![]() ![]() When I started out with home automation in 2016, I wasn’t as savvy nor comfortable going “all in” on Home Assistant without trying it for a while. Visualization of my zigbee network (> 80 devices), using ZHA. This solution works so well it’s worth calling out separately. Google Drive Backups: Given the amount of time I spend on tweaking my Home Assistant configuration, backing it up regularly is critical.This has allowed me to cut back a ton on building my own customizations. community supported) Home Assistant customization store. Home Assistant Add-Ons: The ease of installing and managing other systems like Grafana, AdGuard Home, ZWave JS, VS Studio Code Server (and much more) is awesome.It works really well, is secure, has been very stable and at 5 USD/month is dirt-cheap for what it provides. ![]() Remote control using Nabu Casa: This cloud service to remotely control Home Assistant (from the founders of Home Assistant itself) is great.Not only for controlling, but also for quickly making edits as you think of improvements (from the couch, toilet, bed, on the road. Editing from mobile: The Home Assistant Mobile app is amazing.One-click upgrades: Upgrading has become a single button-click task, often done on mobile and from the couch.While it took me a few months to find the time and appetite to migrate, I regret not having done so sooner because the difference is so massive. So when Home Assistant Blue - a compact all-in-one hardware platform running the Home Assistant Operating System - was announced, I was immediately enticed and quickly ordered one. I had already been pushing my luck for too long. Fire Safety: Macbooks aren’t meant to be running for years on end on wall power, often under high load and without additional cooling.Aging hardware: Software was sometimes slow due to the older CPU and spinning hard drive.It also meant I was missing out on some of the newer, very powerful features (more on that below). Divergence: Over time, my setup was starting to diverge more and more from vanilla Home Assistant which became a vicious circle as I tried patching my way around it.Maintenance time sink: Keeping the whole setup up-to-date started taking a lot of time.While this worked, this approach was no longer scaling: I even had the entire setup process automated using ansible. Yet over the years I found myself spending a lot of times working around limitations, writing custom scripts and installing additional supporting software on an old Macbook Pro I had turned into a makeshift server. When I started playing with Home Assistant in early 2016, it already showed great potential. I’ve kept all the related ansible roles in a legacy folder on Github. Over the years it also ran a bunch of supporting software: Prometheus, InfluxDB, Logstash, Sensu, Monit, HA Dashboard, Elasticsearch and at least half a dozen others. After starting out on a Raspberry Pi, I hosted Home Assistant from this 2011 Macbook Pro - running Ubuntu - for over 4 years. ![]()
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