great “assistant” for HomeKit.
With that you mean, base operation through HomeKit but all the automations with HA?
The reason is the compute module 4 have a very very bad delivery cycle, due to being popular. And also now there is compute module5. And the price of the 4 is up and down like a vegas lap dance girls underwear, so for a 3rd party to secure quantity and have as part of a solution makes the price very tuff to keep the margin.
Could I run Home Assistant on my Windows PC Plex Server?