I have HA running most of the lights in the house, door locks, and some other things. But of late, I am thinking that if a smart house is “the future,” then we have a problem because the future extends for many years. What if you are 30 years old and expect to live for at least another 50 years? I want to build out a system and then have it “just work” for DECADES.
I’m curious about the longest period of time anyone here has let Home Assistant run without even looking at it or doing even the slightest maintenance. My goal right now is to design a setup where that period could be as long as five years.
Think about the above case of a 30-year-old living in the same smart home for 50 years: does he really want to have to futz with it every week for the next half century? Making an addition is fine, but a lifetime of constant required maintenance is just not going to work for most people.
Maybe we can share ideas for how to make a system that "just works” for decades.
I volunteer off the grid for a week every year. Something is usually complaining when I get back. That would be the longest.
HA has a major release monthly, and minor ones about every Friday. What do you think.
You want something you don’t have to futz with, move into a retirement home so someone else fixes it for you. Otherwise no IOT for you…
Decades I don’t know: everything breaks down eventually, even not IOT related, a washing machine, a thermostat, the boiler etc.
I think the first rule is let the home live even without HA, automations are cool up to the point where their unavailability does not cause problems.
Every major function of your house must, in my view, continue to function normally with HA down.
If you want to use HA as an appliance you must treat is as you would with a dumb thermostat.
Internet isolation, separate bus (read cabled network) wired endpoint, why not switch to an “hardened” solution, like a PLC, but you would lose many things.
As an example I have multiple wifi devices, some that works only on 2.4Ghz, in 15/20 years I hope I-ll be able to still connect them to my future Wifi AP…
I’m new to HA, only been using since February. But i think i’ve only had 2 times where it “stopped working” since then. And those two were for extended power outages where it shut down. Coming from Homeseer, I had to shutdown/reboot periodically.
Now, i’ve been messing with things ever since then, and I don’t know if it’s realistic to expect not to do that.
Other than running updates, I have gone months without changing things on my system and everything stays working. Very rarely have I had any issues that required me to do any real work other than click the update button.
As others have stated on here though there is no such system that will last decades and just work. That is not going to happen on any system even with the big companies. Bare minimum at that length of time you will have a hardware failure of some sort.
I’d like to come back in this world in 50 years. I believe that much will have changed beyond my imagination. In fact I think that in 10 to 20 years something will come up that replaces HA or replaces most of the technologies that are currently used by HA. Twenty years ago X10 was still something and I think that Zwave and Zigbee will be historic, so I would not think beyond 5 years. This being said, the suggestion for hardwire makes sense, though wifi will be strong enough and universal in a few years .
Yes, I did not mean that each device should last for 50 years. But rather the system works for 50 years.
One of the things I do is to use at least two sensors to turn on a light. Then if one fails, at least the light still goes on and there is no rush to replace the sensor. When they both work, the system is better, but it still works with a failed part.
Today, I’d standardize on Thread. It is like Zigbee, but it can self-heal if one of the border routers fails.
A refrigerator is a good example. They are standardized to fit in a 37 x 73 inch hole in the cabinets; as long as there is a power and water outlet, I can have a dead fridge swapped out for a new one quickly.
The idea is standardization and redundancy and failing to a safe mode.
But I bet there are a dozen good ideas each of us could learn here.
The first X10 devices came out in 1978 (the standard was written in 1975) so thats almost 50 years ago now. I finally unplugged my last X10 device about 5 years ago (still have a box full of units, I can’t seem to throw away).
Both X10 and Zigbee can be seen as serial devices - the software may change but as long as you speak the protocol you can continue to use the hardware for a very long time.
There are also adapters for old (wired) security systems so they just look like sensors inside HA / you can arm / disarm the alarms.
As long as the standards are open/simple hardware will typically survive its just a case of hooking it up to the latest front end / UI.
I think its worth asking what maintenance you have to do?
HA Updates
I am not convinced you need to keep updating HA at least not on a monthly schedule - if it’s working for you a yearly update may be fine.
Batteries
Batteries are the major issue for me, I could probably just put them on a schedule, but I don’t like the idea of replacing them until they are finally dead ** - hence I end up having to change one every month or two - i.e. I am creating the problem by not setting a replacement schedule and sticking to it.
** - TBF the battery life as reported in HA has no correlation to the actual battery life, most of the time the batteries are either < 90% or > 5%. I.e they suddenly drop then sit at the low percentage for ages before finally dying.
Brand Selection
There is one brand of bulb that I have given up on, I am replacing each bulb as it fails.
Hence you kinda need to experiment with different manufactures and identify which ones are problematic.
WIFI
I have a fairly high end WIFI setup, but in practice I have found it to be less reliable than my Zigbee network / perhaps my Zigbee setup is just rock solid.
You have a point. Printed books and paper newspapers are still being used and will for a long time.
The question however is whether one can/should build a house with home automation that will last 50 years. New technologies will supplement or replace existing ones. I am in my seventies and doubt that I will see it, but some exciting developments will come that makes 2026 as historic. I very well remembered the years before the internet and before the Iphone.
I am currently struggling to think of a single item that:
I own
I use every day.
That I don’t do any maintenance on.
That I would be “upset” about it, if it failed after 20 years of service.
To be clear, it may annoy me at the moment it failed, but I just don’t expect anything to last more than 20 years, where it’s used every single day with no maintenance.
So as asked, the answer is simply: No - its not worth it to try to plan that far ahead.
An alternative way of looking at it would be simply to cut the time line in half and say, would it be so bad to only plan for 25 years and say you’re okay with replacing everything at that point.
I am confident my system could easily run 10 yrs without intervention. This means:
-no server updates
-no need to login server
This does not include:
-downtime caused by power out or internet down
-no battery changes
-app updates/changes
Apps must be supported by phone. Apple app willl likely force update for compatibility. Android may allow app version freeze. App update may require sever update so ultimately browser would likely be only long term gaurantee.
Server updates are recommended for remote access but local only I see no absolute need outside of feature need. I’ll add that people have installed crestron systems without continuous updates.
I used battery device for convenience. Motion detectors. I could easily swap to wired if desired. Door locks not so much but wired door lock is possible.
Bigger point is it is absolutely possible to have a reliable HA install. Just needs to be planned and devices evaluated.
Things do break so 100% uptime may not happen but a system that doesn’t require IT staff to support is doable. Didn’t look at or touch HA for months, no
Issues occurred. No complaints from users. It does take planning and knowledge to avoid standard service/reliability pitfalls.
RasPi : you will not last long
Cheap PC: don’t expect much
Decent long term hardware: not expensive and lasts
3rd party app/addons: this is brittle and likely will break. But this is not HA
Zwave/zigbee/matter: maybe you be ok but even ac line devices fail. But this is not HA. That said I’m updating every 3-4 months and no issues. Not saying much about years but the lack of issues speaks stability. Device failures is bigger issue here and I had some device failed because I used them out of spec and others running 10yrs.
WAN/remote access: nabu is HA but remote access without fiddling is risky. You can roll your own but you’ll need to support it. Local is reliable but wAN requires continued supervision