{"slug": "home-assistant", "name": "Home Assistant", "category": "productivity", "category_name": "Productivity", "description": "Open-source, local-first home automation platform that connects smart devices from many manufacturers.", "recommenders": 47, "commenters": 109, "warners": 2, "score": 56.469, "rising": 17.8, "first": "2025-11-06", "latest": "2026-10-31", "why": "HN commenters like it for tying devices from many manufacturers into one place, keeping control local and private, and powering custom dashboards and energy-saving automations.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 45, "neutral": 66, "compare": 1, "warn": 2}, "spark": [2, 3, 1, 1, 3, 0, 5, 2, 5, 5, 5, 13], "listed": true, "loved": ["Device integrations", "Local and private"], "caveat": "Maintenance effort", "short_quote": "I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should.", "icon": true, "domain": "home-assistant.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.home-assistant.io/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Home Assistant"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like it for tying devices from many manufacturers into one place", "cites": [{"id": 772407888, "item_id": 48275493, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275493", "by": "nfrankel", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.", "excerpt": "I use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped"}, {"id": 737990880, "item_id": 46124430, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124430", "by": "joshstrange", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant is awesome and I highly recommend checking it out.", "excerpt": "Home Assistant is awesome and I highly recommend checking it out. Even if you have an existing smart house hub/platform you can often integrate HA in cleanly. I used SmartThings for years and was hesitant to switch but I was able to control all my devices in ST from HA without moving/repairing/etc devices over. Once I had seen the power of HA I started a _slow_ migration over (took over a year cause I was lazy). The ", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "smart home hub", "switched_from": "SmartThings", "story": "How Home Assistant became the most important project in your house"}, {"id": 795394272, "item_id": 49712142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49712142", "by": "akifbayram", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you're using Home Assistant, you can push any temperature sensor available.", "excerpt": "Spot on. If you're using Home Assistant, you can push any temperature sensor available. Zigbee, Zwave, BLE, 433mhz rtl sdr, etc. At one point, I was using the proprietary temperature sensors that were paired with my ecobee thermostat (for my ancient natural gas fired hydronic boiler). For the BLE sensors, your HA server must have bluetooth capabilities. I use a bluetooth dongle attached to a short USB extension cord.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation, AC control", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}]}, {"text": ", keeping control local and private", "cites": [{"id": 782900160, "item_id": 48931260, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931260", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use home assistant and I buy stuff specifically because it supports local connectivity", "excerpt": "Well my family doesn't live in the same country and most of my friends I don't see every day yet I communicate with them daily. Same with the communities I'm in, they're really active online. And all my stuff is connected yes but not through big tech cloud. It is pretty easy to avoid all that. I use home assistant and I buy stuff specifically because it supports local connectivity. The biggest issue is whatsapp for n", "context": "avoids big tech cloud", "use_case": "local home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Guerrilla London Bus Ads Mock Kylie Jenner's Meta Glasses Campaign"}, {"id": 788644112, "item_id": 49290257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290257", "by": "coreyp_1", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Home Assistant to gather info about my house.", "excerpt": "I use Home Assistant to gather info about my house. I use Zigbee devices exclusively (with the exception of a Z-wave device that was not available in a Zigbee flavor). Why? Because that protocol allows me to talk to the device, but the device itself can't phone home to something outside of my network. I, however, can still talk to the device via my personal system. From thermostats to switches to various monitors and", "context": "privacy-focused smart home user", "use_case": "smart home without cloud", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Why Connected Home Appliances?"}, {"id": 747872320, "item_id": 46742020, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742020", "by": "timwis", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant have a fully local voice assistant experience that's very pluggable and customisable.", "excerpt": "Home Assistant have a fully local voice assistant experience that's very pluggable and customisable. I believe it uses a fast whisper model for STT and piper for TTS. You can run it on a raspberry pi (or ideally an N100+), and for the microphone/speaker part, you can make your own or buy their off the shelf voice hardware, which works really well. https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/", "context": "", "use_case": "local voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?"}]}, {"text": ", and powering custom dashboards and energy-saving automations.", "cites": [{"id": 758432064, "item_id": 47402004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402004", "by": "tamimio", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard", "excerpt": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard to control and monitor the house, plus the app. It\u2019s very easy to setup and work with, maybe a bit convoluted in the initial setup but once done, you barely do anything until you add new sensor. You can setup a whole SCADA-like system with it, controlling your garden, power grid/solar and monitoring it, integrating CCTV and all, and it\u2019s free. A sim", "context": "", "use_case": "home monitoring and control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Home Assistant waters my plants"}, {"id": 782469008, "item_id": 48904313, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904313", "by": "lopis", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Then I use Home Assistant to send the current electricity price to that display when the price changes", "excerpt": "I don't have smart washers, but I did build a smart ESP32-based [0] zigbee numerical display. Then I use Home Assistant to send the current electricity price to that display when the price changes, and send a notification to all users' phones when electricity is cheap (< 0.05\u20ac/kWh) or expensive (> 0.15\u20ac/kWh). This helps me plan my laundry and dish washing, which are the only energy intensive appliances I have. I also", "context": "", "use_case": "electricity price notifications", "switched_from": "", "story": "Australia is offering free daytime electricity"}, {"id": 772401136, "item_id": 48275071, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275071", "by": "rebuilder", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it.", "excerpt": "I think it\u2019s also just that there\u2019s not that much it makes sense to automate in the home. I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it. Why would I want to automate lights? My cat feeder has a timer already. I\u2019m not about to get a smart lock and can\u2019t imagine why I would want to automate one. The useful things I do use it for are: -heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric ", "context": "", "use_case": "heating and EV charging automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is that it takes ongoing research, tinkering and maintenance", "cites": [{"id": 799463408, "item_id": 49966463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966463", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Home Assistant for all of the reasons you list but I wouldn't say it \"just works\".", "excerpt": "I love Home Assistant for all of the reasons you list but I wouldn't say it \"just works\". It's the kind of thing that requires a lot of research and tinkering to get right. AI does actually help a lot here though, if you tell your agent \"setup the new smart lightbulbs I just bought in Home Assistant and add them to my Living Room area\", it just does it.