I find myself in a situation where I can do some basic things in HA. I learn a little bit here and there but I feel very limited in knowledge so I am looking for some proper training courses.
I know about Get started with Home Assistant by Gio Langella and I am wondering if there are any others out there.
I am NOT looking for just how-to YouTube videos but proper structured training that is paid for and also includes options to ask questions.
Hoping for some good input.
I think the site ok. But pay 197 poundā¦ HA is a opensource app with a big community who can help for free. Get money from this great open source is my opinion a bad thought
I havenāt even heard of that site, but it seems to be a good starting point. Unfortunately, I donāt know any other site, that does provide such a service. Maybe this should be something to develop further, but this would be a question to ask the developer team, or even better NabuCasa.
Why should this be a bad idea? As long as somebody is providing a service to you, that fulfill your needs, why should this service be free of cost? If someone would take HA itself and sell it, that would be fraudulent, but only because the project is open-source, it doesnāt mean anything else around that specific project should be freeā¦! Following that logic, I should get my next devices for free as well, because the run with HA and that is freeā¦
People really donāt understand, that open-source doesnāt mean, everything is free of charge. It means, you can see what is done, and can change things to your liking, but not that everything around it should be free. Following that logic, you should be getting NabuCasa for free as well, as it is solely based on HAā¦ Nope, that wouldnāt be a good idea. 
As the bearded man once said There aināt no such thing as a free lunch
And that is open source.
Code is free, help is free but knowledge isnāt. To make this work everyone is giving something in return according to their knowledge and capabilities. This give every open source project ability to exist and develop.
Idea to make some on line tutorials on using ha and charge for it isnāt necessarily bad if money coming from this will at least partially came back to project.
And I believe that is how nabu casa works.
Exactly. I know a person who has a business providing Linux support and he gets a lot of people demanding that he provides his services for free. Absurd.
If anything, educating people about HA can only be a good thing surely. And if people are willing to pay then why not?
The people developing HA would not be losing out on anything. In fact, they may be well placed to build a training program. One thing that comes to mind would be āHome Assistant for dummiesā. I am one of those dummies and I would love to be a customer.
Back to my original question; still looking for alternative training if anyone knows of anyone/anything.
No it wouldnāt. You can charge for a pre-installed computer, or even for copying the download to an sd card. As long as you comply with the license, you can do what people will pay for.
Having said that, the cost of Ā£197 is, IMHO, a bit much. Particularly when there is a lot of free info, and with respect to Gio, his free vids arenāt stunningly good.
You always catch me, when Iām not particullarly clear in my wordingā¦ 
Youāre totally right, it wouldnāt be fraudulent, but it would be ānot a nice touchā. 
I didnāt take a look at the videos on that page, so canāt say how they are, but I find the idea tempting. It might be something, HA itself (read NabuCasa) should consider implementing, a teaching system if you will.
Ā£197 works out to just over AU$300. Compared to the average IT training course which are usually AU$1200-1500 per day, it seems like OK value.
That being said, I have not looked at the videos. It doesnāt seem like there are a lot of options around.
The average IT training course should be prepared by IT professionals, not youtubers.
Have a look at his free youtube videos, see if you like his style and what he says helpful. If you think it is worth it, pay the money.
I still think reading all the docs, and hanging about on the forum will get you a hell of a long way for free.
I totally agree that IT training courses should be (and usually are) built by professionals. Hence why his are cheaper than the average I suppose.
I have read MOST of the docs, watched countless Youtube clips, built some basic automations (which work) and I find myself having trouble āconnecting some of the dotsā so to speak.
Iāll have to check out the sample vids and mull over whether its worth the $. In the end of the day, I donāt really give a rats who gets my money if I learn some useful stuff.
Fair enough, send me some while you are about it
Also do let us know which dots are still disconnected. Happy to help.
Thanks for the offer, much appreciated.
Have to agree to this.
Also, given the nature of smart home in general, people have different homes and different needs and different situations and different devices and different ideas and in different countries. As such, donāt think any canned training courses would ever become one-size-fits-all helpful.
And even if you can make something one-size-fits-all, you either risk the context being not deep enough to be helpful / not deep enough for what people would have expected from a ātrainingā. Furthermore the content would likely expire in ~6 months. Meaning you have to update your contents constantly.
So good luck. I hope those paid courses can be sustainable.
Just an example to try and explain where Iām coming from; take MS Excel, there are hundreds of built in functions and from those one can builds tens of thousands of different formulas. And that is just the formulas, then there all the different built in out-of-the-box features. Then thereās the built in VBA one can use to build macros. No two spreadsheets are the same but the trick is to learn the functions and how to link them together. Over the years I have probably done 3 or 4 different Excel courses and because of that training, I am now a happy confident user. Something I could never have been just messing around trying to teach myself.
An old music teacher told me after I bought a keyboard that you can play around with the keyboard by yourself at home and probably learn some things from the internet and know some basic tunes after 6 months or so. Or you can take some lessons, sit next to someone and learn the same thing in 2-3 weeks.
He was 100% right! This is why Iām trying to find something better than playing around trying things on my own and asking questions in forums that may not get answered at all.
Of course, it all depends on how good the training actually is and that is unknown.
Studying and reading documentation as well as hanging out on this forum can take person long way. Yes itās possible to learn s lot and do it for free. But there is one catch to it. It requires a lot if time. Not all people are software engineers and usually have their everyday job. Understanding things from documentation does require at least some basic knowledge about the subject.
I think you have just described me, timepoor.
One upside for me is that any training costs are tax deductible for me plus every training hour I do can go towards my PMP accreditation to be renewed every three years.
Iāve been looking for HA training too. By following instructions on YouTube, I was able to install an SD card, the OS, and HA on a Raspberry Pi, I was able to get a few of my smart devices connected and working but thatās as far as I can go. I need some more rudimentary training in coding. For example, I updated one of the integration and then I got a notice that I needed to update the js node. Even though I read the instructions on how to do it, I didnāt understand it. What foundational things do I need to learn in order to understand how to use HA? Do I need to take a course in Phyton or something more basic?
Usually you just need to know how to read, copy and paste.
Hi all,
After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, I have finally launched a Home Assistant course website aimed at exactly the type of people who are looking for a premium solution, whereby all of the information is gathered in one place and presented with a lesson structure, which is what I think @llundberg is looking for.
If any of you are interested, the site is https://smarthome.study
You can take the learning environment for a test drive by taking the free course. The site is very new at the time of writing and there are currently two courses available, with a plan to expand:
A complete beginner course that will walk you through the basic principles of Home Assistant, and how to install it on a Raspberry Pi. This is a free course and will prepare a complete newcomer for the level 1 course.
Level 1 beginner course that is aimed at those who are looking to get a solid grasp of the Home Assistant fundamentals.
My plan is to create a level 2 and level 3 course in order to form a complete bundle covering all of the Home Assistant essentials.
I also run the blog siytek.com, which has a lot of Home Assistant guides that have proven to be very popular! This is why I decided to invest the time into creating a course for Home Assistant. I believe there are enough people like @llundberg who are looking for this type of content.
I would love to get some feedback on the site and the learning platform in general, so I would welcome anyone to give the free course a test drive and perhaps leave a review at the end of the course
Thanks guys!
Simon
Thank you for doing this. I believe that there is a need for this (canāt be just me).
I am in the middle of a CAD course at the moment but should be done sometime next week so I will take a look then.
Thanks again.