I currently have a very basic smart home with a bunch of IKEA Trådfri lights that are connected to their hub. I then use a HomePod Mini to automate them but feel like that isn’t powerful enough for what I want to do. Sure, it’s possible but I’d need a bunch of automations that does the same thing with different triggers and conditions etc.
My goal is to have the lights slowly turn on when my alarm goes off or when I deactivate the sleep focus mode on my iPhone, whichever happens first. This should only happen if it’s still dark outside. Then I want them to automatically turn off after sunrise.
I also want some lights to come on an hour before sunset if I’m away, and a bunch more to come on if I’m home or when I get home after sunset.
The next thing I wish to do is to make my LG C2 TV control the lights. If the lights are on when it’s started I want to shut a bunch of them off. This also requires the sunset automation to not be run if the TV is on. Then I want to go back too either all lights off or on when the TV is shut down depending on whether it’s past sunset or not. But if it’s past a set time that differs on weekdays and weekends when the TV is shut down I want a specific night time mode to be triggered. And then when I activate the sleep focus mode I want everything to shut down.
I’m therefor thinking about getting a Raspberry PI 5 that I’ll run HA on but have a few questions before pulling the trigger.
Is there a PI kit with a PI 5, NVMe board and SSD, charger and the ZigBee-modules etc that everyone talks about?
Will I still need my IKEA and/or HomePod hub or will HA replace both of them?
Is there a nice way to achieve all of this in HA without having a bunch of automations that work against each other like I have to do in HomeKit now?
Not necessarily but to replace the Ikea Hub you need to buy a Zigbee dongle instead. I actually recommend this since you can connect more devices to it. The HomePod you can use as a ordinary speaker without the automations.
The price/performance isn’t there in imho. You get more beef for the money by going mini PC (im running on a nuc10 right now)
Read recommendations from your integration vendors as to which interface sticks (coordinator) they recommend
And switching systems does not eliminate the complexity of your requirements… Moving to HA won’t magically make those better. You just attack the problem differently…
I’ll take a look into that, thanks for the recommendation.
I understand that the complexity of my requirements doesn’t disappear, I’m just researching if HA would make it easier to manage to a point where it’s worth switching in the long run. I’m thinking if it would result in a neater setup since HA support multiple triggers and conditions etc
Some find the way HA does things too technical and cumbersome… Unfortunately it’s the price for complexity.
I challenge yih to find something you can’t do with HA. that said most of your question is subjectivecan it do it - unequivocally yes. Do you like how it does it? No clue that’s 100% preference. I just know that people who ask about ‘losing complexity’ moving to HA are usually disappointed.
Thanks for the input! But the HomePod won’t be required for automations and/or talking to my phone in order to trigger by alarms and focus modes etc? I actually got it only a few days ago but am thinking about returning it if HA is a better way to go in my case and it isn’t needed for some reason. I’ve read some state that it’s still needed for some use-cases, which are those?
The complexity in itself isn’t something that scares me. I work as a developer and usually like to fiddle around with stuff so I think it’s the way to go in this case. I’m just trying to get a better understanding about everything before pulling the trigger on a Pi and/or NUC.
Here you go in to another subject, you still want it to be connected to your phone for alarms etc? Yes, no problem but to use it to control HA I let others to answer.
The HomePod could be a convenient way to verbally control what you set up in HA. We are Apple based here, but I only use Homekit as a front end for the devices and automations that are set up in HA at this point in time. It’s convenient and less work than setting up verbal Assist control based in HA (for me, so far).
That is, you don’t need the HomePod. Whether you’d ever want or need one is something you’d determine down the line.
My advice before purchasing any kit is to set a up a vm on what ever computer you have at your disposal. Even an an old abandoned laptop may be able to run HA. You can then get a feel for HA and whether you like the way it works. You will then be able to backup any settings you make and transfer them to dedicated bit of kit later down the road.
Ah, okay. The ability to use voice assist would be nice but then it’s a case of whether I want to spend the money on it just for voice control or not. Thanks for clarifying that!