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry\""}, {"id": 792175777, "item_id": 49510986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510986", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old", "excerpt": "This was me a few years ago, but the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old. These days, I use native HomeKit for everything. Preferably over Matter/Thread, but HomeKit is a requirement. No HA. If it doesn't native work with HomeKit, it doesn't run in our house.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell"}, {"id": 751279296, "item_id": 46954956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954956", "by": "gravis", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "give people the power of HA without needing to maintain it themselves", "excerpt": "Hey HN - ex-GitLab here, building Selora Homes: Professional installation and managed support for Home Assistant. The idea is to give people the power of HA without needing to maintain it themselves. Most HA enthusiasts are happy to do this for their homes, but don't want to manage HA for parents, friends, etc. We pre-install a smart hub (miniPC) for each subscriber and we maintain management access on the host via W", "context": "ex-GitLab, building Selora Homes", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)"}]}, {"text": ", and some users said trust was shaken by private data being sent to a third party by default.", "cites": [{"id": 801995745, "item_id": 50124734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124734", "by": "janice1999", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.", "excerpt": "That makes it even worse. A leak is still a leak even when you haven't notice it. Personally I use HIBP but I would still be annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}, {"id": 802011200, "item_id": 50125700, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50125700", "by": "unsnap_biceps", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system.", "excerpt": "Trust is hard won and easily lost. The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system. Things like this is a huge surprise that gives me pause to wonder what else it's doing that I wouldn't approve of. If I feel like I need to start setting up firewalls between HA and my internet to protect my privacy and data, I'm more likely to look towards alternati", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Device integrations", "summary": "Integrations for many manufacturers allow cross-vendor automations from a single app.", "quotes": [{"id": 772407888, "item_id": 48275493, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275493", "by": "nfrankel", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.", "excerpt": "I use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped"}, {"id": 795394272, "item_id": 49712142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49712142", "by": "akifbayram", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you're using Home Assistant, you can push any temperature sensor available.", "excerpt": "Spot on. If you're using Home Assistant, you can push any temperature sensor available. Zigbee, Zwave, BLE, 433mhz rtl sdr, etc. At one point, I was using the proprietary temperature sensors that were paired with my ecobee thermostat (for my ancient natural gas fired hydronic boiler). For the BLE sensors, your HA server must have bluetooth capabilities. I use a bluetooth dongle attached to a short USB extension cord.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation, AC control", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}, {"id": 737990880, "item_id": 46124430, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124430", "by": "joshstrange", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant is awesome and I highly recommend checking it out.", "excerpt": "Home Assistant is awesome and I highly recommend checking it out. Even if you have an existing smart house hub/platform you can often integrate HA in cleanly. I used SmartThings for years and was hesitant to switch but I was able to control all my devices in ST from HA without moving/repairing/etc devices over. Once I had seen the power of HA I started a _slow_ migration over (took over a year cause I was lazy). The ", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "smart home hub", "switched_from": "SmartThings", "story": "How Home Assistant became the most important project in your house"}]}, {"label": "Local and private", "summary": "Users pick it to keep their smart home off big-tech clouds and under local control.", "quotes": [{"id": 782900160, "item_id": 48931260, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931260", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use home assistant and I buy stuff specifically because it supports local connectivity", "excerpt": "Well my family doesn't live in the same country and most of my friends I don't see every day yet I communicate with them daily. Same with the communities I'm in, they're really active online. And all my stuff is connected yes but not through big tech cloud. It is pretty easy to avoid all that. I use home assistant and I buy stuff specifically because it supports local connectivity. The biggest issue is whatsapp for n", "context": "avoids big tech cloud", "use_case": "local home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Guerrilla London Bus Ads Mock Kylie Jenner's Meta Glasses Campaign"}, {"id": 788644112, "item_id": 49290257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290257", "by": "coreyp_1", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Home Assistant to gather info about my house.", "excerpt": "I use Home Assistant to gather info about my house. I use Zigbee devices exclusively (with the exception of a Z-wave device that was not available in a Zigbee flavor). Why? Because that protocol allows me to talk to the device, but the device itself can't phone home to something outside of my network. I, however, can still talk to the device via my personal system. From thermostats to switches to various monitors and", "context": "privacy-focused smart home user", "use_case": "smart home without cloud", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Why Connected Home Appliances?"}, {"id": 799438496, "item_id": 49964906, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49964906", "by": "whatsdowndog", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have used home assistant in multiple homes, so I'm sticking with it.", "excerpt": "Slightly related. I'm building a house in India and I'm a big fan of locally controller home automation (without cloud). I have used home assistant in multiple homes, so I'm sticking with it. Everything is being automated with knx. The pain point right now is, there are no knx fan controllers, at least not in India. Wherever I can not use knx (such as tower fans, robot vacuums or de-humidifiers), I use Xiaomi because", "context": "building a house in India", "use_case": "local home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is going on with ceiling fans"}]}, {"label": "Dashboards and UIs", "summary": "People build custom dashboards on old tablets, Kindles and wall displays.", "quotes": [{"id": 758432064, "item_id": 47402004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402004", "by": "tamimio", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard", "excerpt": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard to control and monitor the house, plus the app. It\u2019s very easy to setup and work with, maybe a bit convoluted in the initial setup but once done, you barely do anything until you add new sensor. You can setup a whole SCADA-like system with it, controlling your garden, power grid/solar and monitoring it, integrating CCTV and all, and it\u2019s free. A sim", "context": "", "use_case": "home monitoring and control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Home Assistant waters my plants"}, {"id": 800651120, "item_id": 50040695, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50040695", "by": "rwyinuse", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "and of course Home Assistant dashboard. They are awesome little machines.