Thanks for putting up with all of the Star Wars references. We have been watching Star Wars on Fridays with our 6 year old daughter. She came up with the ending because she really wanted to use the Force. Don’t worry, she will be turned to the dark side eventually...
Do you know what the future holds for SmartThings at this point? New hardware? Been on the decline for a while but haven't seen anything new on the horizon. Thanks, love the videos.
I really appreciate that you blank out part of the word "Alexa" each time you say it. Some other channels have the tendency to activate the Echo Dot whenever I'm watching in the kitchen. Thanks much!
I'm not sure how many people notice, but I'm really impressed with the quality of your videos! Every scene, word, and follow-along is so carefully orchestrated. I know a ton of thought must go into just one video. Thank you!
Once I migrated from SmartThings to HA, I was so happy. The migration is a pain...as devices must be re-added, etc. But the flexibility, and the ability to run locally cinched it for me. Coupling this with NodeRed was the icing on the cake.
Love it. You really nailed the references. Home Assistant FTW. Zigbee is what will make you stay up all night, but once you get it to work, you will feel the power of local control. UNLIMITED POWER!
Yes, ZigBee on HA is a nightmare. I consider my HA installation less realiable than Smartthings only because of my ZigBee devices (lights now are working properly, but my Ikea blinds doesn't and I have some devices that I even wasn't able to pair in my ZigBee network, like some remotes, switches and motion sensors...)
Your last video convinced me to try Home Assistant. It was VERY inconvenient for me at first. Many hours watching RU-vid videos, and reading Reddit and Home Assistant threads to learn how it works. Now that I have it set up, I love it. I feel it gives me more control than SmartThings did, but maybe that just because I never had to invest this much time in SmartThings to get it to work. I used both systems for a few weeks, but then decided to switch over completely. I'm happy I did.
I have been thinking about switching for a while and you have now convinced me. If the person that started my full smart home journey is giving the thumbs up.... i'm in
I also moved 2 years + ago to HA from ST (Smart Home Makers) ...I just unplugged the ST hub recently...HA has come so far that it is just amazing me more and more...there are more and more integrations all the time...and it is FREE, open-source...let's keep it that way...:)
like the features, setup was difficult for some of my devices (August Door lock, ru-vid.comUgkxhB5YOMNj04GuoAosExygP4cH-dKeb4aB Bose speaker)... but all switches and outlets (5), thermostat, tankless water heater. Unfortunately all I can do is turn on/off Bose. It doesn't support volume or changing channels, but I believe that is due to the particular speaker I have.... Worth getting if you already have other devices to use it with... I don't sit around and ask Alexa questions much so that doesn't really matter to me....
I've basically followed the same path. I've run SmartThings for years and, about two years ago, I added webCoRE for far greater automation control and ActionTiles for a better front-end. Earlier this year, I started trying out Home Assistant. I started by simply using the SmartThings integration and all the things I was using actually made the transition. After working with it for a few weeks I started migrating my webCoRE automations over to HA until I no longer needed webCoRE at all. Then I started working on the front-end. YAML programming has a bit of a learning curve, but I've got a user interface I really like that has all the advanteges of ActionTiles plus a few things and none of the [AT doesn't understand this device] issues I had. Since then, I've added some WiFi-only devices that work with HA, but not SmartThings. More recently, I added a Z-wave/ZigBee dongle and a few other items that wouldn't work through SmartThings (even though it has both Z-wave and ZigBee protocols). As you say, HA does sometimes take some studying to figure out exactly how to work with a particular item. However, I've found the community really good on making suggestions that actually help.
IFTTT pushed me to Home Assistant, and I'm so glad I did. I'm running HA+Smarthings, but slowly migrating to HA only. The more I migrate, the better it is! It's much brighter on the dark side.
I bought my first house and decided to make the switch myself. Home Assistant is insane, I feel like you can do anything with it if you really wanted to. Currently working on an MLB score updater for my dashboard.
Glad you finally made it. Welcome to our growing community. Now I guess I'll see more videos with an even more interesting content. And thanks for all the content you've produced over the years.
