Choosing a smart home hub

How long have you been using the hue devices without the hue hub? I heard that there is a bunch of limitations to not using the hue hub, also ZHA can't update the hue firmwares as far as I know.

Seems impossible to source any cm4. So im abandoning HA for my new home and looking at Homey Pro instead.

Hi very good video to start home automation. Like to buy the home asssitant yellow. But on the given link will have many option which one to choose

Love your videos. Thanks for the trouble that you take. A question - I have a local automation company which is setting up wifi switches in my new home. It's called Buildtrack India. They are NOT integrated with Home Assistant but they are wifi based, so will I be able to use HA to detect them?

Thanks for this video, i am trying to DIY my home

Hey HomeAutomationGuy 😁 love your videos .. I’m new to the smart home world and I’ve been watching your content and educating myself on the best one for me — going with ZHA. I wanted to find out if the Zigbee dongle can be placed anywhere in the house or just it be physically connected to the Raspberry Pi? I want to put the RPi in my study (where all my other gadgetry sits) and wall plug the dongle in a more centralised area in the (ideally this would wirelessly connect to the RPi) 😊 I hope this makes sense and you can help..

I clicked into the link you had in the description and it took me to Home Assitant Yellow. I looked through the buying options and it looks like you buy most of the things but you’d need to buy a raspberry pi cm4 separately. Is this any cm4 or is it very specific on which one to buy? I’d rather ask than buy the wrong one.

Thanks for the great video! I just subscribed to your channel. I'm brand new to home automation and looking at Home Assistant Yellow. All of the options include this statement: "This kit includes everything in the flagship version except the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4." This is confusing me, because I thought one of the benefits of Yellow was not having to get a separate Raspberry Pi. It'd be great if you could tell me which Yellow option you'd recommend for a total "newbie".

Does home automation support Kasa? I have a lot of switches that are Kasa used with my Alexa. I want to get away from the problem I have when the internet goes down.

cooooool

I literally just got my hand on this, and I consider myself a network tinkerer, by no means an expert. However, even though this doesnt have a great turn key solution, I think the control avaialbel will be worth the effort eventually. Homekit is pretty but in the end there will be limitations.

I just moved into a house with 3 floors and five rooms. This video was very good so you've got a new subscriber!

I plan to use Home Assistant to control 5 Gree Wifi enabled Air Conditioners, 7 ceiling fans and 6 standing fans, for sensors it will be Xiaomi temperature and humid sensors in every room and the common areas (12 sensors!), some Sonoff wifi switches and sensors, door sensors (4 or 5). Plus indoor and outdoor cameras.

Love this solution but unfortunately the brain of the module the Raspberry CM4 is almost impossible to find. Suggestions.?

Can this single hub cover all areas of the house?

Hi Home automation guy. Ther is de e problem with home assistant ZHA that still makes it necessary to have a second Hub. All low energy zigbee devices (without battery ) are not supported. Many expensive zigbee switches therefore still need another Hub. An example of a not supported switch is friend of hue. A second older deconz dongle in your home assistance hub can solve this problem but will lead to two zigbee networks in your house

I have an old Zigbee heating system that is unsupported by ZHA. Is there anyway to access it or is it a lost cause? Thank you.

Hi HA Guy nice video but your blog page doesn't upload

does using a hub help free up wifi usage and not having 50 things connect to my network?

Home assistant is kinda more than a hub. It's the super-hub. Such a hub that you can add other hubs to it as integrations and add-ons and you're back to having just one app. I can operate my ring alarm through home assistant faster than the ring app can even start.

You crucially forgot to mention that the Nabi Casa has an annual subscription cost. Key bit of info.

It would be great if you looked at Hubitat C8. I have little joy with HA, couldn't get most of my WiFi sockets to work, they are TP-link P110, ZigBee all worked ok, even got Google Nest working, but I found HA quite confusing - given I have 30+ years IT experience, as an IT professional, something seems quite wrong. I have a Pi, previously I ran it on Proxmox, and I'm willing to start from scratch on the Pi, maybe this original install and config went very wrong. Hubitat is also locally managed, and if the company went bust I presume all the existing automations would continue. Many sockets we have bought operate through the web, even NEST works via the web.

'promo sm' 💪

Alan, I must say I really enjoy your playlist. The professionalism and no-nonsense approach is great. There is a lot of noise out there on smart homes (mainly coming from America where brands differ and constraints vary). Thank you so much for taking the time uploading this. I wish there was a way to support your channel (maybe there’s is but couldn’t find it so please drop me a line if there is). G

What happens when for example a Hue light is already been paired to a hub before? Does Home Assistent still find it?

Poor TechFlow 😂😂😂😂

I have a hub for hive, broadlink, sonoff, aqara. I have the HA yellow so can I now just turn off all those hubs?

Like you, I've just bought a house and will be setting up a smart home. I am new to this game so ordered the yellow kit with PoE. Just wondering now if I should have bought the standard yellow kit instead. This is all so new. Hope you don't mind questions. X

The Homey Pro for the win! 1 Epic Hub that works with everything.

