Home Assistant. Offline smart home automation you can control.
Home doesn’t have to be 100% dumb in 2023. But you have to do a little work for it.
Bonus: your smart home will be more capable and interconnected than any of the commercial smart home options because they are all busy trying to control the entire ecosystem and sue each other. (maybe Matter changes that but I’m not holding my breath)
It’s really easy to control it with voice by basically replacing Google assistant on an android device. Look up the Wyoming Protocol interaction in Home Assistant
You can use Sonos speakers or any generic smart speaker that is not bound to a brand (like Google /Alexa)
Pro tip, Ikea smart speakers are rebranded Sonos at lower prices, and come hidden in all kinds of furniture forms.
However you don’t need to wholesale jump to HA and lose voice. For $8 CAD I got the Nabu-casa HA cloud assistant and SSL proxy (portal to your home HA without need to punch holes in firewalls) and their cloud assistant integrates with Google or Alexa.
So you can tie everything together and then move things over to the HA ecosystem as you have time, eventually cutting the Google/Amazon limbs off.
You supposedly can connect Google home/Alexa to Home Assistant but it’s not for the feint of heart. I’m just starting this and it’s not a weekend project. Might be a few days before it’s up and running.
The main issue holding me back is that I don’t want Amazon to link my house electronics to my actual account.
I set it up on its own VLAN and I’m starting to onboard it but hit a bump when it asked for my Amazon account credentials. So when I have some free time, I’m going to create a dummy Amazon account that will be used to control Alexa. Probably hook it up with a Privacy credit card set to burn after the first purchase with a limit of $5.
There is a plan to integrate these more tightly into Home Assistant, but it won’t be for a while.
Google because they have the best voice control and I’ve already given them my data through Gmail, search, and for many years chrome. It’s the one compromise I make because the product is good enough it’s worth the cost to me. But if you don’t want them having your data, your voice options are pretty limited.
Home Assistant. Offline smart home automation you can control.
Home doesn’t have to be 100% dumb in 2023. But you have to do a little work for it.
Bonus: your smart home will be more capable and interconnected than any of the commercial smart home options because they are all busy trying to control the entire ecosystem and sue each other. (maybe Matter changes that but I’m not holding my breath)
What do you use for a voice assistant/ speaker mic set up?
That’s the only thing holding me back. And the Mycroft stuff blew up. :(
Honestly I rarely use voice controls for my setup. It’s all time/motion triggers. Voice commands are for weird one offs.
This is HomeAssistant’s year of the voice. It’s all built in now; they just released wake word capabilities.
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Not OP, but I use Google Assistant at the moment. Gonna switch as soon Home Assistant makes it possible.
It’s really easy to control it with voice by basically replacing Google assistant on an android device. Look up the Wyoming Protocol interaction in Home Assistant
You can use Sonos speakers or any generic smart speaker that is not bound to a brand (like Google /Alexa)
Pro tip, Ikea smart speakers are rebranded Sonos at lower prices, and come hidden in all kinds of furniture forms.
However you don’t need to wholesale jump to HA and lose voice. For $8 CAD I got the Nabu-casa HA cloud assistant and SSL proxy (portal to your home HA without need to punch holes in firewalls) and their cloud assistant integrates with Google or Alexa.
So you can tie everything together and then move things over to the HA ecosystem as you have time, eventually cutting the Google/Amazon limbs off.
Thanks for this. I am going to look into it.
You supposedly can connect Google home/Alexa to Home Assistant but it’s not for the feint of heart. I’m just starting this and it’s not a weekend project. Might be a few days before it’s up and running.
The main issue holding me back is that I don’t want Amazon to link my house electronics to my actual account.
I set it up on its own VLAN and I’m starting to onboard it but hit a bump when it asked for my Amazon account credentials. So when I have some free time, I’m going to create a dummy Amazon account that will be used to control Alexa. Probably hook it up with a Privacy credit card set to burn after the first purchase with a limit of $5.
There is a plan to integrate these more tightly into Home Assistant, but it won’t be for a while.
Google because they have the best voice control and I’ve already given them my data through Gmail, search, and for many years chrome. It’s the one compromise I make because the product is good enough it’s worth the cost to me. But if you don’t want them having your data, your voice options are pretty limited.
Ooh whenever I have the budget for this it looks amazing
It can be a bit of work, but if you’re a tech geek you’ll enjoy shopping for / making compatible devices and getting it all set up.