So far this is as close as I’ve seen to what you are looking for. I would highly doubt Control4 has any special deal with Sonos to offer more features. You have to remember that HA is free and attempting to reach the widest audience possible. Therefore they have more of a shotgun approach to integrations with a massive catalog of supported components. Some of them are very basic while others include nearly everything you could ask for. For example the latest Nest component pretty much recreates your thermostat UI into the HA UI. I find that pretty awesome.
As the old saying goes nothing in life comes free. You trade monetary expense for a time expense with HA. That time expense is spent in setup as well as patience waiting for advanced features to roll out.
Yeah I’d seen that, that’s what got me thinking it was probably possible in terms of UI which made me wonder if it was possible in terms of software / interaction with other services.
I know someone asked on reddit a while ago about how you could play a movie in Plex on Apple TV using HA and the reply was basically why bother, HA is just for automation but HA already seems to have come so far that it feels like it is / could be possible to interact with everything else in the market of smart homes. Interesting about nest, will check that out.
Sadly I have no skills in programming / coding but do love to go deep into projects so already thinking about what could be possible
I was being sarcastic. The /s at the end of my post is Internet shorthand for sarcasm.
If I may turn things around, it was difficult to tell if you were being sarcastic. You’re comparing an expensive, high-end, commercial product, handled by licensed installers, to a free, community-run DIY project. Effectively you asked when will something free be like something costing big bucks. Short answer, as soon as dozens of people volunteer their time and effort to do it.
Home Assistant is very capable but requires a significant investment of one’s time. Control4 is very capable but requires a significant investment of one’s money (because you pay someone else to install and configure it … that’s Control4’s modus operandi).
Internet shorthand for sarcasm! You learn something everyday.
No insult or sarcasm was intended on my part, i was merely wondering whether it was possible for HA to come close to other “installed” options. Jsternadels post was useful, good to know that Control4 “only” has money and dedicated teams on their side and it’s not probably the case they have special access to Sonos etc.
Completely agree HA is a time investment, it’s a hobby as well as a function.
Would be great to see any other examples of people using HA as a home control application rather than home automation application
Last time I tried control 4 at a friend’s home I was very underwhelmed. Nothing was intuitive. Admittedly that was probably 9 or so years ago, and it may have improved.
Even if it has improved markedly, I would prefer an open system that I can understand and hack, even if the GUI might not be as flash.
After using Control 4, AMX and Crestron I believe HA surpasses these mostly due to huge price difference and flexibility.
UI wise.i believe you can match these since web is completely configurable and docs are not pay to play. Basically you can Google how modify frontend but that’s not even needed with Lovelace and many HA and 3rd party add one.
If you have ability to program any of those systems I am certain you can do magic with HA
EDIT
HA has no hardware which would be minus technically. But “works with Crestron/AMX” products have api as well as most ptoducts and hardware they sale. For home it is HA hands down. For SOHO and commercial I think I would still use it given large budget.due to less vendor lock-in, reduced vendor support and long turn flexibility
And their story on Instagram about os.v3 makes Control4 look pretty good but yes understand there are heavy costs to that.
Thanks for the links about UI though.
In terms of distinction @123 I mean from my limited understanding and new to HA viewpoint it has automation at its core, I can set lights to turn on and off under conditions, I can set Sonos to turn on and off, or lock doors, turn up thermostat while Control4 seems (again from limited experience) to join up other services better, ie Control4 can be used to choose a tv input and then change channel on your sky box or select a specific film from a library to watch.
Again, and this was part of my question, do people think these sort of interactions will become possible in HA? Is it part of HA’s aims, does it just rely on people wanting these features and people with the skill to create them or do services like Control4 have a hardware or software advantage/usp that means they can change channels on a sky box, browse a media gallery and select tv sources or is it just they have the budget / people and objective of doing that with their product?
HA can do these things. My AV receiver automatically turns on and off as required as well as switching inputs based on what I do. ie: If I turn the TV on the AV receiver gets turned on and set to the correct input. If I play music through a particular Chromecast Audio, then the AV receiver switches on and to the appropriate input for that. If either the TV or music is turned off, so done the AV receiver. There are also conditions to prevent one automation messing with another, so if the TV gets turned on and the music stopped, the AV receiver switches to the input for the TV but doesn’t get turned off by the music stopped automation.
What HA can do is mostly only limited by your hardware and your imagination.
What exactly are we supposed to see there? I see a montage of neat wiring bundles, distant views of wall-mounted TVs, smiling employees, samples of simple UI’s, group shots of smiling employees, etc.
Honestly, Control4 and Home Assistant serve the same purpose and achieve the same things. Control4 is for people who have more money than time and interest in researching, connecting, programming, sourcing, and installing a home automation system (which includes the automation of an AV system). Home Assistant is for DIYers.
Cheers Dave. I’d seen awesome home assistant but the other link is new to me and thanks for the info on your av receiver! Sounds a good setup. Appreciate you taking the time.
Note that in an open project, the answer to “will a feature be implemented” is usually “sure, if and when someone cares enough to donate the man-hours.” (Unless there is a good architectural reason the feature should not be implemented.)
That’s Tileboard not hadashaboard. Either way you are right that you dont need it with Lovelace UI. The thing that interests me with Tileboard is its all written in Angular. With an extensive background in Angular development I can fork it and do quite literally whatever I want. I wouldn’t suggest using it for the main HA interface. My plans, if/when time allows, is to setup Tileboard for a wall mounted tablet. I realize the same could probably be achieved with lovelace for device or user specific UI components but so far it doesnt seem exactly easy to do. And with Tileboard there is no learning curve for me. Pull source make it do what i want and push to /www/tileboard directory and done.
HA could do these things if someone wanted to write the code for it. However I prefer the separation of concerns approach that HA currently has. Your example of load a movie from a media library is cool but im not sure how well that’s going to work with my 6TB (and growing) of media content.
I dont personally know any of the HA devs so i cant say for certain but from using HA for a couple years now it seems the overall aim of the project is to be an automation hub. It integrates with a ton of services but doesnt try to do everything those services can. For example Emby is my media server / player for all the content I have. HA knows when something is playing via the integration and i get a nice card in the UI with the current content on it. I can have HA act on that by dimming the lights or what not if its a movie. But why would HA try to duplicate all of the countless man hours to do what Emby already can? Emby has an API that could be leveraged to do all of those things in HA but then anytime a breaking change is published in Emby someone on the HA dev team has to issue a patch.
This is where i think the separation of concerns idea comes in to play. Let the end user chose which services they like best and allow HA to receive status updates so it can act on them. I’d be surprised if HA tries to do anything like Control4 does anytime soon. Open Source usually doesnt have the resources in time or money to spend trying to incorporate all of those features into a single platform.
I see a site that has a linked in button that goes to their facebook page. And they want me to trust them to screw around with my technology? Also, they need to learn to hold a camera straight!
