Introduction to Home Assistant

Due to the variety of devices which are installed in my house, I thought I would take the plunge and learn to automate and monitor all of them with Home Assistant. Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform designed to be a central control system for smart home devices. It allows users to integrate and manage various devices, such as lights, thermostats, cameras, and sensors, from different manufacturers, regardless of their protocols (e.g., Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi).

The primary reason I am choosing to take this step is two fold. First a foremost, I am getting tired of each manufacturer of smart home products implementing their own app or protocol and then restricting that access to one person or phone. Essentially, I am getting tired and annoyed with all of the apps.

The second reason for doing this integration is to update my skillset and knowledge base to learn something new.

Finally, I want to do a few automations around the house to make our lives a little bit better. I am not the person who wants to turn on lights automatically, when I get out of bed. But it would be nice to have a few automations such as turning on a few lights at sunset, that sort of thing. Who knows, I may do much more than I originally planned.

Installation

Home assistant allows for a variety of installation methods. I choose to install the software as a docker image. I did not want to put this on dedicated hardware and I am actually trying to remove the raspberry pis from my network. So, a docker container seemed the best option and I had the perfect little computer for the task.

Upon installation into a docker container, the software was pretty intuitive to use for me. In order for the Home Assistant software to control wireless smart home devices, I purchased a USB Zigbee 3.0 Dongle from Amazon.

Zigbee is a wireless communication protocol based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency band (and sometimes 900 MHz in certain regions). It is designed for low-power consumption, enabling devices to run on batteries for months or even years. Zigbee supports mesh networking, where devices can relay data to extend the network’s range, making it ideal for home automation, industrial control, and sensor networks.

The USB Interface will allow my server to access and address the zigbee devices. There are several different protocols, however, for simplicity I am opting to focas on Zigbee enabled smart home devices. I connected the Zigbree USB controller to the server using a USB extension cable, which allows me to secure the controller outside of my server cabinet.

Initial Configuration

Once I completed the installation process and created my initial account, Home Assistant began to learn about my home network. Out of the box, it found my printer and DirectTV devices. With just a minor bit of work, I was able to configure and add in my Ring Alarm. All in all, it is a pretty impressive start. There is one failure, which is the Home Assistant server is having issues access the Bluetooth network, however, I am not planning on using it unless I need to do so. I will get that adapter sorted out at some point I suppose.

Connecting my first lamp

I was a bit excited when I connected my first lamp. I purchased a THIRDREALAITY LED bulb from Amazon, which is enabled for Zigbee.

When the power is applied to the bulb, it blinks three different colors to let you know that the bulb is in pairing mode. On the Home Assistant side, I clicked on Settings and Devices & Services. From the Integrations screen, I clicked on the Zigbee Adapter and then Configure. Now, I simply clicked on the “ADD DEVICE” button. After a few seconds of synchronizing, my Home Assistant had control over over my new light. It took my about 5 minutes to figure out how to automatically turn the light on at sunset and turn if off again a few hours later.

All in all, Home Assistant is preety cool thus far and I look forward to learning more about this piece of open source software.