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing, maybe it's time to buy some more old Kindles... I use bunch as smart paintings (with changing pictures generated locally with stable diffusion), and of course Home Assistant dashboard. They are awesome little machines.", "context": "", "use_case": "dashboard on old Kindle", "switched_from": "", "story": "The RAM shortage is bringing back DDR4"}, {"id": 768764144, "item_id": 48047759, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047759", "by": "gandutraveler", "date": "2026-05-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Best family app to me is home assistant.", "excerpt": "Best family app to me is home assistant. It's so powerful and you can build so many custom UIs on it. I started it for smart home automations but on daily basis I use it more for managing tasks,scheduling reminders. And with Claude code remote even my not so technical wife uses it to build her tiny utility apps.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home, tasks, reminders", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I Learned Making an App for My Family"}]}, {"label": "Local voice", "summary": "Its voice assistant can run fully locally and is pluggable and customisable.", "quotes": [{"id": 747872320, "item_id": 46742020, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742020", "by": "timwis", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant have a fully local voice assistant experience that's very pluggable and customisable.", "excerpt": "Home Assistant have a fully local voice assistant experience that's very pluggable and customisable. I believe it uses a fast whisper model for STT and piper for TTS. You can run it on a raspberry pi (or ideally an N100+), and for the microphone/speaker part, you can make your own or buy their off the shelf voice hardware, which works really well. https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/", "context": "", "use_case": "local voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?"}, {"id": 782890064, "item_id": 48930629, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48930629", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use a home assistant voice preview speaker, connected to a locally hosted whisper instance backed by Qwen 3.6", "excerpt": "I kinda have that though. I use a home assistant voice preview speaker, connected to a locally hosted whisper instance backed by Qwen 3.6. All local and fairly energy-reasonable :) Just saying it's not impossible to have your cake and eat it.", "context": "", "use_case": "local voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "Guerrilla London Bus Ads Mock Kylie Jenner's Meta Glasses Campaign"}, {"id": 800362643, "item_id": 50022665, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50022665", "by": "cco", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is my setup for Home Assistant voice", "excerpt": "Yeah maybe I'll play around with different precision, I did see improvement when I went from fp4 to full fidelity though. This is my setup for Home Assistant voice, parakeet for STT, GLM 5.3 to generate responses, and Kokoro for TTS. I use local routing for simple commands like turn on the lights, but if I want to ask questions or something, it gets routed to GLM 5.3. It is basically free, half a cent per turn maybe,", "context": "", "use_case": "voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB"}]}, {"label": "Energy optimization", "summary": "Commenters use it to shift heating, EV charging and chores to cheaper electricity.", "quotes": [{"id": 772401136, "item_id": 48275071, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275071", "by": "rebuilder", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it.", "excerpt": "I think it\u2019s also just that there\u2019s not that much it makes sense to automate in the home. I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it. Why would I want to automate lights? My cat feeder has a timer already. I\u2019m not about to get a smart lock and can\u2019t imagine why I would want to automate one. The useful things I do use it for are: -heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric ", "context": "", "use_case": "heating and EV charging automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped"}, {"id": 782469008, "item_id": 48904313, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904313", "by": "lopis", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Then I use Home Assistant to send the current electricity price to that display when the price changes", "excerpt": "I don't have smart washers, but I did build a smart ESP32-based [0] zigbee numerical display. Then I use Home Assistant to send the current electricity price to that display when the price changes, and send a notification to all users' phones when electricity is cheap (< 0.05\u20ac/kWh) or expensive (> 0.15\u20ac/kWh). This helps me plan my laundry and dish washing, which are the only energy intensive appliances I have. I also", "context": "", "use_case": "electricity price notifications", "switched_from": "", "story": "Australia is offering free daytime electricity"}, {"id": 800304560, "item_id": 50019035, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019035", "by": "AdrianB1", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used a Shelly relay and Home Assistant, it was simpler", "excerpt": "I was not interested about smart home. At all. Then my father asked me to help him install an automatic switch for external lights in the yard. I never did that, I used a Shelly relay and Home Assistant, it was simpler (yes, sounds strange, but it was simpler). Then I found that I can automate some stuff in the house that was manual until then, so I did some. 4 years later I have more than 50 relays and sensors in 2 ", "context": "developer with 50+ relays and sensors in 2 houses", "use_case": "home and irrigation automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard"}]}, {"label": "Responsiveness", "summary": "One switcher found the same devices responded instantly compared with slow, flaky HomeKit.", "quotes": [{"id": 801695616, "item_id": 50105976, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105976", "by": "pornel", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should.", "excerpt": "HomeKit is so painfully slow and flaky. I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should. Apple is so terrible at this. They have nobody to blame: it's their system, their protocol (I have pre-Matter devices), their home hub, their certified devices. Home Assistant with a pile of community-maintained python hacks runs circles around Apple.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home control", "switched_from": "HomeKit", "story": "Siri is so bad at everything"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Maintenance effort", "summary": "It does not 'just work' and needs research, tinkering and ongoing admin.", "quotes": [{"id": 799463408, "item_id": 49966463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966463", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Home Assistant for all of the reasons you list but I wouldn't say it \"just works\".", "excerpt": "I love Home Assistant for all of the reasons you list but I wouldn't say it \"just works\". It's the kind of thing that requires a lot of research and tinkering to get right. AI does actually help a lot here though, if you tell your agent \"setup the new smart lightbulbs I just bought in Home Assistant and add them to my Living Room area\", it just does it.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry\""}, {"id": 792175777, "item_id": 49510986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510986", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old", "excerpt": "This was me a few years ago, but the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old. These days, I use native HomeKit for everything. Preferably over Matter/Thread, but HomeKit is a requirement. No HA. If it doesn't native work with HomeKit, it doesn't run in our house.