Get me started

1

Hello All!

New here. Been trying to figure out how to get started with Home Assistant (HA) but I feel like I am spinning my wheels. I need some guidance. If this is not the right place to ask questions, please direct me to the right category.

I really like the smart home stuff and have been using the Google Home stuff for a few years now. But I am getting tired of devices just randomly becoming “unavailable.” My understanding is that with HA device control is handled locally which should alleviate that issue. My home has several smart lights (mostly Feit I think), some smart switches and plugs, 3 Nest Minis, 2 displays, 4 TVs, and a Nest doorbell camera and probably some other things I am forgetting.

I’m thinking about getting a HA Green. Would that be suitable for my home? I really like the voice assistant that Google provides. Does HA have a similar function?

I consider myself fairly tech-savvy (been building computers since the late 70s, and some programming [BASIC and Z-80 assembler] in the 80s, and more through the 00s) but I think I will need some hand holding with this stuff, at least to get started. Anybody willing to give an old man a push in the right direction?

2

hi! there’s not really enough info in your post to tell if home assistant will control all of your devices because you don’t have enough info on the devices (ie, home assistant supports a lot of tv’s, but not all… it has some support for ring…but not 100% (ie, you can’t do live 2 way interactions with ring, but you can do 1 way delayed stream)

if you’re somewhat tech savy and not sure, i’d recommend you try installing home assistant on a vm. some info here: Installation - Home Assistant
as well as a number of youtube walkthroughs depending on whether you have windows/mac/linux.

a vm is a perfectly fine no cost way to evaluate. i ran on a vm for a couple years before i decided to get a dedicated pi…

3

I too would be setting up a trial either on a VM or on an old redundant PC, or something. Really no need to spend cash just to try out HA, after all it may be a bit to much for you, unlikely with your experience though.