Great video. Welcome to the Home Assistant community. I also still use my Smartthings hub, but I have the V3 3 pack specifically for network traffic management, which HASS doesn’t give me. The two work really great together, but I would not install HASS for any of my non-technical clients, that would mean a lot of travelling and online troubleshooting….
I recommend installing Node-Red, Visual Studio Code, Samba Share. Its far simpler to keep/maintain your automations in node-red than messing with Automations and such in native HA. Far less jumping around and you can tie in node-red modules to do a lot more if you need it.
Great video. I have experienced those HA highs and lows, and the deep spelunking of documentation and online forums to fix things. Keep up the great videos. I liked the dark side reference.
I've not been able to find any SmartThings products around locally or online as frequently. So this makes for a beautiful fresh start. I'm excited. I already have a few items installed and automation is definitely on the next tick mark to check.
I started less than 8 month ago with the ST Hub V3, got it on eBay, got 10 water sensors, 10 multipurpose, 10 Motion sensors, 5 buttons and 3 cameras so far... Little by little... I have a guy that accommodates prices for me... Yes is an investment but little by little you don't feel it
Your timing is almost scary. Literally tried to expose home assistant to the internet last night until 3am. Am starting to think if it's really some kind of dark force involved there. Awesome video btw and they're getting better and better
When I started you needed that knowledge and time to diagnose and debug. But over the last few years it's getting a lot easier to setup and with more people jumping in it may make it so even Skywalker Hibbett will to come to our side too.
I recently made the switch from SmartThings to Home Assistant and was pleasantly surprised by how smooth it went. I grew tired of long existing bugs in the SmartThings app. The rate that updates are released for Home Assistant is a very welcome change. I also wanted to add that I laughed out loud at the Order 66 bit. I've been using an Alexa routine called Order 66 for years. I have all of my Alexa devices plugged into smart outlets and use Order 66 to power them all off. Keep up the great content.
I also moved 2 years + ago to HA from ST (Smart Home Makers) ...I just unplugged the ST hub recently...HA has come so far that it is just amazing me more and more...there are more and more integrations all the time...and it is FREE, open-source...let's keep it that way...:)
About the Ikea Tradfri switches. They work fine for me using a Conbee II Zigbee stick. So they can be used through HA. Propably works with your Zigbee stick too.
I first tried it with the Conbee II but for some reason it kept disconnecting. I think it might have to do with my external SSD plugged in to a USB port. I think I'm just going to use my SmartThings hub for them though since Brett commented on here and showed me how to do it.
@@SmartHomeSolver Whatever works is the best solution ;-) About the Conbee II stick. I had to put mine on usb extension cord since it was otherwise sitting directly next to a usb 3 port which was interfering with the frequency of the stick.
Okay, you've convinced me to try out Home Assistant. Used your link to purchase my Raspberry Pi and got it today. Now to get it set up and try things out! :D
Well, just bought a Rasberry Pi and SD card to start my path on Home Assistant, been watching your videos for a while, and I've slowly been convincing my parents to buy smart products, we've got a full smart back verandah (porch) for BBQs and have been on the search for light switches, and other similar devices.
The ISY-994i still has more powerful automations IMO. I use HA, Smartthings and the ISY at the same time but most of my automations are with the ISY. Just so powerful. Great video though! There are definite advantages to HA in native integrations but the automations can't be matched compared to the ISY so I just tie all three together. The ISY does have a antiquated interface and the lack of a mobile app to do programming is a limitation but you can't beat it for automations. For me it's like the Tasker of Home Automation. Keep putting out the great videos! Love to see a new one pop up on my feed.
It was the best decision for me when I switched. It does get frustrating every once in a while, however, so did Smart Things. Smart Things just felt like when Samsung took over that it lost its touch and it wasn't actively being worked on anymore.
Started with HA one year ago, not knowing where ST was headed. One week in, had a complication working on my Apple Watch, never looked back. Just disconnected my ST hub last week. The developers at HA are both visible and transparent, if you catch my drift. Can't wait for tomorrow to see what 2022.11 has in store.
Welcome to the Smartthings to Home Assistant group! Ran the the two platforms side by side for a while too just using smartthings as my device hub. Now it’s time to start automating the weird stuff!
