It’s been 20 months exactly since I first heard about Home Assistant and installed it. It has a very steep learning curve, and I’m a guy who’s been a computer geek all my life, a Linux user, a hardware guy and yet still, it was really really hard. But boy is it addictive and powerful.
Having said that, it’s a spectacular open source project and I’m starting to feel comfortable with it. So here are a few things that are not strictly technical in nature but just things that new users might want to consider. There were things I wish I had known:
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It’s not easy, it’s going to take you a while and try not to get frustrated. The experts on this site have been a great help, but only if you are willing to help yourself, answer their questions and do your own research.
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Get the right hardware. I wouldn’t even get a Pi4 although with external SSD storage and decent memory I suppose it’s okay. But you can get an NUC, an N100 or i5 or something equivalent with M2 or SSD storage and it’s pretty cheap.
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If you’re new, go with the HAOS install. Forget what people tell you about Proxmox, virtual machines, Docker containers etc. It will just cause you more trouble if you’re a newcomer. I am perfectly happy with my HAOS install. Updates are simple and there are lots of add-ins which extend the capability of Homeassistant and they are easier to install with HAOS.
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Pick your coordinator hardware carefully. Coordinators are those USB sticks (or now network dongles) that talk to all your devices although certainly some of your devices may also connect through Wi-Fi But most things interface pretty well with ZHA (ZigBee Home Automation), Z-Wave or Zigbee2mqtt. Thread/Matter is the way home automation is going, but perhaps it’s not ready yet. I actually use Zigbee, Z2M and Z-Wave and I’m a big fan of Z-Wave for distance, configuration, reliability.
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When you purchase your computer whether it’s an RPi or an NUC, do not plug your Zigbee coordinator stick directly into that machine’s USB ports. Get a powered USB 2 hub. Yes that’s right, a USB 2 hub. And when you plug in those coordinators, the USB sticks into the USB ports, don’t plug right into the hub, use long USB high quality extension cables for each and keep them as far away from the computer and wifi router and from each other as possible to avoid interference. You also want to make sure that the coordinators are located somewhere as central as possible so that it can reach all the devices in your house. This is easier if you get one of the new ethernet coordinators like the SLZB-06x models as it can be separate from your computer. If I was starting today, I’d go that way.
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Despite what I just said, the coordinators will probably not reach everything on their own but that’s okay. ZHA Zwave and Zigbee2MQTT create their own mesh networks, each protocol creates its own network. That network can be extended by buying network extenders, and I have a couple, but almost any device like a switch or plug etc that is mains-powered full-time, not battery operated, acts as an extender and builds out your network. So visualize your home, use extenders were necessary and use powered devices when possible.
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Always make sure you’re coordinator is updated to the newest well-tested and reviewed firmware, and that goes for your end devices as well. It’s nice when a device can upgrade over the air, they can’t all and that becomes a problem because you have to take them out and flash them sometimes it’s taking them apart.
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Speaking of upgrades, the Homeassistant software is constantly being developed. I don’t know the numbers but it has to be one of the most active Open Source projects on the internet with a huge number of contributors. You are notified when updates are available. Read the release notes before installing. If they are major updates, wait a day or two or even for the .1 version and then check here to see if people are experiencing problems. Always make a backup before doing any sort of major upgrade.
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Understand the difference between addons, integrations, devices and entities, and understand the importance of entities. It took me a while. A device is a piece of hardware, something you can touch. An entity is an ability that a piece of hardware has (that’s a generalization because things like a weather service, weather station can have a dozen or more entities, things like temperature, humidity etc. But the weather station is not in your home, you are connected to it through an integration).
These abilities (entities) can be hidden or exposed when you first add a new device like motion sensors, switches, plugs, LED controllers, car charging stations, TVs, phone, cameras etc. Until today, I thought a lot of my devices were broken as while the motion sensor might properly expose the motion entity or room presence entity or temperature entity, none of them showed me the battery percentage. Well it turns out when you add devices there are disabled entities but you can enable them and then use them to do other things. For instance I have a Reolink camera (that’s an actual device) added through the Reolink HA Integration, and there are about 25 different entities for the camera such as zoom and pan and focus and exposure and of course the streams is themselves. So make sure you check all those entities that are hidden by default, you may need to enable them.
