Why do I need Home Assistant - for those who have some home automation and live in developing countries

Installation
1

Hi,

My question is a bit unique as I live in India. I am not a techie, but love automation. Living in India means not only do we have a lower per capita in dollar terms, most home automation hardware is not available here. Following are some uniqueness:

(a) If we need something we need to ask friends and family coming from US or UK to get it. This has its own problems due to Covid travel restrictions, power voltage differences…etc
(b) Lots of things that makes sense in the western world doesn’t make sense in a country like India. for example we don’t have vehicle garages and hence no garage doors to automate. We don’t have thermostats…etc.
(c) Of course, due to limited availability, things which are common and cheap in the western world becomes niche and super costly in India, assuming of course they are available in the first place
(d) Due to border tensions with China - the government has banned direct imports from China and hence no access to Aliexpress since 2019
(e) home automation in itself is something 99.9999% of Indians are not even aware of, which is a shame, but can also be justified by reasons listed above.

I have watched hundreds of videos on home automation knowing very well I cannot replicate the same in India. I have also watched tens of videos on home assistant and always wonder do I really need it.

Given below is what I have in terms of home automation - things that are either available in India or I was able to import from Aliexpress prior to the ban in 2019.

(a) Few Sonoff 4 channel relays to control my light and fan switches
(b) Few 6 channel relays to control my light and fan switches manufactured locally in India
(c) Few Sonoff single relays
(d) Few wifi three pin plug controllers
(e) Few RGB LED strips - 32, 50 and 100 feet
(f) Two DC motion sensors which trigger LED strips
(f) All of the above are compatible with Alexa and Google Home
(g) Plenty of echo dots and google minis, fire HD tablets, laptops and desktops

As explained above - things like garage doors openers, curtain openers, smart thermostats, door alarms…etc are either not applicable in our scenario or not available or make no sense to install.

Currently my home automation is done by two ways - (a) using mobile apps to schedule on and off lights on set defined timings - (b) using voice - alexa or google home to turn on and off things

Since I am technically challenged, after watching many home assistant videos - there are few things I understood as beneficial. One is everything can be controlled within in home network and no need to send anything to cloud. Secondly its more easier to integrate various different standards - but in my case all I have are alexa/google compatible.

Given all of the above, please let me know why I need home assistant as unlike those living in the western world, I am not so much worried about my data being hacked…very happy to use cloud.

Secondly, I already have multiple fire tablets, chrome tablets, laptops and desktops as mentioned. Investing in raspberry pi is very expensive coz in India it costs around 70-80 dollars which when translated by local incomes is equivalent to someone in US spending 2-300 USD to buy a Pi.

Hence please let me know if I can make sure of my existing computers or tablets to install home assistant instead of wasting money on the Pi.

Once I get a response, I have more questions as I have few friends coming from US and UK and hence I don’t mind supplementing my automation with affordable additions like sensors…etc

Thanks in advance for all your help!!

1 Like
2

You can definitely install HA on some used desktop or laptop.

As HA is free, you can benefit without paying anything.

The only thing, I use HA for here in Western Europe: My own education.
It’s a hobby. I like playing with it. I like to make things work after some effort.

And since I do have HA working with almost everything in my home, I never use the phone apps anymore. Everything is now in one place. Even on my phone I only use HA to control my home.

I see it as a educational game, with some automation magic as a result. Way better, than sitting in a bar and wasting money on Whiskey… :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

I’m fortunate to be in the USA even though some things are pretty messed up but that’s a different story.
HA simply put, HA can be a time suck but as BebeMischa says, “It’s a hobby. I like playing with it. I like to make things work after some effort.”
For me;

  1. Motion sensor activated lights. To have the basement light turn on when I start down the steps is worth the price of the bulbs, sensors and my time to set it up in HA. Same thing when I go into our freezer room. The light turns on and I don’t have to worry about flipping a switch when carrying stuff to put in the freezer. Also, I don’t forget to turn off the light, it does it for me!
  2. Security. With a few inexpensive cameras HA allows me to watch movement in and out of the house, send alerts, take pics, record movies, etc. Doesn’t have to be real fancy. Right now just being able to view the camera feeds when I’m not home (Nabu Casa cloud service - figured it wasn’t too expensive, it supports HA, they handle all the security and I don’t have to do any router work).
  3. Lovelace Dashboard - it’s a whole new world. I’d love to have a tablet on the wall that shows the calendar, weather & forecast, status of lights, etc.