I absolutely love the Star Wars references… I toyed with home automation about 15 years ago. Now, I’m ready to jump back into it. I would like a powerful system with a good range of compatibility and allows for future updates and expansion. I look like Home Assistant is probably the best choice. I’m guessing that if an item like a bulb or light strip says, “hub not require”, doesn’t mean that it won’t work with a hub. I’ll be looking at the available products, but I want a clean, professional look; not just plugs in all the outlets throughout the house. I have enjoyed watching your videos and found them very informative. Your home automation setup is, “Impressive… Most impressive.” I look for to more videos from you and would welcome any advice you might have. “I won’t fail you. I’m not afraid!”
Thanks for sharing your journey. I'm way behind you and just now thinking of moving from Amazon to SmartThings, primarily to be able to add Zigbee devices like the IKEA smart button. I think I'll still stick with that path because I don't have the patience to deal with what you're describing with Home Assistant.
I'm currently switching to HA from Hubitat, mainly because I don't have a choice if I want certain functionality but HA really is a nightmare to learn, you can't do it causally, you have to devote serious time to it, that's my experience anyway.
Yep agreed wholeheartedly. I need the ability to do some automations, but I'll be darned if I'm going to sling code or go down the rabbit hole of documentation to do it... I do that enough at my day job. Give me point and click, drop downs, radio selections, check boxes, and no more.
Hi, amazingly, im right now in the middle of this same transition from ST to HA. Struggling with PI untill 2 am like everybody i guess :) Thank you for the resources!
I recently installed homeassistant on my media server, primarily because of the Google Assistant plex integration. Initial setup was suuuuper easy and I was really impressed. Then yesterday I spent ages bashing my head against poorly documented packages with out of date tutorials. Not going to be fully switching any time soon
Let me put it this way. My wife genuinely likes smart home technology, but if she looked up how to install Home Assistant, she’d never get past “raspberry pi or virtual machine.” She’d just shake her head & be like ain’t nobody got time for that.
Maybe is like that for you because you like coding and digging, you have the passion for that, some others like me, does not have it, or we find it difficult to get in there path...
I wanted to switch from ST to HA but Webcore is so much easier to do advanced automations with compared to HA native or Node Red. Basic automations are quite easy but once you need a variable or anything more advanced it takes a developer to understand it. I still just use ST with Webcore and integrate into HA. I do use HA for the dashboard. Everyone in the house interacts with smart devices through the dashboard on tablets or HA app on mobile instead of ST. I have to really give it to HA devs for making the dashboard super easy to setup. Way more functional and looks incredible
Hey Reid, thanks for all the AWESOME CONTENT!!!! Any plans to do an in depth step by step series on how to install and set up Home Assistant? I like most am very interested in having home assistant run my home. However, watching all of the videos an reading all of the horror stories has me cowering in the corner! Just like all of the other followers to your channel I find you easy to understand and trust that you actually know what your talking about lol. I'm sure a lot of your subscribers would love and appreciate a video series such as this, most of us would be happy to sit through a 30 min step by step instructional video. I know that's easier said than done, especially for someone with a life and a family..... but I can certainly say if you were to do something of the sort, it would be VERY WELL RECEIVED!!!!!! p.s..... I'm pretty sure even Paul Hibbert would come on over to the dark side lol
I need to start over with HA. I have dreams of security mode, guest mode, i’m home mode, away mode, etc for setting up multiple automations and security features for my parents’ rental property/2nd home!
One piece of advice I can give to anyone running home assistant on a Pi is to use an SSD via a USB enclosure rather than an SD card. In my early days I had many issues all caused by SD cards. Even after spending money on quality cards etc I still ran into issues eventually. I've now been running from an SSD for 3 years with not one single crash or corruption issue. That paired with automatic daily backups that are synced to Google drive give me piece of mind. And should anything go wrong I can quickly re-flash the SSD via etcher and restore the backup. It also makes the home assistant run much quicker. Updates and reboots etc are super quick compared to an SD card.
I felt the 2am zigbee usb stick troubleshooting too hard. My Conbee II stick has proven difficult with HA running on my Synology NAS. Great video as always!