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Speaking of gotchas for newbies, the actual ZHA network information is not stored in Homeassistant but it’s stored on the actual ZigBee stick. While Z-Wave backs up the contents of the stick to disk with every shutdown, ZHA does not. So to the best of my knowledge, you can’t just go swapping out a new stick even if the same manufacturer, model and protocol and expecting to work. In my mind, that’s a real issue that needs fixing.
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Homeassistant excels at allowing you to control things without going through the cloud… In other words if the internet was down, you could still have Homeassistant and all your devices up and running as long as your home network is up and running. So be careful of devices, especially no name Chinese devices because often information goes through the cloud which will slow things down, cause outages and of course has security implications. I have found everything can be done locally within my network. You may need the manufacturer’s app to do the initial setup of a new device, but after that, you want things to be local. Local means safe. Local means you have control.
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At some point you will hear about devices connected through Wi-Fi, in other words the device does not natively support ZHA, Zigbee2mqtt or Z-Wave. That’s okay, but keep them to a minimum unless you want to end up with a lot of interference with your regular home 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi network. One of the most popular of the Wi-Fi devices are a brand called Shelly. They make high quality devices, relays and switches, and these allow you to use these inexpensive devices instead of buying smart switches, bypassing the dumb switch. It’s much cheaper and at times that’s all you need, but I’m a fan of smart switches. My philosophy is that if the network goes down, the switches still work.
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Make sure you back up data to somewhere outside the machine running Home Assistant, Google drive, network attached storage etc. It’s so easy to do, there’s an automated backup routine coming in the 2025.1 update. Trust me, you will mess up, and resetting everything, repairing devices will be a nightmare. Having a backup, you can be back up and running in 5 minutes. And test your backups.
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Where you are connecting to your home network, for instance assuming your HAOS machine is part of your home network, or you have Wi-Fi or wired devices being controlled, it’s much easier to have them use static IPs. Of course for your actual HAOS computer, It should absolutely be wired by ethernet to your network on its own static IP.
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Understand the difference between automations, scenes, scripts and blueprints. It took me a long time, but that’s where HA gets useful. I would strongly suggest you find a guy named Blacky (Blackshome) who is very active in the community forums and has some complex configurable automations that will make you look like a pro. And donate to him.
Scripts don’t run on their own, they get called. Scripts are something you can call from automations quite easily. Scripts are just reusable code.
- Homeassistant wouldn’t be complete without having an app for Android or iOS. It’s called the Companion app. Go to the app’s settings, there’s an extra settings sub-menu when using the Companion app which contains settings for the Companion app itself. Understand what they are and particularly understand what the entities are that you can expose so that you can do cool things like geolocating, triggering automations based on who is home or away etc.
17… Voice integration is an emerging, ever-changing crazy world. Leave it alone for 6 months. You have enough to learn, and it’s evolving.
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Strange as it seems, part of the success of your project will depend on the spouse factor. Test things before you implement them. Buy pretty devices, do integrations and automations that are helpful for your spouse. Don’t create lighting automation without buying proper smart switches that allow lights to turn on and off even if Homeassistant has crashed.
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Wall tablets are great. I have one by my front door with the alarm panel (Alarmo) on the main screen but cameras, weather, etc. as well. But don’t buy Amazon tablets. Just don’t. I love the experience I’ve had with the Lenovo line. I have an M9. It does battery cycling to keep the battery healthy and prevent over-heating.
I’m also a big fan of a paid product called fully kiosk browser. It runs as an Android app on your dedicated tablet (replaces the Companion app) giving you all sorts of capabilities to customize and lock it up so that it’s running in what many call kiosk mode. I think it’s about $12 for a lifetime purchase and I highly recommend it. What’s very cool is you can access all the settings sitting at your computer through home assistant, remotely administering it.
- Support Nabu Casa. They are integral to the support and success of the project. For remote access, the Nabu Casa cloud is extremely reliable, easy to use, and the annual fee is very inexpensive. The annual fee supports salaries for their full-time staff.
Harry Fine, Toronto Canada
Haos
Intel i5 NUC
