Hi all:
I’m new here, and please forgive me if I ask something obvious. I’ve been thinking to migrate my current setup with OpenHAB + HomeBridge (for Homekit) to HA since 2024, and since then I have played a bit more with HA to understand what it can do and limitations. I think I now have a fairly basic understanding of HA and also convinced that it has the edge to OH + HomeBridge. However there are integration from HB and OH which don’t seem to work/exist in HA, and also I’m not convinced the simple IFTTT styled rules engine is good enough for my needs, so hence I’m posting some questions here.
My current setup:
- User interface: HomeKit + OH for graphs (energy consumption related time series)
- Integration: most via OH, some unsupported via HB
- Rule/automations: split between HomeKit and OpenHAB. Choose OpenHAB for more complex rules and HomeKit for device that doesn’t exist in OH
What I’m happy with current setup:
- HomeKit coverage, basically what I need are all exposed to HomeKit and it’s easy to teach family to use. OH provides enough flexibility to “create” whatever accessory I’d like in HomeKit. For fun I have created irrigation system for my rice cooker just to show the time counting down in HomeKit) Another example I grouped a dimmer, lock and switch for my Easee charger that provide all daily functionality I need (if I want to override schedule)
- OH can handle more complex rules, for example I have rules that plans for energy consumption by turn up/down heating, schedule charging my car etc. Also rules that are not based on single event but based on trend, for example if avg light in last 15 minutes is higher than last 30 minutes and above some threshold, the weather from now to next 2 hours are not windy, then close the sunblind.
Those are the main 2 things that I’m concerned that I will lose by moving to HA.
However there are also things that I’d like to improve with my current setup which HA can do easily:
- More accessory coverage in one automation system so more rules can be migrated from HomeKit
- Support for native HomeKit devices which cannot be added otherwise.
- Better support for ESPHome etc. (don’t have any device yet but will get my hands dirty soon
) - More actively developed as I sometimes feel that neither HB nor OH are still actively maintained
So what I plan to do step by step
- Move all accessories from HB to HA, most are TV/remotes due to the fact OH doesn’t support remote fully. One challenge is Harmony, as HomeBridge has very good Harmony plugin which is so flexible that I’m in doubt if it can be migrated. I need for example change the remote keys for different activities (for example Menu key in movie mode works different from Menu key in Game mode). It also allows to publish any device command as switch or sequence. If anybody know this is possible please let me know.
- Migrate devices from OH to HA. So far I have considered to migrate everything except for heating and ventilation system as there is no corresponding integration in HA. I have spend months to configure Modbus protocol for my heating system not sure if it worth to repeat the effort. There is already integration in HA to control OH if needed.
- Migrate all rules to HA - this is unsure doable as I looked into the automation in HA and they look very basic, so if I want more complex rules as I mentioned above, is there other way to do so?
Please let me know your comments and any suggestion, appreciated!