Thanks Jacob! Yeah it was the Conbee II that was giving me some issues. It might be related to the external SSD I have plugged into a USB port. Another user Brett commented on how to use the buttons with the SmartThings hub so I might end up ditching the Zigbee stick.
@@SmartHomeSolver I want to love the Conbee II for what everyone says, but I’ve deployed two of the Nortek USB Zwave/Zigbee sticks at my parents/friends with absolutely zero issues. Every time I reboot or upgrade HA, the Conbee takes significant effort to successfully reconnect.
I started with the dark side, yes, they make some things easy, yes some things are very frustrating, especially when you want zero cloud dependency, like I am trying to build. But once something is done it is the best power in the force, no worries about internet outage and something not working
I’m moving to a new home soon. I’ll be leaving SmartThings behind and going to the HomeAssistant dark side platform. (No, I’m not leaving my smart equipment behind). I’ve been learning home assistant to get ready. And I’m also going to install a UniFi network since I will have 1GB fiber at the new place. Already ordered 2 Access Point 6 Pro units. Snagged those as soon as came back in stock. Trying to decide between the UDM PRO or the SE.
That automation you show with the days of the week in it is something I messed around with for hours trying to just figure out how to turn a light on at a certain time only M-F. I was using the Triggers section and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't let me set a day of the week! I'm hoping this makes it work the way I want. Overall Home assistant has been really good for getting devices connected, but finding documentation that is current and correct can be very challenging. One person told me they didn't want a second job, that's why they didn't go with HA... I'm finding out why they said that.
I love the idea. My age I think I'm a firm Alexa user . It is the first time everything works perfect every time every day. And that's thanks to you guys. And some excellent help from Amazon and their Tech Team on the phone. And fiber-optic internet actually works. Superday take care of yourself watch out your wife does not cancel you
I spent most of this weekend installing/playing with HA. One of the problems I'm running into is HA seems to be changing so fast that many tutorial YT videos that are just a few months old are obsolete. That said, I'm really not sure I want to plow this deep into this. I enjoy automation as a hobby, not an addiction. I'll continue to play with it and after I get my first automation(s) working, I may press on. I've been a computer geek since the 8086 days but the "old dog/new tricks" thing is starting to rear its ugly head.
Thanks Reed for the detailed and instructive video as you always you, I am barely new to ST, less than 8 month I got my 1st ST Hub, and I love it , but with your video, it makes me wonder about Home Assistant, and your friend Paul love it as well hahaha. I am a little bit scared because I have almost 0 knowledge about codes, don't feel the urge or the initiative to learn about it right now, I don't know why feel so lazy about that piece... But I will see if I can try Home Assistant, thanks to you and Paul H. God Bless you Both.
Just to let you know. There is almost nothing that doesnt work with home assistant. When combining it with the node red addon things get very interesting. Installing HACS a community based integration store/platform you will find all the things that home assistant isnt offering. And because almost everything works with apis you can just use node red addon to do automations with apis that you cant do with home assistant itself. Im using it for a few months now and in the beginning it was a pain to learn everything but with their discord channel and helpfull devs there i went from a noob user to a hardcore user with over 400 automations and around 500 entities in it. All running on a raspi 4b. Its controlling the whole house with only 6% CPU.
And to think I was crazy asking you when you were going to switch to home assistant a long time ago. Look at you go! Ubiquiti, home assistant and lutron?! We live the same life!
My frustration with home assistant is that there are so many variables/versions of it. I installed hassio on a RaspberryPi 4, and had all kinds of things setup, went to update it and never came back up, I've even tried reflashing the OS and....nothing. So then I grabbed an old laptop, installed Ubuntu, installed home assistant....and I don't have the supervisor link on the left hand side that so many of the other things I want to do seem to require. Or like you said you go mining for information and well it's for Hassio, not the Linux version or visa versa. Left it alone for a bit, updated Linux and well....the laptop never started again. I've heard there is a version for windows now, so I've thought about trying it again, but the configuration time alone makes me not want to put the effort in. I've got a 3500 sq. ft. home. 95% of the light bulbs are smart, the ones that aren't switches are. Then I've got fans, ceiling fans, speakers, plugs, Christmas lights, thermostats, sprinkler controllers, garage doors, locks, tvs, cameras...etc. Just getting everything grouped into the rooms the way I want with the icons that I want setup on the dashboard...literally 4-5 hours, that I've done twice already, and for what? It runs a second faster? Yes yes I know locally controlled, internet goes out everything still works...blah blah blah. I've lived in this house for 8 years, and my internet has gone out....maybe once for a couple hours?
