The underlying idea
Commercial home automation is an archipelago of apps that do not speak to each other: one for the lights, one for the thermostat, one for the cameras. Home Assistant does the opposite: it is a local hub that speaks dozens of protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, MQTT, Wi-Fi…) and unifies them into a single logic. The data stays on my server; if the internet goes down, the automations keep working.
Three principles I follow
- Local first. Anything that can work without the cloud, works without the cloud.
- Automations should be useful, not impressive. One light that switches off when you leave beats a thousand scenes nobody ever uses.
- Reversible. Every switch must remain a switch: the house has to be usable by people who have no idea what Home Assistant is.
How it is structured
Home Assistant runs as a dedicated virtual machine on my Proxmox server, reachable safely from outside through a reverse proxy. Entities are organised by room and by domain (lights, climate, security, energy), so the dashboards stay readable.
A personal rule: if explaining an automation to the people I live with takes me more than one sentence, it is probably too complicated.
A few automations I actually use
- Real presence — lights and climate react to who is at home, not to a fixed schedule.
- Quiet savings — smart sockets that cut standby loads overnight.
- Useful notifications — a door left open, the washing machine finished, an odd power reading: targeted alerts, not spam.
- Sun & blinds — shading that follows light and temperature so the house does not overheat in summer.
Where this is going
The next step is to let the house talk to a local AI assistant: natural-language commands processed by a model running on my own hardware, without sending my voice to outside servers. Home automation and artificial intelligence, both of them at home.
Do you run Home Assistant and want to compare notes on a setup? Drop me a line.