sanjeewa.samaranayak
This is a great article. Very practical and if not followed either can expect a divorce or forced to get rid of all automation gear
This is a great article. Very practical and if not followed either can expect a divorce or forced to get rid of all automation gear
Very well put. It’s so easy to get sucked in to all the tackiness and show-offs on the internet these days and forget what was really the point of home automation.
I wrote a similar post in December last year: The real motivation behind Home Automation
The article does perfectly explain how home automation should be and it is really good to read that home assistant has the user and the use cases in mind and not (only) the technology.
This article was written a few years ago, but everything in it will always hold true. I’ve been using Home Assistant for about 3 years and prior to that, I was looking around and was just … well, disillusioned. Everything commercial was focused on using an app to control the home. I would just think "Where is the automation? Where is the “Smart”? " It was all just glorified remote controls to do what the existing switch does.
Being able to actually have a “brain” in the home that is capable of looking at data and responding accordingly makes more sense than a light switch on the phone, or just saying “Hey [insert voice assistant here] Turn on the light”
I must say I can very much relate to you first post and about 4 years ago I lived with those same ideals ( if you can call it like that ) when it comes with home automation. But the more I worked on this I realized this whole concept does not only applies with home automation but with every piece of technology. In my own mind I think any form of cumputing should be a slave to us, we humans should not be a slave to our technology , its here to serve us not the other way around. Therefore with any piece of hardware I buy I always think how can it serve me and my household without losing any convenience as much as possible.
This is exactly my thinking, take for instance my lights automation, with a little extra effort it becomes transparent. For instance, the lights turn on of an evening about an hour before sunset. There’s your first point sunset not time because sunset is different every day. Then when we tell google bedtime all the lights turn off. However if noone is home come 10pm my HA picks a random time between 10pm and midnight and turns the lights off. Voila, my lights function as expected when were home and when we’re away on vacation they still handle themselves, when I go away I don’t have to think about setting my home to vacation mode or anything like that. So that’s just one example of many.
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Well… FINALLY someone I see eye to eye to on these things. I tried to home-brew something along these principles and didn’t get too far - too much work for a single person hobby project. Home Assistant fits the gap.
One note tho - while Alexa is nice - I have 2 of them in my house - I am only one in the house able and willing to talk to them. Speaking English at a level that Alexa understands is not really universal - nobody else in my immediate circle does as we dont live in an english speaking country. And even language barrier aside - raising a child with speech impediment is enough to know - voice interface has it’s place - but its no replacement for physical control.
This explanation is so clear and insightful. Someone has clearly dabbled in the dark art of home automation. I have hope that my marriage will survive this journey thanks to these insights.
This platform truly answers more questions than it creates. I don’t believe that cloud based services will ever be free from the shackles of an internet connection or a fatal bug in an update.
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A very usefull explanation and so true. The reason, I never started till now to automate was the fact that there was ( and still is ) to much variation in systems making you dependent of one or more constructors and their cloud services. Living in a +25 year old house, I wasn’t willing to go changing my entire installation. So automation needs to blend in and use the installation as is. Lamps are going to remain stupid. Switches might being changed to buttons, but that is as far I wanna go with changes.
My wife’s view is also that you turn the light on and off with the available switch, not with a phone or any other funky method.
@balloob I’m wondering if your opinion/vision on this also has changed during the past years. A lot of cloud related issues could perhaps be solved and maybe some of the potential advantages are bigger than the disadvantages/risks.
I like to idea to have my whole Hassio running in the cloud instead of having the hardware like an Intel Nuc or Pi in my house. It would also make it more simple for people to start with Home Assistant as you can just sign-up, buy a gateway if needed and start automating.
You would only need one ore multiple simple (low power usage) gateway devices where you connect your Z-Wave/Zigbee/RF/BT receivers to via USB and they can send/receive the data to the cloud instance. You can even run without hardware if you have only cloud polling integrations. Plus: if you have multiple of these simple gateways then you can place them close to where you need them (e.g. with Bluetooth range from the ground floor to the attic).
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@nickrout Not asking for @balloob to change his mind on the vision but there’s a big difference between having your Home Assistant instance in the cloud and having cloud API’s like Google Nest (which I dislike and avoid).
Also there’s no need to pray for sticking to an opinion from 2016. The tech constantly changes and it can only become better if the community is discussing it. Furthermore the option to run your HA instance in the cloud can be offered next to having your own hardware.
If you prefer the cloud then accept the possible disadvantages but it also brings advantages. If your internet or the hosted solution is having downtime you can also find a solution like:
I think it’s important to distinguish between what’s practically possible vs. a philosophy.
You can totally set up HA for example running in AWS — and there are posts on this forum about this. There are also many integrations making use of Cloud services. Part of the issue with Cloud services is vendor lock-in. Perhaps if the IETF or someone can define open standards for IoT use, or all vendors use good, existing standards and protocols (e.g. MQTT) then perhaps this becomes more feasible. It also seems utterly unnecessary that (for example) a security camera stream, light or doorbell needs to make a round-trip via the Internet when I’m at home.
As for the vision of HA, I bought into what’s written here so I would like to see it remain the vision. To me it’s much more about freedom of choice: I can use Cloud services but don’t have to.
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I try to keep the cloud out as much as possible
Agree on that routing a camera stream to your cloud HA instance wouldn’t be very efficient.
Avoiding cloud service / cloud polling integrations is a totally different discussion by the way. I’m just talking about HA in the cloud.
Having HA in the cloud is a ridiculous idea. Everything would be slower. I could list all the disadvantages but there is no need.
Local is far better and I sure hope HA stays that way.
Imho HA is working towards all this (or almost all). The only thing HA really fails is rules. And in particular the creation of rules aka automations. It’s all covered from a programming perspective. But imho it should be from a business rule like perspective. And made easier to create and manage for a simple non programmer.