One question that pops up every time Home Assistant is mentioned: did you look at the OpenHAB alternative, and if so, why did it end up not being your choice?

I didn‘t know HA yellow or nabu casa. Thanks for presenting them.

Looking forward to using home assistant, still waiting to be able to buy a RPi 4 CM, they are as rare as hens teeth at the moment, so I'll maybe get to it at the end of 2023. 🤣

Hi, could you please send the information regarding the Bluetooth dongle you use with HA Yellow? REgards, Great videos.

Can't wait to see the progress. Great videos and are very informational. Thank you!

I started learning home assistant in July 2022. I have invested around two months in learning, reading and experimenting before I got to a level where I could feel comfortable about using it and make it available for my family, but I feel it was worth it, because it expanded my mind and understanding on how home automation works and what happens under the hood.
It is not an understatement that Home Assistant is complex and has a steep-ish learning curve. Maybe this was because I chose to learn alone. But if you have a friend already using it, go ask for explanation. Home Assistant has some quirks and pitfalls of which once you are aware of, everything goes much, MUCH faster.

Hi, congrats for your new apartment and good luck with these new series of videos, always following you with a close attention to your contents...

I have a question... how good it is the integrated zigbee antenna in home assistant yellow? Does it worth it? Or better continuing with sonoff zigbee and zigbee2mqtt? Thanks

I too wanted a local solution and didn't want any cloud involvement. A few years ago, I spent time trying to understand both Home Assistant and OpenHAB on a Raspberry PI. I went back and forth between the two then threw up my hands in frustration. Both had way too many technology hurdles for me, even though I'd spent 30+ years in IT. I then found Hubitat and that's where I'm at now. (I have no Apple products in my home and never will so that's a non-starter. I'm an Apple bigot and not ashamed to say so.) Even though Hubitat also presented me with some technology challenges I've persevered and implemented the automations I wanted, lighting control, integration with a traditional home security system, garage door integration, and presence automation. Most of my financial investment is in devices and not the hub, so if Hubitat or Home Assistant or "XYZ" disappears someday I'll still have most of my financial investment intact since only a small part of my investment is in the hub. I know Home Assistant has (thankfully) matured in recent years and new users can be more insulated from its underlying technology, but I still am not a fan of relying on a community for answers and updates. I find that pouring over hundreds of posts from users a hassle when I'm trying to solve a problem. In those cases, it's hard to "see the forest from the trees", especially when some posts don't exactly relate to my situation, or the poster wasn't accurate with their response. Both Home Assistant and Hubitat rely heavily on their communities and that still troubles me. It's too Wild West but home automation is still an emerging market. There will be winners and losers as this market matures so I'm trying to keep myself as flexible as I can to handle that inevitability.

What's about the prozessing power of HomeAssistant Yellow?
I run my HomeAssistant at the moment on my QNAP NAS in a virtual machine.
Would your recommend to switch to HA Yellow, and if so why?

I'm talking about prozessing power because of the future and possible plans with local text recognition for Assist.

Home assistant for a beginner is an utter nightmare. I’ve wasted so many hours trying to get it working and keeping working. I feel like everyday something stops working or it needs restarting.
Going to wait for matter hubs, probably the SmartThings and go back to basics.

This is definitely making me consider the HA Yellow kit, as there are just too many hubs to buy and it will save me on energy costs with hosting HA on a PC or Server. Thanx for the great content. I cannot afford the network kit you installed, but I managed to do the exact same thing you did, by fixing up my internal network first, then starting on adding automation devices. 👍

Any tips on finding a Compute Module 4?

As someone new to smart homes and assistants. I love when I can see what people are doing, and how they set them up.

As an IT / cloud / network engineer I disagree to some degree. A poorly designed/secured network will still work, it may even seem very fast etc.

The real issue in my eyes is that most people don't give their network security that much input... Many large companies don't provide WFH staff a separate WiFi point /router/firewall and then they use lots email and SMS based 2FA... Layering up on such issues will become a issue, it's just a matter of time.

"If you don't schedule maintenance for your environment, your environment will schedule maintenance for you". - Unknown

I started my smart home journey with HA yellow 3 months ago. It's crucial to communicate that HA doesn't always give you full access to end device functionality so buyer beware when selecting devices to purchase.

@marzbar referenced....

Using a yellow now? Well I guess it was a good ride watching someone manage their smarthome with docker.

I use an Intel NUC NUC6CAYH with Home Assistant OS. The NUC has more capacity and power than the Home Assistant Yellow, which also makes the hub a bit more future-proof. I use only two hubs, the NUC with Home Assistant and the Aqara M1S, the rest runs on a Zigbee stick with Zigbee2mqtt. So far I have to say it's the most stable hub I've ever had. I can even use the integrated Bluetooth interface for BLE, and the WLAN as failover.

I bought a smart home yellow and still waiting for it . Was supposed to get it in January now it's March and they said they don't think it will even come in March ....😞

5 hubs ...in 1 house?! Haiyaaaaaa

So will you be using Home Assistant Yellow? Any input on performance once you have a couple of hundred devies?