Really love your content. Thanks for doing all the research for us 🙂. I currently use very basic level home automation where the lights are automated . I am now looking at buying sensors to take it to the next level . I also have a home assistant set up on a VM, ...just wanted to try it out but couldn’t do much with it coz I need the sensors to automate and run scenes and right now I just use HA to turn the lights on and off. Would u recommend buying the aeotec hub or just buy the conbee II stick for the door and motions sensors . M I thinking of buying the hue motion sensor and sengled door sensors. Once again ,keep up the good work and thank u.
Actually, I have 2 ikea dimmer buttons connected to smartthings and reports to home assistant, but not as a binary sensor. See, when you press or hold the button, it triggers the smartthing.button event, and give you the data for the ID of the switch, if it was pressed or held, etc. That CAN be in native automation by choosing an event trigger and copying the yaml code generated when watching the event into the automation. It works great! I'd happily help you with that! :)
Oh that's great news! Thanks so much! I looked everywhere on if this was possible but didn't know what events to listen to on Home Assistant. If you wouldn't mind emailing me some of that info I'll make sure to give you credit when I share it in a future video.
To get the USB Zigbee dongle working you need the right firmware on the stick or pick the right stick to begin with ... it is a minefield :) Works great, when you get it working.
I bought a raspberry pi and played with it all last summer. What a hot mess. And I am pretty techie - but I don't want figuring out how to do something in HA to become my new part time job. Back to ST for now - maybe Hubitat in the future.
Zigbee buttons you end up having to (use the?) force your automation off a zigbee event at worst, which is pretty easy to work out with the native tools. I haven't tried the native automations since the revamp (using Node Red, thanks Rob!) so I'll see how you go, thanks for the content.
You can make those IKEA switches work with HA. Create a smart things virtual switch (those are seen by HA). Use a ST automation to turn the virtual switch on or off when the ikea button is pressed.
I must say... that SmartThings is not all that simple as everyone keeps saying it is. Maybe if you buy very specific products that are tailored for SmartThings and that SmartThings have built native integration for. BUT I found my self in more frustration then ever when using SmartThing, basically zero of my 30+ devices would work out of the box with SmartThings. The custom device handlers that people built to make these product work would stop working form time to time, or update and not work at all, be unreliable, miss capabilities that the product has. I wanted to integrate my Xiaomi air purifier which follows a pretty standardized protocol, but with SmartThings, the only way to do this was by setting up a raspberry pi server, running docker containers that would bridge the two devices. insane, so many points of failer, which made it completely unreliable. When I switched to Home Assistant, Yes! sure there is a very steep learning curve to set things up. BUT all of my 30 devices are working PERFECTLY and are 100% reliable after setting them up. Further more, to discredit SmartThings, I even bought smart bulbs from IKEA that they listed on their website would work, but they didn't! SmartThings could not figure out to set the right colors of the lights. I contacted support, and wrote on their community, a thread with tons of people complaining about this. A moderator replied that they were aware of the problem, but still half a year later they had still not fixed the problem, and the still list the item as compatible. Not acceptable. I even ping'ed the moderator in the thread at least 3 times with 2 months in between to hear if there was any news on the issue. zero response. I really don't regret migrating to HA from ST, my life have only been easier since.
Not sure if you read comments from an older video, but if you do would you consider a more detailed video about the switch? Love your videos btw. If it were not for them my spouse approval factor would be only eye rolling.
I did the same you talked about. I switched to Home Assistant but I left my Smartthings connected integrated into Home Assistant. I use Smartthings to bring over devices into Home Assistant that is not natively supported like my zigbee devices. I haven't upgraded to the USB zigbee dongle yet.
