This thought was correct. Home Assistant is absolutely incredible, easy to use, polished, and flexible. You can get it to do all of this easily.
I got it installed and configured within ~3 hours.
There are no dependecies from other services and especially no dependency from Amazon or Google (the plugs work with them too.) Given the size of the web app maybe it also spared me some time because I suspect that installing, configuring Home Assistant and learning how to use it and what works and what doesn't are not zero time activities.
I believe one can also combine it with Home Assistant, I think there are interfaces.
Learning curve is initial exponential (think of visual Unix pipes) but once understood, there are limitless things that you can do with Node-RED. It's basically a visual programming frontend to NodeJS.
No real reason to write code in blocks when you know how to not do that.
I have an express server that runs my automations using the REST API.
My 2 cents go for Zigbee2MQTT, Mosquitton, and Domoticz. Domoticz has it's problems, but it's been a faithful workhorse for me for the past 6 or more years.
One way is also to use HAOS but it is kinda limited.
Current stack for me is HA+traefik+Z2M+Frigate+Mosquitto. All running in containers, on top of Debian. Works perfectly.
I have been thinking of migrating my setup from a docks container to HAOS on metal.
I have like 1 dozen Intel j5105 boxes, might as well use them.
This is not the most popular route and therefore also less supported my advice:
- use a raspberry-pi with Home Assistant OS or buy one of their self made raspberry-pi alternatives Home Assistant Yellow etc.
You can run docker but it's still not straightforward because then you need to passthrough like USB Devices etc, I would recommend against it.
And from there use the yamls to define a very basic config like language, location etc (I'm not sure that you even need to do that). But only use the GUI from there on.
Everything can be done with the GUI, I haven't touched my yaml files in years.
And I regularly upgrade versions too, haven't had any upgrade issues either.
Command line sensors, REST sensors, some types of virtual sensors, groups (I think), there's a lot of stuff you still can't do in the GUI, and even if you don't mind writing their stupid YAML-based config, the documentation isn't very friendly and in places outdated and contradicting itself.
AFAIK you still need to do everything else in yaml tho.
You're also not tied to HA, but can develop using anything then once it all works put the result on HA.
I feel like one of the people waving at the cloud saying: "Use Home Assistant", same as back in the days of use linux for all your troubles.
OpenHAB allows for way more customization and integration.
The only gripe I have about the Shelly stuff is that it uses more power than what you would expect for stuff that is pretty much very intermittent use and as a result I've wired up everything with 5V wall warts, very low power to save on parasitic drain. We've done what we could to knock down our daily average and typically do about 8-10KWh/day so every little bit counts.
The easiest way is to ignore their apps and other cloud based components and just to run HA on a small computer that you stash away near your distribution panel.
1. Zigbee devices are crazy inexpensive. I can get two zigbee power switches for less than half the cost of a single USB controlled one.
2. Zigbee2Mqtt is really nice; setting it and mosquitto up was easy, and I can control everything over mqtt now.
3. The creator of HA really doesn't want me using his software, so I'm not.
I also want to use Shelly dimmers, but I haven’t found simple stateless light switches. I want automation and app control in many cases, but also want simple tactile button for on/off or hold for brightness control. Amazingly hard to find.
That's how I have my lights setup - normal light switches (switched live) will toggle the switch sensor which is picked up by HomeAssistant which then either toggles the relay (for non smart lights) or sends a command to a light group (Zigbee IKEA Tradfri bulbs, using a Sonoff Zigbee dongle for comms) to turn on or off.
The only issue you might have is that they require a neutral, so unless you have a neutral behind each switch you'll need to put the Shelly elsewhere, either in the light fitting or ceiling (in my case).
They no longer seem to offer them. But the replacement might work as well. Support for the device was merged into Z2M last month so not sure if it's already included in the latest release.
1. Predecesor of this: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/somrig-shortcut-button-white-sm...
