Getting Started

Home automation sounds futuristic, lights turning on by themselves, doors locking on a schedule, coffee brewing before you even crawl out of bed. But it’s not about that, you don’t need to turn your house into a spaceship. Its about small improvements making the house a little more helpful and a little more comfortable bit by bit.

Going gong-ho from the get-go is going to end up in disapointment, maybe tears. So take it easy and one step at a time.

We’re not going super deep here, just enough to get your bearings.

The theory:

At its core, home automation is just making devices in your home work together or automatically, based on rules you set.

That could be as simple as turning the lights on in the morning, getting the coffee maker going right when the alarm goes off, getting an alarm when the laundry is done. It’s not magic. It’s just a bunch of connected gadgets that can talk to each other and listen to instructions from you.

How Do These Devices Talk to Each Other?

Smart devices need to communicate, and they all have their own ways of doing it. Here’s a quick rundown of the most common methods:

All of the above are communication protocols, wifi and bluetooth are very popular but for smart home i’d stay away from any wifi or bluetooth devices, unless there’s no other option. Zigbee/Z-wave, matter and thread are made for this kind of communication.

Usually smart devices are designed for one protocol, for them to work they need to connect to a hub. There’s all sorts of hubs and almost every manufacturer has its own hub, our recomendation is to get a conbee stick and ditch all other hubs, it supports a lot of devices. [read more/network article] but for starters any smart ‘kit’ with a hub is good.

That’s it, almost every hub manufacturer has its app that allows to send commands to the hub and control the devices.

Multiple networks can co-exist with each other, but each network will have its own way to control it.

For example, Phillips Hue lights come with a hub. (this is a great starting point link-here) The lightbulbs connect to this hub and this hub talks to its app. the app has an interface that makes it posible to control each light. Each tap to turn on the light makes the hub to fire a message with acommand every single device that hears the message checks if its for itself, in which case it runs the action, or re-broadcasts the message (like a repeater). Simlilarly an aqara hub with smart button, a switch and a motion sensor work the same way, hub fires messages with commands, each device that hears the message will check if its for itself and sends the message agian. Consi It will be possible to use the motion sensor or button to control the switch, but not the lights. Unless…

** A smart controller walks into the room**

Using a Smart controller its possible to use different networks and have them work together.

Hub and Controller get thrown around a lot, and they’re often used interchangeably which is confusing. The bottom line is Hubs are for connecting and Controllers tells them what to do.

Controllers are the remote control and brain of the smart home. It’s the thing that knows your rules, routines, and automations. Could be an app like Google Home, Apple Home or could also be something more advanced…

And Now… Meet Home Assistant

It’s a free, open-source platform that can pull everything together into one place, even if your devices are from different brands or use different tech. Plus, it runs locally, so your automations don’t die if your Wi-Fi hiccups or the cloud goes down.

It’s a bit more hands-on than Apple Home or Google Home, but that also means way more control and flexibility. Home Assistant is where’s at! and this is where we’re here.

Home automation is revolutionizing how we live, turning our homes into responsive spaces that make life easier and more efficient.

If you’re feeling a bit intimidated by all the options, don’t worry! You don’t need a PhD in tech to get started. With the right guidance, you can dive into home automation with confidence, starting small and building up your smart home over time.

If you’re interested to start from nothing, try one of these:

[]link to philips hue light kit.

fiddle with it, aim to automate turning off the lights. every day at 12 they turn off, just in case they were left on, kinda thing. Go from there.I’d recomend, as a second step, to get a hue motion sensor(##LINK##) and or a button (##link##), this is enough to play a little bit more with them and figuring out the latency and all these things. If its not your thing, at least the lightbulbs do last forever (unless they’re on a dimmer switch,they wont).

The next step would be to get home assistant. Many ways to get it. (##link##)

Once setup add the hue integration, remove everything from the hue app and recreate it all on home assistant. at this point, is game on, bring in an aqara hub and all the sensors, or any other network, which even tho will work you should stick to the same protocol. basic higene, that’s all.

The next step would be to get a custom hub and clean things up connecting everything to a single hub, instead of having 17 different hubs all lying around.