Home Assistant

Thank you first and foremost for joining me here. I started this journey like most with an Echo in 2015. I got it as a Christmas present. It opened up Pandora's box and it started this whole journey.

I am the type that goes all in on most projects. I started to read about home automation. I bought some smart plugs and some light bulbs. I got them all installed and running. The voice assistant park was initially the cool thing. Like most people I was excited to call out Alexa and have it do things. Months later I was buying more and more devices. I had them all connected and working and able to call out Alexa to turn them on and off. Eventually I had automations and things running and was excited.

Then it happened. I was watching YouTube and found this guy Dr Zzs:  

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7G4tLa4Kt6A9e3hJ-HO8ng. 

He talked about this program Home Assistant and doing all these things and running your devices local. Well what is local? Why would I care? Well after reading and finding out about devices being on a company's server, and putting your information in their hands, I decided to take the leap.

I bought a Raspberry PI4:

I followed his guide. Here is a link to a newer version of it:

https://youtu.be/pVxoSXeC2Jw

I was off. I was officially a Home Assistant user. I am not going to lie I was scared as hell. I mean I am going to take all my devices that are working with my and move them over to HA. It was easier than I thought to get it up and running. Now it is even easier to do.

here is another guide by JuanMTech:

https://youtu.be/XdiGdC7K4sI

There are other guides but these two were the ones that helped me greatly.

If you are looking at moving to Home Assistant do it. Don't be afraid of it. It is pretty easy to get started. You can run it alot of different hardware. Start out with a Raspberry Pi. You can upgrade later, which you will, to something else. The worst thing is if you don't like it. The Pi can be used for retro games or something else.

I am just warning you though. Once you start down this path you will never go back. It is a great hobby. The sky's the limit with what can be done with HA. There are people out there, that are way smarter than me, that have figured out everything you can think of. They are making it faster, easier and smarter with every update.

Thanks for joining me I will make posts all the time. If anyone has feedback or want to contribute let me know. I am not trying to take anyone's information I will give credit where credit is due. I am just trying to help those that don't know what to do or are afraid to ask.