with big steps, the end of 2023 is comming near - and there’s only one major release left in HomeAssistant and “the year of the voice”.
And - I am just in the mood to write down a throwback - on how I started with the whole “home-automation” stuff, finally - ending up with HomeAssistant as THE component around our home - and maybe having a small look into the future, what might come…
First, I have to admit, that - while I really like stuff like automated lights and so on - I haven’t yet implemented much of such features and gimmicks yet… mostly, because I don’t have many ideas on how to setup ‘reliable’ automations that would add a real benefit to our living - and I don’t like all those fance “ambient light” stuff (or haven’t considered it as “must have” yet).
Anyway…
I don’t really know, when I first had a look into HomeAssistant itself, but the first look into this project might be somewhere around 2012 or 2013 when my “automation” experience started - and since HomeAssistant had its Birthday Release in September 2022 this sounds reasonable.
So, an “automated Home”, was a dream for many years, but - back then, the only way for realizing such a thing was a built in Bus-System like KNX - which was impossible for us.
A market, with millions of devices like we have it today did not exist.
In 2008 or 2009 I got two pet snakes and as long as they were still small juveniles, they lived in a terrarium, that was operated completely manually.
But after some years, they had to move into a bigger terrarium - and for this, I was thinking about about a fully automated controll unit, that should switch on / off the lights, the heating and so on.
While researching on how to realize this, I stepped over a german startup, called tinkerforge.
They sold small sensors and actors, called “bricks” and “bricklets” which you could combine just as your project required it.
This company provided bindings / libraries for nearly every programming language, and so you were able to write your controll software in nearly every language you wanted.
This was the first thing with which I tried to realize the crontroll of my terrarium control, but it was a project, I never got finished.
I don’t really remember the correct order - maybe, I’ve started earlier with the project of controlling the Terrariums, because I found some images, which were taken in 2011 where I built the new terrariums - and I think, around that time, I implemented the automation with a Siemens Logo (Version 6) - so there was no way for network communication and so on, and I guess, it was then around 2013 when I first heard about a piece of Software called “Home Assistant”…
So back then, I think I installed this software for testing it on my computer - but soon I realized, that it was not what I was looking for - and I was not able to do anything with it… it was complicated, and so I just forgot about this project for another couple of years… many years…
in 2015 I moved … I started to live with my girlfried in our own appartment, and while I was always thinking that this would be the perfect start to build up a “smart home”, I was not lucky with the available devices back then.
Battery powered, all within their own eco-system, and so another couple of years passed by, until I really forced me to start with the Project of HomeAutomation.
A friend of mine already started with some smart home stuff - and I decided to go with the same brand - Called Homematic IP.
I started with some smoke detectors, and some Thermostats and Window-Sensors… It was pretty simple, all components were part of their own ecosystem and worked with one app - so there was no need for another software to controll everything, but I already had a Synology NAS running and started to play around with additional Software.
Was HomeAssistant part of this? I don’t remember… it COULD be, but even if it was, the installation wasn’t stable and therefore, I barely used it.
But 2018 was also the year, where many things have changed with my network setup.
We were building new terrariums for our snakes, and I wanted to redo the controllers - I upgraded them to a network connected Siemens Logo (v8) and I replaced the Synology NAS with a small home Server running proxmox.
Besides my Media Library, a VM with HomeAssistant was planned to be used - but it was still mainly for testing purpose and playing around with it…
Still - there wasn’t a benefit from having it, I still had “only” some Homematic IP components running.
And this was the state until end of 2020…
During the pandemic, we started with the plans to get Solar Power - and I noticed, that there was an integration for the Solar Components that we should get…
WOW Cool - now, HomeAssistant could become a more important part of my setup And in April 2021, the installation was finnaly done - and I could connect HomeAssistant to my Solar.
But… besides that, there was still not much to do… but, over all - 2021 became the year, where HomeAssistant really started to develop itself into the direction that it should soon become more and more important to me.
In August, the Energy Dashboard was introduced, and I discovered the Modbus integration for my SolarEdge installation.
In addition to that, I played around with NodeRed and was able to collect the data from my new Terrarium Controler
Soon, more and more components were added - and with the end of 2021, HA was one of the important parts for me in terms of “energy management”.
2022 - was again a year, where many things were added…
The energy dashboard was now stable (ok, the SolarEdge Modbus integration) and in mid 2022 my EV and the Charging-Station came… everything was working with HomeAssistant and, I finally started to implement our Alexa Devices to work with HomeAssistant… ok, first - I replaced the old Echo device with some newer once 
This was done End of 2022 - and with the beginning of 2023 - the “year of the voice” started… now, I am sitting here, with a couple of ESPs on my desk, replacing some of the cheap electronics of our Christmas-Decoration with customized ESP controlled lights, have replaced the NodeRed implementation for the Siemens LOGO with a direct Modbus Communication, running a ModbusProxy to connect mymy SolarEdge Inverter with my EV Charger AND HomeAssistant - have multiple Smartplugs spread all over the house, using Zigbee, Homematic, and whatelse on my homeserver and playing around with the new Espressiv ESP32-S3-Box3 and local voice assist…
I am curious, what the Team around NabuCasa has planned for 2024 - I still have plans for the next two or three years replacing our heating from oil to a heatpump, and MAYBE replacing our Water-Clocks and more to include all those components into homeAssistant too … and I guess, despite of having the money for all of this, these are projects for the next couple of years…
So - sorry for the long story … I guess, many of you have similar stories and therefore consider my storry as “boring”… but for me the most interesting fact is, how fast the things developed in the past two / three years for something, I “wanted” the past 10 years.
And also, what’s interesting to me:
HA came always with the right focus on a topic / feature at the time, when I started to use or needed it