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell"}, {"id": 751279296, "item_id": 46954956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954956", "by": "gravis", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "give people the power of HA without needing to maintain it themselves", "excerpt": "Hey HN - ex-GitLab here, building Selora Homes: Professional installation and managed support for Home Assistant. The idea is to give people the power of HA without needing to maintain it themselves. Most HA enthusiasts are happy to do this for their homes, but don't want to manage HA for parents, friends, etc. We pre-install a smart hub (miniPC) for each subscriber and we maintain management access on the host via W", "context": "ex-GitLab, building Selora Homes", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)"}]}, {"label": "Privacy trust", "summary": "Users were troubled to learn data was sent to a third party by default.", "quotes": [{"id": 802011200, "item_id": 50125700, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50125700", "by": "unsnap_biceps", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system.", "excerpt": "Trust is hard won and easily lost. The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system. Things like this is a huge surprise that gives me pause to wonder what else it's doing that I wouldn't approve of. If I feel like I need to start setting up firewalls between HA and my internet to protect my privacy and data, I'm more likely to look towards alternati", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}, {"id": 801995745, "item_id": 50124734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124734", "by": "janice1999", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.", "excerpt": "That makes it even worse. A leak is still a leak even when you haven't notice it. Personally I use HIBP but I would still be annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}]}, {"label": "Initial setup", "summary": "The initial setup can be convoluted, and home automation is a rabbit hole.", "quotes": [{"id": 758432064, "item_id": 47402004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402004", "by": "tamimio", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard", "excerpt": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard to control and monitor the house, plus the app. It\u2019s very easy to setup and work with, maybe a bit convoluted in the initial setup but once done, you barely do anything until you add new sensor. You can setup a whole SCADA-like system with it, controlling your garden, power grid/solar and monitoring it, integrating CCTV and all, and it\u2019s free. A sim", "context": "", "use_case": "home monitoring and control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Home Assistant waters my plants"}, {"id": 737996960, "item_id": 46124810, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124810", "by": "iRomain", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run it in a VM on a proxmox server (because I use it for other stuff), it works like a charm.", "excerpt": "I am glad home assistant (HA) gets some exposure. I run it in a VM on a proxmox server (because I use it for other stuff), it works like a charm. If you only need HA buy the dedicated hardware they sell or buy a mini PC. For my lights and switches (via the wall module), I am 100% Philips hue which is expensive but make the best smart lights money can buy and works as expected locally even if the internet or my HA ser", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "How Home Assistant became the most important project in your house"}]}, {"label": "Developer conduct", "summary": "One commenter was turned off by what they called toxic developers.", "quotes": [{"id": 801992928, "item_id": 50124558, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124558", "by": "janice1999", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Toxic developers turned me off Home Assistant.", "excerpt": "Toxic developers turned me off Home Assistant. The same developer is the star of this issue: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}]}], "who": [{"by": "bengalister", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "Hikikomori", "context": "home server user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111512", "date": "2026-10-15"}, {"by": "qwerpy", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50064411", "date": "2026-10-12"}, {"by": "eitally", "context": "building a custom home", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019721", "date": "2026-10-09"}, {"by": "AdrianB1", "context": "developer with 50+ relays and sensors in 2 houses", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019035", "date": "2026-10-09"}, {"by": "moogly", "context": "has ~15 Aqara sensors", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49983741", "date": "2026-10-06"}, {"by": "whatsdowndog", "context": "building a house in India", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49964906", "date": "2026-10-05"}, {"by": "HerrlichDigital", "context": "home lab, solo founder", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798269", "date": "2026-09-22"}, {"by": "usagisushi", "context": "Mitsubishi AC owner", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49682783", "date": "2026-09-13"}, {"by": "gerdesj", "context": "UK resident with IoT VLANs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49677566", "date": "2026-09-12"}, {"by": "nickthegreek", "context": "hobbyist with a homelab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541723", "date": "2026-09-02"}, {"by": "KetoManx64", "context": "Homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494416", "date": "2026-08-30"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for homelabbers", "for privacy-focused users", "for energy optimization", "for tinkerers"], "use_cases": ["home automation", "smart home automation", "smart home", "smart home control", "voice assistant", "home automation dashboard"], "compared": [{"slug": "homekit", "name": "HomeKit", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "esphome", "name": "ESPHome", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "immich", "name": "Immich", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "jellyfin", "name": "Jellyfin", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "proxmox", "name": "Proxmox", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tailscale", "name": "Tailscale", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "alexa", "name": "Alexa", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49640913", "title": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109715", "title": "What I self-host", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986882", "title": "I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124251", "title": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274667", "title": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47348652", "title": "Home Assistant waters my plants", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 6, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 3}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 5}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 9, "recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 9}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 8, "warn": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 11, "recommend": 5}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 13, "neutral": 11, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 805127010, "item_id": 50320438, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50320438", "by": "Flere-Imsaho", "date": "2026-10-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "being able to control my home, optimise the energy usage, improve security.", "excerpt": "You are missing out on a lot. And I don't mean the social media apps, or any of that nonsense. Allow me to try and explain: Maps: Knowing what's around me physically, up-to-date information, public transport routes, etc. I found some remote paths on CoMaps in the UK which I walked recently, without the aid of the app I would have not known about these. AntennaPod: the wealth of information and interesting topics I've", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Digital minimalism"}, {"id": 802011200, "item_id": 50125700, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50125700", "by": "unsnap_biceps", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system.", "excerpt": "Trust is hard won and easily lost. The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system. Things like this is a huge surprise that gives me pause to wonder what else it's doing that I wouldn't approve of. If I feel like I need to start setting up firewalls between HA and my internet to protect my privacy and data, I'm more likely to look towards alternati", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}, {"id": 801995745, "item_id": 50124734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124734", "by": "janice1999", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.", "excerpt": "That