General understanding of Home Assistant and its concept

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Hello out there!

I’m new to the world of smart home and would like to understand in general the way that home assistant works. I tried to make a sketch of a few more or less complex examples:

simple - unidirectional task with specific integration on HA:
Task: turn lights on with a Shelly relais
a) ask the HA Companion/Alexa/… to turn on the lights in the kitchen
b) the ‘Shelly’ integration communicates with the Shelly relais which then turns on the lights

with additional hardware:
Task: turn a HUE LED on
a) ask the HA Companion/Alexa/… to turn on the HUE LED
b) Integration ‘Philips HUE’ communicates with the HUE bridge, which is in the same Wifi-network
c) HUE bridge turns on the LED
The question for me at this point: would it be possible to skip the HUE bridge as the HUE LEDs are working with the zigbee standard? Wouldn’t it be possible to directly use the zigbee integration and skip the long way over the HUE bridge (with the need of additional HW)? Is this possible or are there reasons, why there is a Philips HUE integration available as the hardware from Philips communicates over zigbee protocol?

bi-directional with additional HW (NAS):
Task: show the viedo of the doorbell and save the snippet on my NAS
a) it rings
b) the HA Companion creates a push notification on my smartphone, that someone is in front of my door
c) I open the HA Companion to see the video → communication is realized with the integration for Reolink
d) I set the automation, that after someone rang the doorbell, a 15 second video should be saved on my NAS → video is sent back over Wifi to the Reolink integration which then forwards the video material to my NAS (in my sketch, I drew it wrong as the doorbell would directly communicate with my NAS according my notes)

Is the general concept understood correctly? I guess there are at least some mistakes within my idea of how this all works and I hope that someone can explain where they are :wink:

Thanks a lot!

best, orPoG

Home Assistant understanding
Home Assistant understanding1600×1141 202 KB

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Yes. Many people (myself included) start with a Hue bridge which works out of the box and later migrate to a Zigbee integration which can be harder to set up. Some people have a Hue bridge and a Zigbee integration - two separate Zigbee networks.

I don’t use video, but this sounds broadly right.

The point is that every home is different and there are many different solutions to most problems. The point of HA is to bring smart home solutions together - there are currently nearly 3,000 integrations. How you do that is up to you. Your sketch looks pretty typical! :laughing:

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I’d make it a two-way arrow between HA and Shelly devices in your “simple” example. Not only can HA tell a Shelly device to turn on or off, it also receives information from the Shelly whenever something changes at the device - such as the user turning the light on or off manually.

The vast majority of integrations are two-way like this: HA can both sense and command the state of the associated devices.

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Thanks, that gives me a good feeling that I understood the concept right. I was just kind of confused as there are multiple ways to go (as in the HUE example).
I’m pretty sure that the HA solution will be the best of the hundreds of possible options for me to get my home to a smarter level. It’s just overwhelming how many possible systems and solutions are available out there.

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You are absolutely right! Of course, most of the devices are bi-directional as even the simplest light bulb needs to give feedback if it is online and can be addressed. I just wanted to make the sketch as simple as possible.

I’m very exited getting started with my HA project!

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It’s a good way to go, provided you don’t mind being hands on - more of a hobby than a system you can set up and forget. What it doesn’t do is lock you into a particular manufacturer’s products.

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