thanks for the great post. I will totally check out Mycroft. That looks super interesting.
Has your home automation tech changed in the last 12 months or is basically still the same tech?
I'm still struggling to decide if I want to try HomeAssistant or OpenHAB first. But your arguments for OpenHAB sound great. Maybe I will go and play with OpenHAB first.
Btw, have you seen Ben's new Forem-based home-tech community called Hometechnica? You should check it out. I think it's a great idea to have everything home automation and home-related tech stuff in a dedicated community.
I had not seen that community! I'll certainly take a pop over there, thanks.
The tech I'm using is mostly the same as what I outlined here. I didn't end up integrating the cams with openHAB yet - I tried, but getting the MQTT integration working with them was... fiddly. For now, I've just got the cameras saving their feeds to a NAS with a cronjob. I'd eventually like openHAB to be able to send me photos from the cameras on different trigger conditions. Maybe I'll work on that today :)
The zooz switches have worked out great, for the money I would definitely recommend them. I ended up with a mix of different revisions of the zen 23 due to buying a second bulk batch of them months after the first, and the more recent version are better for operating in groups. In fact, had I ended up with several of the older zen 23's, I'm not actually sure how I would have turned them into a group to turn on and off together, at least with OpenHAB. I've bought a zooz dimmer switch for another room in the house, though haven't installed it yet. I expect that'll work about the same as the toggles.
I tried out a smartbulb (an aeotech one, very colorful, tons of customizations) and the openHAB integration was lackluster. I believe I probably could get the bulb to do whatever I wanted, the features are accessible, but only really through the scripting interface, and only with a lot of trial and error. Trying to use the widget that auto-populated on the dashboard for the bulb would just turn off the light whenever I changed a setting. Increase the brightness? Nope. Bulb dark. Change color? Only if that color is "black." Not exactly a flawless integration.
Mycroft was a neat toy that I played with for a while, but I decided that actual functional use of it would have to wait until I had a better mic setup. The PS3 eye that they recommend is good for getting a feel for the platform and playing around with things, but in practice I think I want something like an omnidirectional mic pi hat to help boost the sensitivity. I found that even from a few feet away, I'd be yelling at the thing to get it to do stuff. I'm a quiet person though, what I consider yelling some people may consider talking ;) On the whole though I had a positive impression of Mycroft, very customizable, and I was able to get the OpenHAB integration working no problem.
My underbaked thoughts on OpenHAB vs HomeAssistant - they both look good. HomeAssistant is probably easier to learn, and (hopefully) has a better UI. One of the less great things about OpenHAB is that it has a bunch of UIs to choose from, all slightly different and with different use cases, and none of them really intuitive. You'll end up reading the tutorial in full for OpenHAB in order to really get going with it, which will take some time. It's imperative to understand the different types of objects the system uses (thing, binding, etc.). That said, I'm quite happy with it - at the end of the day, once a device is integrated and automated the way I want, I don't look at the UI again. So the big selling points for me with OpenHAB are the sheer amount of devices it supports and the heavy customization. I have not yet run into a case where I was like, "I wonder if OpenHAB can do this," googled it, and didn't see a result matching what I wanted.
If you do play around with HomeAssistant, let me know what you think! I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, especially if you try them both and compare.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Hi @dizzyspi ,
thanks for the great post. I will totally check out Mycroft. That looks super interesting.
Has your home automation tech changed in the last 12 months or is basically still the same tech?
I'm still struggling to decide if I want to try HomeAssistant or OpenHAB first. But your arguments for OpenHAB sound great. Maybe I will go and play with OpenHAB first.
Btw, have you seen Ben's new Forem-based home-tech community called Hometechnica? You should check it out. I think it's a great idea to have everything home automation and home-related tech stuff in a dedicated community.
Hey Lars,
I had not seen that community! I'll certainly take a pop over there, thanks.
The tech I'm using is mostly the same as what I outlined here. I didn't end up integrating the cams with openHAB yet - I tried, but getting the MQTT integration working with them was... fiddly. For now, I've just got the cameras saving their feeds to a NAS with a cronjob. I'd eventually like openHAB to be able to send me photos from the cameras on different trigger conditions. Maybe I'll work on that today :)
The zooz switches have worked out great, for the money I would definitely recommend them. I ended up with a mix of different revisions of the zen 23 due to buying a second bulk batch of them months after the first, and the more recent version are better for operating in groups. In fact, had I ended up with several of the older zen 23's, I'm not actually sure how I would have turned them into a group to turn on and off together, at least with OpenHAB. I've bought a zooz dimmer switch for another room in the house, though haven't installed it yet. I expect that'll work about the same as the toggles.
I tried out a smartbulb (an aeotech one, very colorful, tons of customizations) and the openHAB integration was lackluster. I believe I probably could get the bulb to do whatever I wanted, the features are accessible, but only really through the scripting interface, and only with a lot of trial and error. Trying to use the widget that auto-populated on the dashboard for the bulb would just turn off the light whenever I changed a setting. Increase the brightness? Nope. Bulb dark. Change color? Only if that color is "black." Not exactly a flawless integration.
Mycroft was a neat toy that I played with for a while, but I decided that actual functional use of it would have to wait until I had a better mic setup. The PS3 eye that they recommend is good for getting a feel for the platform and playing around with things, but in practice I think I want something like an omnidirectional mic pi hat to help boost the sensitivity. I found that even from a few feet away, I'd be yelling at the thing to get it to do stuff. I'm a quiet person though, what I consider yelling some people may consider talking ;) On the whole though I had a positive impression of Mycroft, very customizable, and I was able to get the OpenHAB integration working no problem.
My underbaked thoughts on OpenHAB vs HomeAssistant - they both look good. HomeAssistant is probably easier to learn, and (hopefully) has a better UI. One of the less great things about OpenHAB is that it has a bunch of UIs to choose from, all slightly different and with different use cases, and none of them really intuitive. You'll end up reading the tutorial in full for OpenHAB in order to really get going with it, which will take some time. It's imperative to understand the different types of objects the system uses (thing, binding, etc.). That said, I'm quite happy with it - at the end of the day, once a device is integrated and automated the way I want, I don't look at the UI again. So the big selling points for me with OpenHAB are the sheer amount of devices it supports and the heavy customization. I have not yet run into a case where I was like, "I wonder if OpenHAB can do this," googled it, and didn't see a result matching what I wanted.
If you do play around with HomeAssistant, let me know what you think! I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, especially if you try them both and compare.