Google has really tried to go all in on automation since the rollout of its redesigned Home app in May. There’s been the introduction of a new script editor, Nest Cam Indoor integration and, now, a whole slew of new routines to use. The company has announced 18 new routines — half starters and half actions — immediately available for Google Home users.
Oh boy, I’m looking forward to going all in on Google Home only for it to be deprecated in three years!
(Hey folks, Home Assistant is pretty cool and you can run it locally on an old laptop.)
Is home assistant a piece of software? Do you have a link, it’s not a very searchable name
Here you go: https://www.home-assistant.io/
You would need to do some pre-planning before going ahead with this and it’s not as simple as Google Home for sure. For example, my household went all in on Zigbee lights and switches so we had to get a Zigbee antenna to connect to our old laptop running Home Assistant and make sure all our cool LED smart lights and other cool gadgets were compatible, etc. I’m also tagging @ISometimesAdmin who did a lot of the networking stuff in case he wants to add anything.
I’m attaching an image of my dashboard setup for my room, just as an example of what can be accomplished. (This may not federate to Lemmy so I will self-reply with a link if necessary) This shows my and my household’s location, the downstairs Sensi thermometer climate (which can be controlled), the light controls, temperature/pressure/humidity which is a little Aqara sensor from Amazon, and the Air Quality comes from my Winix air filter which can also be integrated to Home Assistant. You can really do a lot.
If the image link didn’t come in: here you go.
There’s also purchasable hardware that comes pre-installed with Home Assistant and has zigbee built-in, it looks like, which is neat (though expensive).
To add onto this:
Home Assistant isn’t “yet another” service. It’s not trying to do vendor lock in: you can think of Home Assistant kinda like a “glue” framework.
It’s meant to let you systemically attach devices/software across any number of mediums, and pre-existing services, and let them play nice.
So if you’ve already gone and set up your Google Home, or Alexa, or Apple Homekit, you don’t have to abandon them to use Home Assistant.
Sometimes you can’t even get away from it: the thermostat that came with our rental basically only has a useful Samsung Smartthings integration, but we can still use it with Home Assistant.
Yes it’s software for managing IoT stuff, tons of addons and plugins for just about everything.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
Yea, it’s not hard to search for it.
Seriously though.
Just got word that Pixel Pass, introduced less than 2 years ago that had an every-2-years upgrade program, has been cancelled.
They didn’t even have it long enough to give people the main benefit. So don’t rely on Google to keep anything new going these days.
Homeassistant is fun and all but it falls down for complex automations for me
Doesn’t even need an old laptop, mines running on a Pi3