only yesterday I have understood the existence of home assistant…before it, I was thinking to change all the bought smart devices that already I have in my house with a Philips hue system or something similar in order to solve the issues that I have using different brands of products together. Of course this will cost money because the Philips hue smart bulbs or other kind of its accessories have a higher prices.
In my current configurations I have : 3 google home, a soundbar Samsung Q950A which uses smartThings app (which I never interfaced with home system), many wifi colour smart bulbs of different brands (Lohas, Sengled, Maxcio), Wyze cameras plus wyze door sensors and wyze motion sensors and an Nvidia shield which is interfaced with google home (only for turning on and off the TV)
The smart bulbs are connected to google home system, so I can turn on and off or dimmerable them by voice. Some smart bulbs are interfaced with the wyze sensors to turn on & off using IFTTT. The latter works very bad, due to the delays between the motion detection and the turning on of the lights (at least 2 seconds or more). Posting such a problem, it was suggested to use home assistant, because it relays on the local network (so faster then cloud based system as IFTTT) and after reading some information in the home assistant home page I have some questions, because in order to achieve a good result I need to invest at least 250 euro only for a raspberry pi 4 which I need to learn how to configure it…
Are my smart lights supported? I cannot find these brands into the integration page…or do I need to buy only the brands shown in the web page?
The same question is applied to the door sensors and motion sensors, are they supported or do I need to buy other ones? Which ones will be suitable at a good price?
Is it possible to add some dimmer switch or smart button to turn on and off the smart light?
Can I integrate in such a way the soundbar into the hole system? (eg. when I open the door, to start a music from google home which is reproduced on the sound bar)
Or it is better to buy a complete system like Philips hue which has the smart bulbs, sensors and dimmer switches?
If you have access to a vm that can run Linux the just vm up a HAOS build and play around with it before you buy anything. You might be able to find an option to runn it and see what it can do for you before you jump in with both feet.
You will need to research each device on its own merit down TO THE MODEL NUMBER of the device. There may be idiosyncrasies with one model that doesn’t exist with another. That said, your chances are extremely high that ‘device X’ will work. Out of all the ecosystems I’ve used in the past (SmartThings, Vera, HomeSeer, Hubitat) Homeassistant by far has the biggest extensibility and support lists.
If your hardware is supported and integrated properly, sure. That’s basic stuff. Same for the sound bar.
As to is it better? That’s TOTALLY a YOU question. There are pros and cons for going with a homogeneous system. But I submit that over the years even if you ATTEMPT to create a homogeneous system based on only one manufacturer… You will ultimately fail because honestly not one single manufacturer covers all cases. So for me having an extensible system that can be updated is a good choice.
I will however temper your expectations on ‘local’ and faster.
Absolutely. Unconditionally faster…
…if your devices support local communications. If your device can be connected to locally then you will see the reliability and speed improvement you’re looking for. But don’t assume that just connecting a device to HA makes it local. If you have a cloud connected light and HA has to connect to the cloud to read its status you didn’t buy yourself anything. So when you research your devices to find out what integration you will use to connect that ‘thing’ you should also be able to determine if it’s able to be locally controlled.
I found on amazon a lot of mini pc based on windows that costs a lot less than raspberry pi 4, It could be a better solution? What specs will be ok for Home assistant?
You told me to install a VM, is it ok also on a docker?
It will work on a wifi connection or it is mandatory to use the lan cable?