Home Assistant

I like both techy things and a sense of privacy. These 2 bite eachother plenty of times, whenever a cool new gadget comes out it is connected to an app and that is pulling data into either a US or Chinese cloud.

I got real tired of having a whole bunch of apps to operate things in my house, from lights to the security camera to monitoring the charging of my electric car. So, I bought a home assistant green. This is basically a mini computer dedicated to home automation.

Things I monitor with it are:

• Lights: I have a bunch of Hue lights in the house
• Car Charger: it keeps track of charging sessions and system health.
• Music system: it has fully replaced the sonos app for music in the house.
• Presence: it tracks who is home, allowing for automations with the AC and heating.
• Climate control: the AC is connected to it, allowing for smart schedules.
• Energy consumption: with the energy prices what they are over here, it is wise to be on top of what is being consumed by the house.

Additionally you can hook many interesting bits into home automation, such as useful information from our local weather and environment agency.

The system is a great way to get into home automation. It actually is very addictive, once you get the first things connected you always look for other things to connect. And the best thing? It is all local, nothing goes into a cloud.