Depending on the capabilities of your existing relays & plugs, with the addition of a fairly inexpensive 4-in-1 sensor or 6-in-1 sensor you could turn on your fans when the humidity gets to a certain level. You can turn on/off lights based on light luminance in the room (too dark, turn on the lights, bright day, turn them off or down), sun elevation options for lights too.

Alexa & Google assistants are great but it’s nice to not have to ask for devices to be turned off / on.

If music is important to you, I believe you can send songs to dots & google minis from HA. I use Raspberry PIs with audio boards attached which then connect to a set of speakers but I understand the constraints you have purchasing those devices. You probably can set up whole house audio and even set delays so it syncs the song playing on your dots/minis in each room.

I could go on for quite a while but hopefully this gives you a few ideas. Oh, the HA community is very helpful. You can’t say that about many of the forums out there.
Stay safe.

1 Like
4

Thank you both. Let me try using it on a laptop as keeping it on all the time hopefully consumes less energy than a desktop.

Also I have excess fire tablets. So if I am successful in installing HA on a PC, hopefully I will have a screen on my tablet which displays all my gadgets and which ones are on and which ones are off at a glance ?

I too will do some more research. Door alarms are cool but for Indian scenario we dont need it. But yes…I do want to link some PIR sensors so when it detects motion it can turn on LED strips…say on my stairs.

Thanks again for the quick response and have a nice day!!

If possible do post links to items in US or China for super cheap sensors or any other automation ideas…like those costing 5 dollars or below each. I will also keep googling.

6

I also live in the US and but I understand what you’re saying. I wish you all the best and it’s worth a try!!!

1 Like
7

I hope I didn’t mislead you by the “fairly inexpensive” mention I made. Typically the Z-wave sensors are in the $30-$50 range & require a Z-wave USB controller.
Zigbee sensors (Xiaomi Aqara for instance) are in the $10-15 range and i believe also require a zigbee controller.
You might want to take a look at ESPHome devices but they generally require some electronics knowledge to wire sensors to boards. The sensors

https://esphome.io/

Here’s a link for a topic on this forum regarding a Fire tablet.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/wall-panel-fire-8-hd-tablet-lovelace-cch-mqtt-alarm-and-video-doorbell-on-ring/133561

1 Like
8

I live in Indonesia, so we have some similarity in terms of getting the IoT device. Even though Indonesia have no problem with China, however importing the device will double the prices due to custom. Furthermore depend on the importer then the brand availability will vary. Recently more and more OEM brand arise in Indonesia, again all off them are under TUYA OEM and all of HA user know that currently the reason why I’m avoiding TUYA due to its cloud only nature.

Anyway I run HA Supervised version on my small mini Ryzen PC running on top Proxmox. Very happy with its installation and HA is a blessing since its like God Send. Not only it unifi all my older IoT like Hue, Broadlink, TUYA but it also unifi my YiCam, Sonoff, Aqara, Google TV, Samsung, Google Home, AppleTV etc.

Anyway smart speaker is now much powerfull since many notification can be sent via its voices. Furthermore for thermostats you can always check arduino for an alternatif (DIY) I made my own door bell + switch + camera since in Indonesia we all live inside a house with a fences, so those smart doorbell did not work.

Anyway you can alway contact or ask the community for assistant if needed.

2 Likes
9

Hi Richard,

I can understand home assistant for slightly complex things that smart speakers cannot handle…like door sensors and triggers if some event were to happen. But why would someone need HA for things like google chromecast, appletv…etc which are smart by themselves? Like I mentioned, I got lots of smart speakers lying around. Is there anything I can do with HA for my devices that i cannot do with smart speakers?

10

Well, for one thing there are many thing that you can do after you integrated HA with your smart speaker adn your other devices.

In my case without it this would not possilble.

  1. Smart Bell: I incorporate my CCTV front Camera + Philips Dumb Bell + Sonoff smart switch to create multiple event which is without HA wont possible. In my case the notification to my family mobile + picture + logs send to Telegram is a great example. Furthermore my HA connected to HomeKits which allow me to sent notification + broadcast all video capture to my iPhone, macBook, and AppleTV. All my smart speaker will also allow to notification everyone using TTS. Noted that my smart door bell being a DIY project.

  2. I can create a cuckoo clock using HA automation to your smart speaker ← which wont be possible using only a smart speaker

  3. Many notification connected to you HA for example turn off a light or forget to switch off something after some period of time. Security measure if Door/Windows open after certain period of time. You can also making a smart washing machine and many more.

  4. Sending some crazy TTS notification to your device should be something to look forward too.

Anyway you’ll will be able to see it after you play around with it. Anything that you can think is now possible. There are no boundary to it. You just need to find away to do tinkering with it.