Start little by little, step by step. First, setup Home Assistant in whichever platform you choose (yellow, your own Raspberry Pi, a virtual machine…). Once it is up and running, not giving errors and you can navigate the GUI without problem, go to the store and buy, let’s say, a Lifx lightbulb.
Set it up and then add it to Home Assistant. Tinker and play with it. Create the first automation… keep going from there. You’ll immediately figure new useful things to do. The system growth and learning curve will be organic and enjoyable.
Once you have set up your HA on whatever ‘box’ you prefer (again, Yellow Box is perfect for me), you look for its URL 192.168.XX.XXX:8123 and type that in your browser and HA will show up. I use windows, but my guess is that MAC will work as well.
I strongly recommend to take Nabu subscription which allows you to access your HA on your phone, and use Alexa and Google Home.
You know it’s almost as if you are completely ignoring all of my caveats and just replying to me with basically what I’ve pretty much already said in a different way.
No you don’t HAVE to learn yaml. But you will eventually be limited if you don’t. If that limitation is fine with you then don’t learn it.
But if you want to do potentially more advanced stuff or ever need to try to troubleshoot something that isn’t working then you will be a huge step ahead if you know at least the basics.
How many times have you seen someone asking for help with just an automation that the usual first response is to “post the properly formatted yaml that you’ve tried”? Pretty much every time that a new user asks for help.
How much benefit does that user get if they just blindly post their incorrect yaml and then just blindly copy/paste the solution into their config? At that point there is literally no growth of knowledge and that same user will have to keep coming back over and over again asking for help instead of trying to figure it out on their own.
Neither am I.
But again the OP asked for recommendations. I gave mine to them. Nowhere did I say they had to learn Linux. I just said it would be helpful to know a little to try to fix things.
I had almost zero knowledge of Linux or Yaml or Jinja when I started with HA 7 years ago. But I do know that I would be way more than a little frustrated with HA if I still knew nothing about any of that now. I doubt I’d still be here if I couldn’t do anything more advanced than I could do thru the UI unless I just simply want to never do anything more than just turn lights on and off. Let alone trying to solve the issues that are going to inevitably come up.
That HA “Yellow Box” is using Linux in the background. If I’m not mistaken and something has changed it uses a pared down version of Alpine Linux.
People are suggested by the forum to enter Linux commands in the CLI on a somewhat regular basis to address issues that pop up.
So again like I said, no you don’t HAVE TO learn Linux but it will be to your benefit to at least have some basic knowledge of how the CLI works.
What you are trying to instruct the OP to do is how they access the HA user interface AFTER the HA system is installed and running.
And yes for that (as I already said above) you can use any machine that has a browser, Windows, Mac or even the dreaded Linux machine.
That’s the hardware I run it on and have for about 5 years now after I upgraded from a Pi 3B+. So I would say that if you have one already available then start out on it. There is no reason to buy more hardware until you know you might need it.
And I’ve never had any inkling at all for the need to buy any of the Nabu Casa (aka HA) provided hardware. As long as it does ethernet (yes you want to hardwire your HA to your network and don’t use wifi) and it has a couple of USB ports it will be fine.
EDIT to clarify:
you don’t need to hardwire everything related to HA. Just the box that HA itself is running on. Wifi is just too flaky at times to be reliably used for the brain of your home automation system.
If you like to DIY then HA is the system for you and you should really heed the suggestion to dig in under the hood a bit. There’s no reason to be afaid. There is a whole forum of helpful people to assist you if you get stuck. The only thing I usually ask is that you at least try first and then post what you’ve tried and what isn’t working.
I mean this in the kindest possible way, and I greatly respect as well as admire your level of knowledge, which is obviously well above mine, but in a way you make my point… You are right about everything you write but some people, like me, are just not that technical… and not smart enough (or too lazy) to reach your level.
Yes, I occasionally use YAML when I have no other choice and you are right again that on occasions I have been asked to post the YAML version of one of my automations. But when it comes to {{{ [[[ etc, it just gets too complicated for me.
The wonderful thing of HA is that it can be used at different levels of technical knowledge. I am sure that you get a lot more out of HA than me. Hopefully our new friend is closer to your level than mine. If he is young and/or smart enough, he can grow his expertise along the road of using HA.
My only point has been not to scare him. But thanks again for all you are adding to this topic.