Do I need to be a developer to use Home Assist

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I am currently using SmartThings to do some automation in my house but I am finding can’t work with some of the devices I want to use such as MYQ garage door and Foscam cameras. It looks like Home Assist works with both. The question that I have is that do need to have some software developer skills and use Python to configure Home Assist. I am an IT person but I am not a software developer.

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No, you do not need to be a developer

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I am not an IT professional period. You don’t need Python but you do need to use yaml. The automations can be done with a GUI or writing yaml directly. yaml is a steep learning curve but the forum will help you. You have all the skills you need to be successful. I use MyQ and had foscam camera. Both work. I also use shelly, z-wave, rainmachine, ecobee, pihole, squeezebox, unifi and NOAA Weather and Aurora. There are so many integrations and the software is getting better every day. Look into nabu casa for access away from home. - one way to give back. Welcome to the community!

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You don’t even need to use YAML all that much if you automate using Node-RED.

Btw. it’s called “Home Assistant” not “Home Assist”:

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I’d be wary about MyQ in general. Historically MyQ has not played nice with HA. It’s apparent that MyQ does not want people using its hardware outside it’s intended environment, which is not open source home automation.

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Thanks for the feedback. You said you had Foscam cameras… Are you using different cameras now. The reason I was looking at Foscam cameras is that they have POE cameras(no battery) and they support using an SD Card to store videos(no Cloud Storage cost). It also looks like they have good Motion recognition that they can recognize people versus leaves blowing. What I would like to do is have the Foscam cameras send an alert to Home Assistant and then turn on specific lights based on which camera is getting the alert. Will this be hard to do in Home Assistant?

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Agree. The MyQ cloud setup frequently breaks itself from time to time, to a point where you might not get it to work reliably even if you are inside its intended environment, using the official MyQ app.

And none of the above has anything to do with HA.

But yeah, @PC_Marker, this is a good place to start if you want to get all kinds of different things to talk to each other.
No need for any coding, python or otherwise, for me over last 4 years - GUI is good enough, and in rare cases you issue commands or put together config strings, which is probably what you have been doing as an IT person anyways.

You could search for other threads in this forum about the experiences from people who converted from SmartThings (or Hubitat) to HA.

Regarding cameras, maybe lookup the youtube channel “The Hook Up” and look for videos about cameras. I recall he has a video on options from basic battery models all the way to roll-yourself-no-internet local AI detection setup.

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@PC_Marker I am switching to Unifi Protect as I have Ubiquity infrastructure. My experience with MyQ has been fine. I only have garage door openers and I don’t demand much from them. I can open and close the door from home assistant (running fine for 2-3 years) and it shows status of the door.

Foscam cameras send an alert to Home Assistant and then turn on specific lights based on which camera is getting the alert. Will this be hard to do in Home Assistant?

This should be relatively easy.