this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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It seems that there are a lot of things to consider before even buying the first smart device. How would you start when you would start over?

Are there any good beginner guides that helped you?

Important points for me are

  • privacy (everything should be local, no Alexa-Karens in my home)
  • use of open source/free software
  • a good variety of smart things I can use (I don't want to be tied Apple-like to only one company)

Is there a golden way to build a smart home with these factors in mind?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Or the "step-by-step" guides that are missing a step. Or assume a bunch of knowledge. If you don't tell me I need to download a special compiler to install this thing, it's not step-by-step.

I found one the other day that failed to mention that I had to put some code in config to make it work. But they had put a screenshot of the code they used, just hadn't referenced it in the steps ๐Ÿ™„.

I've also seen one of the main devs respond to a user on GitHub saying that the bug they were seeing was not a bug because it was caused by the third-party system and "that's just how it is". Completely ignored the fact that the user could not achieve the intended behaviour from the integration. Was this information anywhere in the notes? Of course not.