makes it even worse. A leak is still a leak even when you haven't notice it. Personally I use HIBP but I would still be annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}, {"id": 801992928, "item_id": 50124558, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50124558", "by": "janice1999", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Toxic developers turned me off Home Assistant.", "excerpt": "Toxic developers turned me off Home Assistant. The same developer is the star of this issue: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326 Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets"}, {"id": 801864112, "item_id": 50116507, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50116507", "by": "bengalister", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So far it is ok.", "excerpt": "So far it is ok. I even have a usb zigbee dongle receiver in usb passthrough and the container in privileged mode. I am moving to the Apple ecosystem and I managed to have homekit bridge connected to Apple home. I had to use an avahi relay on the NixOS host for the discovery protocol to work. The home assistant is not the same network as my devices. The homekit bridge allows to configure the advertised IP. I use tail", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation on Kubernetes", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801839493, "item_id": 50114968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "by": "bengalister", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "home assistant", "excerpt": "I also self host some services: keycloak, forgejo, home assistant, immich, grafana/prometheus, jellyfin, pureftp (to store my surveillance cameras videos), and a vibecoded financial app, and soon hermes agent on a 2023 laptop. I chose to run most of them on Kubernetes since I am used to work with it. I use: - ha-proxy running on the host and istio running inside the cluster for the sni based ingress routing - cert-ma", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801794800, "item_id": 50112175, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112175", "by": "bahmboo", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it for my Home Assistant setup and more.", "excerpt": "Just FYI you can get a M1 Macbook Air with a broken or cracked screen for about $250 on eBay. It's a headless device at that point but it has a keyboard and touchpad. I use it for my Home Assistant setup and more. It still has headroom. No fan, very low power consumption. Not true Linux container stuff but pretty much everything works on it in this area.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801784193, "item_id": 50111512, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111512", "by": "Hikikomori", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "running arr stack, jellyfin, home assistant, pi hole", "excerpt": "About to retire the NUC I used for 10 years running arr stack, jellyfin, home assistant, pi hole and a few more containers. Bought a new bee link mini pc, new Intel CPU, 500gb SSD and 16gb ram for less than $500.", "context": "home server user", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801777648, "item_id": 50111103, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111103", "by": "lokar", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home assistant is full of adapters like this.", "excerpt": "I would give it a shot. Home assistant is full of adapters like this. I though the CSV export was manual, you can\u2019t automate it.", "context": "", "use_case": "adapter for Withings data", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing"}, {"id": 801695616, "item_id": 50105976, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105976", "by": "pornel", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should.", "excerpt": "HomeKit is so painfully slow and flaky. I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should. Apple is so terrible at this. They have nobody to blame: it's their system, their protocol (I have pre-Matter devices), their home hub, their certified devices. Home Assistant with a pile of community-maintained python hacks runs circles around Apple.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home control", "switched_from": "HomeKit", "story": "Siri is so bad at everything"}, {"id": 801253552, "item_id": 50078347, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50078347", "by": "ssl-3", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "whatever I want to activate with Home Assistant", "excerpt": "I still have them. I use them for kitchen timers, alarm clocks, a quick weather forecast, random maths and unit conversions, and whatever I want to activate with Home Assistant. There's one on the night stand with a clock on the front that I never need to set, that adjusts its brightness automatically based on ambient light, and which gets used as a Bluetooth speaker for the tablet that I watch dumb shit on YouTube w", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple HomeView"}, {"id": 801030576, "item_id": 50064411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50064411", "by": "qwerpy", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "many more metrics and dashboards in my home assistant instance, both of which I use on a daily basis", "excerpt": "My homelab has many fancy new things like a self-hosted gym app and many more metrics and dashboards in my home assistant instance, both of which I use on a daily basis. It also now runs a linux VM that is an always-on agent workspace, and various emulators & decompilers and their MCPs. I, like apparently everyone else, am also reverse engineering games and mashing them up for my own personal enjoyment. I've modded a", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab dashboards", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software"}, {"id": 800651120, "item_id": 50040695, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50040695", "by": "rwyinuse", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "and of course Home Assistant dashboard. They are awesome little machines.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing, maybe it's time to buy some more old Kindles... I use bunch as smart paintings (with changing pictures generated locally with stable diffusion), and of course Home Assistant dashboard. They are awesome little machines.", "context": "", "use_case": "dashboard on old Kindle", "switched_from": "", "story": "The RAM shortage is bringing back DDR4"}, {"id": 800409491, "item_id": 50025593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50025593", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "HomeAssistant on all of them", "excerpt": "Well, I have a VPS, plus multiple physical servers in different locations (parents, etc). The VPS is useful for: - sending e-mails (hard to improve your reputation on residential IPs and get a reverse DNS record) - Unifi controller, though I appreciate Unifi less and less. - Uptime monitoring / status page - I think I'll move my headscale node there, since it has the highest availability -- Internet was out for a wee", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800375042, "item_id": 50023440, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023440", "by": "Semaphor", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "runs almost 20 services, from home assistant and jellyfin", "excerpt": "Cheap Vps: mainly seafile (file sync) and prosody (jabber/xmpp). I want those always available from everywhere. Living room has a small passively cooled n150 which runs almost 20 services, from home assistant and jellyfin, over paperless and navidrome, to some lesser known services (yamtrack, koito, grimoire). A bunch more, and I use them regularly, some more than others, but then adding a service without exposing it", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800362643, "item_id": 50022665, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50022665", "by": "cco", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is my setup for Home Assistant voice", "excerpt": "Yeah maybe I'll play around with different precision, I did see improvement when I went from fp4 to full fidelity though. This is my setup for Home Assistant voice, parakeet for STT, GLM 5.3 to generate responses, and Kokoro for TTS. I use local routing for simple commands like turn on the lights, but if I want to ask questions or something, it gets routed to GLM 5.3. It is basically free, half