TLDR: Feeling a bit lost in gathering information to plan my project, outlining my needs and hoping for help or insight whether HA is right for me or I should just stick with SL.
I want to start my journey into home automation but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the info and terminology that is out there. It is suggested that Home Assistant is installed on separate hardware. For this, I am thinking of buying the following setup but don’t know if it is enough?
Fujitsu Esprimo Q920
USFF Intel Core i5
memory size: 16 GB
SSD hard drive capacity: 1 TB
operating system: Windows 11 Pro
WLAN: WLAN per USB-Adapter
I am not very tech savvy and don’t really know much about virtual machines and coding etc… is Home Assistant still a good choice for me?
I want to learn but it is a steep learning curve and every little helps.
Don’t know what motion detectors to get, what security cameras, what lights, what switches. I have a pretty good idea of what I want and how I want it but trying to research, I get very confused with all the information.
I am fairly certain that I like and am familiar with Alexa and I see a lot of products that are compatible with that. I know I want pet immune motion detection and door sensors to automate my lights via schedules, I want to have a temperature sensor so that in the winter the heating panel and fireplace would come on automatically if temperature gets below x and the fan comes on if it gets above x. a nice room specific dashboard from which I can play my music when taking a bath or a shower or am in the bathroom, for example. A nice dashboard/alarm clock next to my bed to be able to check everything before going to bed. (examples).
Also, I want to create a nice looking main room dashboard that shows the videofeed of my over the door camera (maybe it notifies when notion is detected), maybe an access log from the smart lock (to see when the cleaner made it to work) and automated lights when I move into a room, without forcing anyone in my home to only use their smartphone (working light switches, complemented by maybe scene switches and dimmers??)
Do I build on alexa and integrate in Home Assistant? I feel like I am asking dumb questions and sorry for that, but I don’t know if I need to take a coding class and where to start and if home assistant is the right thing for me or not.
I would recommend doing some more reading / research on home assistant before purchasing anything. This will hopefully give you a sense of what you would need to do and the time & energy you will need to accomplish what you want to do.
If you do proceed, start small!
There are some good YouTube videos including the following (in no particular order):
And read the HA getting started documentation:
Finally, a lot of us have learned quite a bit on the HA journey. Here are some of our thoughts if we wanted to do it over again:
In a nutshell: that machine is vast overkill for just running Home Assistant. I run mine in a Raspberry Pi 4. Just use an SSD instead of an SD card for booting and running the system. That is much faster. Also, SD cards are not made for that kind of use.
In the beginning just make a virtual machine on your normal desktop and play around what HA there.
You will learn a lot and get a better idea of the way forward then.
Raspis are hard to get at the moment, but an older laptop is actually really good for HA, because it is often way more powerful and the battery will actually work as a built-in UPS.
See if har you can get and then ask here if you finds are good.
Oh yes I need a home pc anyway and thought I could combine it. Wouldn’t be for gaming but more for surfing and downloading. But so it would be ok to use that setup (as personal computer and HA hardware)?
IMO: If you are willing to put in the time and effort to learn then yes, HA is a great choice. Home Assistant is very powerful.
If not then I would suggest something like HomeSeer. HomeSeer is an extremely robust / stable windows based solution. The HomeSeer ‘ecosystem’ will cost you more in money, while Home Assistant will cost you MUCH more in time.
