I use built-in automations and they work great. I also need an ETL kind of tool for other (non-HA) stuff and I was wondering whether someone has integrated automations with n8n.
Ideally, this would mean replacing HA automations with n8n. I doubt that this would be useful; n8n would need to have a good integration to understand HA’s data model.
But maybe someone tried and failed? Or succeeded? Or somewhere in between?
I see that there is a RED-NODE community and since they are basically the same thing any feedback from that side is welcom as well!
N8n isn’t as strong here yet and doesn’t have a direct integration but you can hook it up with webhooks. There is a way to make it control HA through RESTful and another using MCP. Which N8n should be able to do both. But…
Don’t fall into the trap just because it’s good it does everything. There’s pros and cons for every system.
So yeah you can hook it up. And make it control stuff. But it’s probably not yet a wholesale replacement for builtin for many reasons.
I actually am using mine for data pumping (event driven not etl) between back end systems (like mealie<>grocy) using llm agent based workflow in response to triggers on various systems so that ha sees the all in sync) but I don’t plan on driving ha with it. Builtin is way better for those uses. And I have a rather complicated set of Node red flows that drive my room state engine…
I installed 8n8 and it does have an integration. The integration is a bit weird, though - you cannot get lists of entities. This makes it quite useless.
All of this can be worked out with API calls but then why to complicate one’s life.
Like I said for what it’s used for (direct api and mcp calls) makes it work well driving a knowledge agent hooked to an LLM but no it’s jot at click boom there ya go right now. Far from it.