I think only having a phone as a remote control for lights is not optimal — opening an app or even just accessing and running a shortcut, or asking an assistant (Siri, etc.) is just so much slower. I try to keep physical switches on lights besides automatically turning them on and off. While a dashboard is nice, I think what the post is saying that it shouldn’t be the goal. Expanding your example, there is probably many ways you van automate that use case, e.g. getting a notification to tell you its getting late for the kids and an action to turn off the lights, or if there hasn’t been movement in the room. Some people even have bed sensors. Etc.
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Still there are better solutions. Get HA to notify you when the light has been on for X time in an empty room.
If you have no way of knowing whether the room is empty, you could always ask your voice assistant “kid’s room lights” to know the light’s state.
Then you can either turn it off by voice command or actionable notification.
You don’t need the app 
.
The only app I use is the HA dashboard and I really barely use it except when there’s absolutely no other way.
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I wasn’t talking about only having an app. I use voice control, presence detection, physical switches, and the phone app. They are all useful.
To me, the best place to receive actionable notifications is in the phone app. I can see my whole house status at a glance (auto-entities), and I can easily control when I want to receive notifications or ignore them.
The only form of HA control that doesn’t make sense to me is the wall display.
My wife doesn’t even notice the most things I switched to smart stuff, everything works as before. I only extend to existing functionality, never replace it by something else. We just get more lazy without her really knowing.
The only place I break this rule is my own office because I use it as a lab to test stuff before implementing it in the rest of the house.
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I have a similar set up where there are devices my family use and there are some only I use.
Example of family-uses are Z-Wave light switches that I installed in-wall (Aeotec Nano switches). These use the existing light switch to control the Z-Wave switch instead of the actual A/C circuit, and they behave the same (except the toggle state can change – but no one really notices or cares).
EDIT: and of course the Z-Wave thermostat which is easily overridden by my family (I can detect that it was changed at the device and back off automation for a period).
For my own devices, these are things like being able to remotely toggle a Raspberry Pi – my wife and kids don’t really even know they exist.
And then of course my lab also full of things I experiment with.
Excellent article!
Can I translate it to PT-BR in our Brazilian forum?
I will include a link to here on that
The licence is here
If I remember it correctly it’s being linked from the installation guide or similar. So it’s a common read text that should be fresh with the latest ideas of what a perfect home automation is, today.
It doesn’t need to be a blog post. And the link can also be changed to a new blog post etc.
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No. The original post in this thread is a blog post, from years ago. It should stay as historic. People can clearly see that based on the date it was posted. The link you are referring to in that blog post goes to an (also very old) news article.
Not sure why you are getting so bothered about an old post…
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It is dated, so you can work out when 'January‘ was.
Should we go back to newspapers from April 1912 and change the archives to clarify that the Titanic didn’t sink this month? No, of course not
A link to this blog post was definitely a part of the introduction or installation guide. I think it might be part of a “you’re done, we’re installing some things, please read this text” state. But it might also been removed since i wrote the comment.
This has been my philosophy from the start, which is why I’ve always focused on automating conveniences. If it ain’t convenient, it ain’t automated. Which is why the light on my nightstand is automated, my wife’s isn’t.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to just create an automation by saying to my system, “If it’s dark when I get home, turn on the light on the basement landing,” and have it configure a rule.
Hello all
interesting thread. I agree with @DarthBob automating for the sake of automation is expensive and useless. I am not an IT guy, I’m a pensioner with too much time an his hands and i have become extremely lazy in my old age. For me automating my coffee maker (an espresso machine) or the fridge tells me what i need to buy is of little use and value. However if this floats you boat power to you all
I also agree with @devastator that we should avoid at all means the cloud.
I’m lazy to the point i do not want to use my phone or a voice assistant like google siri or alexa (i use almond). I try to have automation start based on time of day, date, sensors or the presence of my phone connected to my router. (my next development is to install a WIFI repeater .at the beginning of my lane (30 meters) so when i arrive in range my house will turn on. Yes when all goes pear shape you will still need to use the switch
IMHO home automation should more and more drive to be intelligent home. Home assistant is great basis to start this. only issue is me and my lack of knowledge
However thanks to the HA community and youtube videos (sometime great ideas but incomplete and sometimes contradictory) i manage to continue to develop my environment.
I can only say thank you all for a great contribution to the development of this platform and your teachings
Perfect philosophy, tech should not get in the way of humans doing things, but should help human do things better.
Switching on lights through the phone is an example of the former, not of the latter: you better switch on your lights using the electromechanical switch in your house, otherwise you do not own tech, you are owned by it.
Automation should be used to do useful things, for example automatically lowering the heating (or AC) when there is nobody at home, therefore saving energy without decreasing comfort (provided you have a good way to sense the inhabitants, which is all the question).
The non-geek inhabitants of the house are your first clients. Piss them off, and you’ll see.
I’m agree with you
but I know a valid use case for being able to control lights from my phone:
I’m quadriplegic and it’s very useful to control my house from my bed! 
Best Regards
olf24
In your post, you mention fail-safe operation, but a topic i rarely hear about is ‘closed-loop’ control.
Many ‘dinky’ brand actuators and switches don’t reliably or regularly report their current state. One example is IR senders without a back channel.
…
There should be some indication if the device being queried, or reporting its present state…. e.g a light switch is ‘on’ but doesn’t show ‘on’ until the next off-on cycle.
A door is open, but the status says’closed.’ until it’s cycled by HA.
A list of certified actuators or switches would be helpful
The Force isn’t a supported protocol.
My understanding is that maintaining stable connectivity between the light side and the dark side is problematic and users must be force-sensitive.