a cent per turn maybe,", "context": "", "use_case": "voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB"}, {"id": 800315536, "item_id": 50019721, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019721", "by": "eitally", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant is tremendously helpful as a FOSS alternative to Control4, Crestron, Savant, Lutron, and Josh.ai", "excerpt": "I think the audience for home automation is U-shaped. There are folks who are neck deep in it and care deeply, and others who couldn't care less, but not many in the middle. The middle 90% is decently served by Apple, Google and Amazon, too, so there's no need for any real passion or exploration by most anyway. We're building a custom home and it's only been through this process that I've taken an interest in smart h", "context": "building a custom home", "use_case": "home automation in custom home", "switched_from": "", "story": "I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard"}, {"id": 800304560, "item_id": 50019035, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019035", "by": "AdrianB1", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used a Shelly relay and Home Assistant, it was simpler", "excerpt": "I was not interested about smart home. At all. Then my father asked me to help him install an automatic switch for external lights in the yard. I never did that, I used a Shelly relay and Home Assistant, it was simpler (yes, sounds strange, but it was simpler). Then I found that I can automate some stuff in the house that was manual until then, so I did some. 4 years later I have more than 50 relays and sensors in 2 ", "context": "developer with 50+ relays and sensors in 2 houses", "use_case": "home and irrigation automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard"}, {"id": 800241296, "item_id": 50015081, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015081", "by": "richardlblair", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have home assistant and I'm not sure I could fulfill my needs without it.", "excerpt": "I also have limited interest, but alas, I have home assistant and I'm not sure I could fulfill my needs without it. 1 - My child is a runner. Zigbee door position sensors talk to home assistant and play sounds when a door is unlocked or opened. 2 - I'm super private. Giving people a key to my house is not something I'm comfortable with. I use Unifi Access + ESPHome + Zwave deadbolt to get the level of control I'm com", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard"}, {"id": 800186130, "item_id": 50011633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50011633", "by": "skolos", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "connects to my homeassistant for home automation", "excerpt": "Interesting that this is here. I used whistle (and bunch of other things) to take ownership of my echo show. It now doesn't dial to Amazon at all - it does all processing locally with its own CPU and connects to my homeassistant for home automation. My initial setup involved qwen asr (1.7b model) running on rtx 5080. Compared to that, whistle was really bad (out of 170 messages, qwen recognized correctly 168, whistle", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB"}, {"id": 799841216, "item_id": 49990076, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990076", "by": "dzhiurgis", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "p.s. I wish I had huge eink display for home assistant dashboards.", "excerpt": "This is beautiful. Reminds me floor796. I used AI to get it draw it. What worked is giving floor plan I already had and putting some labels on it - brown dining table here, fridge here, etc. What didn't work was giving it bunch of photos and asking it to just figure it out. For things it did figure out - it was nice, but it made way too make mistakes. The entire point of it was to put light switches and heaters on th", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation dashboard", "switched_from": "", "story": "I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard"}, {"id": 799829986, "item_id": 49989374, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49989374", "by": "amne", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "onnx scores all my HA entities to determine which one I'm talking about", "excerpt": "I switched to a decision model for my local \"AI\" voice control thingy. faster-whisper produces the text then onnx scores all my HA entities to determine which one I'm talking about .. then it lists all its actions and a second scoring round to determine what action I want. some regex to extract numbers if I'm saying things like \"water the lawn for 10 minutes\". It's pretty dumb when compared to what an LLM can do but ", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jev-Driven SRE Diagnosis: What Worked and What Failed"}, {"id": 799739857, "item_id": 49983741, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49983741", "by": "moogly", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Battery Notes in HA", "excerpt": "Something is wrong somewhere, because I've had ~15 of those and battery life is 16-20 months for me (I use Battery Notes in HA which keeps a timestamp since you last changed the battery so I have a pretty good view into battery life). I have not adjusted reporting thresholds/intervals in zigbee2mqtt. They're really annoying to pair though, so I've replaced most of them with Sonoff SNZB-02P which runs a CR2477 battery", "context": "has ~15 Aqara sensors", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Best-selling Zigbee temperature sensors tested and compared"}, {"id": 799463408, "item_id": 49966463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966463", "by": "slowin", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Home Assistant for all of the reasons you list but I wouldn't say it \"just works\".", "excerpt": "I love Home Assistant for all of the reasons you list but I wouldn't say it \"just works\". It's the kind of thing that requires a lot of research and tinkering to get right. AI does actually help a lot here though, if you tell your agent \"setup the new smart lightbulbs I just bought in Home Assistant and add them to my Living Room area\", it just does it.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry\""}, {"id": 799438496, "item_id": 49964906, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49964906", "by": "whatsdowndog", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have used home assistant in multiple homes, so I'm sticking with it.", "excerpt": "Slightly related. I'm building a house in India and I'm a big fan of locally controller home automation (without cloud). I have used home assistant in multiple homes, so I'm sticking with it. Everything is being automated with knx. The pain point right now is, there are no knx fan controllers, at least not in India. Wherever I can not use knx (such as tower fans, robot vacuums or de-humidifiers), I use Xiaomi because", "context": "building a house in India", "use_case": "local home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is going on with ceiling fans"}, {"id": 799173872, "item_id": 49948367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948367", "by": "qurren", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant already has an LLM plugin, you can wire it up to a local LLM if you want", "excerpt": "> Home Assistant already knows which bins (trash cans, for the international readers) are due for collection. [...] What it can\u2019t tell me is whether I\u2019ve actually done anything about it. My first gut reaction to this was: Have you tried using a vision-language model? I used to have an elaborate Home Assistant setup with tons of zigbee sensors here and there telling me if front door is not closed properly, if the rice", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation with LLM vision", "switched_from": "", "story": "Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?"