STEEP LEARNING CURVE! They were not joking.

I have always considered myself pretty tech savvy, I had a reasonable amount of Tuya devices, Logitech Harmony and Aarlo Cameras. I needed a solution to integrate central control. Google Home was not cutting the mustard, I researched Homey, Smart Things, Insteon, Home Seer, Control4, Hubitat and Home Assistant.

Everything I was looking at mentioned a “steep learning curve” with Home Assistant, but it looked amazing what it could achieve, especially with the dashboards. In 2020 I took the plunge and brought a Home Assistant Blue.

Here we are in April 2025, I am still climbing this learning curve. Even though tech savvy, I have never properly coded in any language previously. I now have a grasp on yaml, JavaScript, html, Jinja, CSS and JSON. This is only the tip of the Iceberg.

What a headache it was to intergrate my Aarlo Cameras, I will admit it took close to a couple of years. Getting Graphana and InfluxDB working about the same. I followed the tutorials and countless youtube clips and finally got it.

I can write templates now without having to copy and paste or refer to other example constantly. yaml syntax and indentation is finally a breeze. A lot of the guides out there are from programmer type people, they seem to miss the basic steps that a true beginner just does not get. Where in the hell is configuration.yaml?, what is an integration?, what is an add-on?, how in the hell do I reload the front end?

I am pleased I persevered, it has been a 3 year journey. In the past few months I have started using Chat GPT and Co-pilot AI. These are good tools but I am pleased I learned it manually before attempting AI. You actually need to know what you are looking at to steer the AI in the right direction.

Home Assistant is a commitment, a 2 year project minimum, then a life commitment. I make it my aim to make detailed posts of things I finally work out. I know the hurdles of a beginner.

Selfless work for the greater good, I am pleased I have found a community full of people like that.

Everyday you make progress, Every step may be fruitful.
Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path.
You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and Glory of the climb.

~Chykan Hunter ~