}, {"id": 798660960, "item_id": 49916310, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49916310", "by": "varenc", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The skill and HA MCP I use allows the LLM to use tools which make more precise changes without excessive context usage.", "excerpt": "For Home Assistant, the MCP can enable the LLM to make changes without using up excessive tokens. For example, the only way to make a change to an HA automation via the API is to POST a whole new copy of the YAML, even if changing one things. The skill and HA MCP I use allows the LLM to use tools which make more precise changes without excessive context usage. Certainly still works either way though. And of course yo", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation with LLM", "switched_from": "", "story": "You said no MCP"}, {"id": 797320065, "item_id": 49832504, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832504", "by": "kfoley", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "keeping local control through Home Assistant", "excerpt": "For anyone looking to disconnect their Samsung appliances from the web while keeping local control through Home Assistant, there's LocalThings[0]. I found it after learning that Samsung is planning to start charging $5 a month for API access but another benefit is reducing the risk of something like this. [0]: https://github.com/mbillow/localthings", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges"}, {"id": 796772305, "item_id": 49798269, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49798269", "by": "HerrlichDigital", "date": "2026-09-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant (Awesome Smart Home Platform)", "excerpt": "I'm also running a Home Lab with several useful projects: - Nextcloud (Cloud Storage alternative) - Home Assistant (Awesome Smart Home Platform) - Calibre-Web (Managing my eBooks) I also run Umami but on a fly.io instance with all my other software that i build as a solo preneur.", "context": "home lab, solo founder", "use_case": "smart home", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 795573440, "item_id": 49723340, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49723340", "by": "dns_snek", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "to stop IOT devices from doing funny things to HomeAssistant", "excerpt": "Use a basic firewall? Not a single outbound byte should leave the machine, except inside a virtual network towards in-scope test subjects. That's not going to be infallible because hypervisor exploits still exist, but it's the lowest bar and they failed to even meet that. > If you have strict ACLs, we've already seen in the HF case, traversal from an intermediate system - The intermediate system shouldn't have outbou", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "A single firm is behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta hacking scandals"}, {"id": 795394272, "item_id": 49712142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49712142", "by": "akifbayram", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you're using Home Assistant, you can push any temperature sensor available.", "excerpt": "Spot on. If you're using Home Assistant, you can push any temperature sensor available. Zigbee, Zwave, BLE, 433mhz rtl sdr, etc. At one point, I was using the proprietary temperature sensors that were paired with my ecobee thermostat (for my ancient natural gas fired hydronic boiler). For the BLE sensors, your HA server must have bluetooth capabilities. I use a bluetooth dongle attached to a short USB extension cord.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation, AC control", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}, {"id": 795052864, "item_id": 49690804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690804", "by": "koyote", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "HA has good support for that. This is what I use.", "excerpt": "The non-ducted systems will usually have an IR remote. You can buy devices to blast IR at it and HA has good support for that. This is what I use.", "context": "", "use_case": "controlling AC via IR", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}, {"id": 794981425, "item_id": 49686339, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686339", "by": "webinar", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using mitsubishi2MQTT with Home Assistant.", "excerpt": "I've been using mitsubishi2MQTT with Home Assistant. It's been working great for several years. https://github.com/gysmo38/mitsubishi2MQTT", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}, {"id": 794926513, "item_id": 49682907, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49682907", "by": "damascus_kei", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "to control my units from home assistant", "excerpt": "I have a Daikin system. I use Faikout(ESP32 that controls the heads via the debug port) to control my units from home assistant. Works great! Their official service needs an app and cloud access to control it. And I absolutely refuse to do that. https://codeberg.org/RevK/ESP32-Faikout", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home control", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}, {"id": 794924528, "item_id": 49682783, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49682783", "by": "usagisushi", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used the Python scripting interface in Home Assistant to replicate this [1] feature", "excerpt": "Mitsubishi AC units that support M-NET have a CN105 port. IIRC, my specific model uses a JST PA 5-pin connector rather than a JST PH 5-pin. As a small hack, I used the Python scripting interface in Home Assistant to replicate this [1] feature from Panasonic HVAC that gradually raises the cooling set point towards the morning. It is quite comfortable during the summer. [1]: http://getnavi.jp/appliances/681340/ (ja)", "context": "Mitsubishi AC owner", "use_case": "AC automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant"}, {"id": 794899104, "item_id": 49681194, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49681194", "by": "utopiah", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using HA daily for years now.", "excerpt": "Well that's the point, you do want information in and out, including the ability to send instructions. Call it \"smart\" or \"connected\" or whatever marketing words you prefer, the point is having affordances that give you agency. So yes I insist you do want those, just not in the way it's been currently forced. IMHO you are right to reject this as it is but wrong to reject the possibilities when done right. We are just", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG says we're fake news [video]"}, {"id": 794841056, "item_id": 49677566, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49677566", "by": "gerdesj", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use the Home Assistant integration for that and put up with the rest.", "excerpt": "LG TVs boot Linux and have plenty of capabilities. Why would they not ... take a look around at the environment ... to best enhance ... your errr experience. LG are amongst equals here. I've seen devices (TVs/cameras) do ping sweeps and then port scans. I have two VLANs at home: THINGS for IoT and SEWER for things that look really dodgy. I drive a (Seic) MG4 EV. I use the Home Assistant integration for that and put u", "context": "UK resident with IoT VLANs", "use_case": "monitoring MG4 EV", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'"}, {"id": 794786597, "item_id": 49674162, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49674162", "by": "jamesponddotco", "date": "2026-09-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "For Home Assistant I use a combination of Grok 4.20 and DeepSeek Flash 4.1.", "excerpt": "Given that Fable is the only one that fucking listens to me and writes proper Go code, that\u2019s what I use for everything code-related. At least on my personal projects. If I don\u2019t care about the code, i.e. I\u2019m writing something quick just to test something, I\u2019ll use GPT Astra to save my Fable tokens. For conversations and research I usually go with GPT Astra Pro. For Home Assistant I use a combination of Grok 4.20 and", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What default model do you use and why?"}, {"id": 794501714, "item_id": 49656357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49656357", "by": "ndom91", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "with the HomeAssistant VoicePE", "excerpt": "Been wanting to try this out on top of https://github.com/TristanBrotherton/voicepe-realtime with the HomeAssistant VoicePE Anyone else hack something together with HA / the Voice PE yet? Looks like it needs a second model to do function calling, which gpt-realtime-2.5 didn't, and the Voice PE XMOS chip's audio pipeline might not be a great fit for full duplex back and forth, like what gpt-live-1 now supports.", "context": "", "use_case": "voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "GPT\u2011Live\u20111 in the API"}, {"id": 794301696, "item_id": 49643856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643856", "by": "iso1631", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Home Assistant will do that, but it feels a little fragile with my car charger", "excerpt": "In the UK we've had off peak power overnight for decades. My current one is something like 1/3rd of the price of daytime power between 2300 and 0700. However this is somewhat old fashioned, the most modern tarrifs vary on a 30 minute window, with prices set a day ahead. If there's a lot of solar and little demand on say a sunny sunday afternoon or windy february nighttime, then the prices may even go negative. You wa", "context": "", "use_case": "smart charging automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hitachi launches CO2 heat pump water heaters with solar-friendly tariff controls"}, {"id": 792175777, "item_id": 49510986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510986", "by": "nunez", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old", "excerpt": "This was me a few years ago, but the admin job I gave myself maintaining this stuff eventually got old. These days, I use native HomeKit for everything. Preferably over Matter/Thread, but HomeKit is a requirement. No HA. If it doesn't native work with HomeKit, it doesn't run in our house.", "context": "", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell"}, {"id": 788644112, "item_id": 49290257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290257", "by": "coreyp_1", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Home Assistant to gather info about my house.", "excerpt": "I use Home Assistant to gather info about my house. I use Zigbee devices exclusively (with the exception of a Z-wave device that was not available in a Zigbee flavor). Why? Because that protocol allows me to talk to the device, but the device itself can't phone home to something outside of my network. I, however, can still talk to the device via my personal system. From thermostats to switches to various monitors and", "context": "privacy-focused smart home user", "use_case": "smart home without cloud", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Why Connected Home Appliances?"}, {"id": 782900160, "item_id": 48931260, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48931260", "by": "wolvoleo", "date": "2026-07-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use home assistant and I buy stuff specifically because it supports local connectivity", "excerpt": "Well my family doesn't live in the same country and most of my friends I don't see every day yet I communicate with them daily. Same with the communities I'm in, they're really active online. And all my stuff is connected yes but not through big tech cloud. It is pretty easy to avoid all that. I use home assistant and I buy stuff specifically because it supports local connectivity. The biggest issue is whatsapp for n", "context": "avoids big tech cloud", "use_case": "local home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Guerrilla London Bus Ads Mock Kylie Jenner's Meta Glasses Campaign"}, {"id": 782469008, "item_id": 48904313, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904313", "by": "lopis", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Then I use Home Assistant to send the current electricity price to that display when the price changes", "excerpt": "I don't have smart washers, but I did build a smart ESP32-based [0] zigbee numerical display. Then I use Home Assistant to send the current electricity price to that display when the price changes, and send a notification to all users' phones when electricity is cheap (< 0.05\u20ac/kWh) or expensive (> 0.15\u20ac/kWh). This helps me plan my laundry and dish washing, which are the only energy intensive appliances I have. I also", "context": "", "use_case": "electricity price notifications", "switched_from": "", "story": "Australia is offering free daytime electricity"}, {"id": 772407888, "item_id": 48275493, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275493", "by": "nfrankel", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.", "excerpt": "I use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). It has an integration for lots of manufacturers. Single app, single entry point, cross manufacturer automations.", "context": "", "use_case": "smart home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped"}, {"id": 772401136, "item_id": 48275071, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275071", "by": "rebuilder", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it.", "excerpt": "I think it\u2019s also just that there\u2019s not that much it makes sense to automate in the home. I run Home Assistant, and I do not have much of the typical home stuff on it. Why would I want to automate lights? My cat feeder has a timer already. I\u2019m not about to get a smart lock and can\u2019t imagine why I would want to automate one. The useful things I do use it for are: -heating control to take advantage of cheaper electric ", "context": "", "use_case": "heating and EV charging automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped"}, {"id": 758432064, "item_id": 47402004, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47402004", "by": "tamimio", "date": "2026-03-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard", "excerpt": "I love HA, after setting it up I used an old tablet as the dashboard to control and monitor the house, plus the app. It\u2019s very easy to setup and work with, maybe a bit convoluted in the initial setup but once done, you barely do anything until you add new sensor. You can setup a whole SCADA-like system with it, controlling your garden, power grid/solar and monitoring it, integrating CCTV and all, and it\u2019s free. A sim", "context": "", "use_case": "home monitoring and control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Home Assistant waters my plants"}, {"id": 751279296, "item_id": 46954956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954956", "by": "gravis", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "give people the power of HA without needing to maintain it themselves", "excerpt": "Hey HN - ex-GitLab here, building Selora Homes: Professional installation and managed support for Home Assistant. The idea is to give people the power of HA without needing to maintain it themselves. Most HA enthusiasts are happy to do this for their homes, but don't want to manage HA for parents, friends, etc. We pre-install a smart hub (miniPC) for each subscriber and we maintain management access on the host via W", "context": "ex-GitLab, building Selora Homes", "use_case": "home automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026)"}, {"id": 747872320, "item_id": 46742020, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742020", "by": "timwis", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant have a fully local voice assistant experience that's very pluggable and customisable.", "excerpt": "Home Assistant have a fully local voice assistant experience that's very pluggable and customisable. I believe it uses a fast whisper model for STT and piper for TTS. You can run it on a raspberry pi (or ideally an N100+), and for the microphone/speaker part, you can make your own or buy their off the shelf voice hardware, which works really well. https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/", "context": "", "use_case": "local voice assistant", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?"}, {"id": 737990880, "item_id": 46124430, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124430", "by": "joshstrange", "date": "2025-12-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Home Assistant is awesome and I highly recommend checking it out.", "excerpt": "Home Assistant is awesome and I highly recommend checking it out. Even if you have an existing smart house hub/platform you can often integrate HA in cleanly. I used SmartThings for years and was hesitant to switch but I was able to control all my devices in ST from HA without moving/repairing/etc devices over. Once I had seen the power of HA I started a _slow_ migration over (took over a year cause I was lazy). The ", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "smart home hub", "switched_from": "SmartThings", "story": "How Home Assistant became the most important project in your house"}]}