This is a breakdown of my current Home Automation setup. It's broken down into three major sections -
- Hardware Integrations
- Software Integrations
- External Integrations
Of course, end of the day all integrations are technically "software" but these integrations rely on you having a specific piece of hardware.
Integration link - Tuya
A lot of cheap smart bulbs are essentially rebranded Tuya bulbs. Which allows HA to then integrate with a "Syska" bulb. Unfortunately, there's no way to verify if your hardware will with on HA or not. It's a bit of a risk. Easiest way to check would be to search the Q&A and review section of the product and see if someone mentions using the Tuya app.
You'll have to fetch the Tuya app on your phone and configure the bulb using that. Once configured you can then install the integration on HA and follow the steps.
Integration link - Yeelight
Not much to add here. There's no workaround needed, works out of the box. I believe Yeelight is now branded as Mi Bulbs but the same integration might work. I cannot confirm as I don't have any Mi bulbs.
Integration link - wiz_light.
Integrates through a custom integration that you have to install. Setup is straightforward after that.
Integration link - WLED
I made a custom LED Strip that I stuck behind my monitor. You can find more details on my blog here - Responsive Bias lighting with WLED. Setup is quite straightforward after that.
Integration link - Sony Playstation 4. This integration allows you to control the power state of the PS4. Along with that, you can also select which game you want to play from HA itself, which then turns on the PS4, and starts the game.
Integration link - Google Cast
I have two Google Home Minis and one Chromecast Audio. They all work through this integration.
Integration link - Kodi
I have Raspberry Pi 4 that runs Kodi. I use this as my media player connected to my TV.
I have a Fire HD 10 and Lenovo Yoga 3 (that my friend graciously gave me). The Fire HD sits on my work desk and the Lenovo tab hangs on a wall in the kitchen. They both run Fully Kiosk Browser. Fully Kiosk also integrates with HA through a custom integration - homeassistant-fullykiosk. This allows me to do a bunch of things like - Control the screen, lock the tablet, monitor certain aspects like battery, wifi strength, etc. It also allows me to push any web page. Very useful in the kitchen!
My phone runs the official HA app. The app allows you to send a lot of interesting data back to HA. There's a lot of powerful automations you can make using this data, especialy geolocation based ones.
Integration link - Broadlink
This works in tandem with a custom integration SmartIR which makes it really easy to integrate existing TVs and ACs into HA. I currently only use this to control the AC in my bedroom.
Integration link - Octoprint
I have a Creality Ender 3 v2 FDM 3D Printer. Octoprint is a fantastic OSS project that allows you to remotely control and monitor your FDM 3D Printer. It also integrates with HA allowing me to monitor my prints from the HA dashboard and also create automations like notifying me when my print is finished. If you have a camera setup, you can also embed that feed into the dashboard using the MJPEG Integration.
Integration link - Xiaomi Miio
I have a air purifier in my bedroom. The HA integration allows me to control the fan setting for the purifier. Along with that the purifier has sensors for temperature, humidity and AQI that I fetch into HA to display on a dashboard.
Integration link - Spotify
Pretty straightforward integration. I use this integration to be able to control playback from any device that I can access the dashboard. This is useful when music is playing on speakers. Along with that I can change the device the music is playing on from the dashboard itself. This integration also allows you to browse Spotify from HA's UI and play media on any devices that you may have integrated
Integration link - Google Calendar Event
I have specfic calenders that are connected to my account that I fetch data from and show in HA on the dashboard. This is great for my workspace tablet which allows me to quickly glance at meetings / events.
Integration link - AirVisual
This fetches AQI information that I feed to my dashboard for monitoring purposes. It's a good reference point when comparing with AQI in-house.
Integration link - Uptime Robot
Uptime Robot pings a certain IP / Domain every x number of minutes and monitors your services. It wouldn't make sense to self-host a monitoring service at home so I use a hosted service to fetch the uptime data and store it in HA which is then fed into my dashboard.
Integration link - System Monitor
This pulls data from the system HA is installed on. For my setup I fetch the CPU Usage, and network in and out. This gives me a simple but useful way to monitor my server from the HA dashboard.
This works over MQTT and doesn't need any specific configuration in HA as long as you've configured MQTT.
This app allows me to push sensor data from my Windows (forgive me!) PC to HA via MQTT. It also allows me to trigger specific things on the PC via MQTT. Here's some of the things I use this for -
- Push my webcam state to HA to turn on a bulb (see more details in the Node-RED section)
- Allow me to run specific applications from the HA dashboard. This is useful if I want to trigger something remotely.
- Shutting down the system remotely
Integration link (for Node-RED) - home-asssistant-websocket
Node-RED is low-code programming tool that allows me to very quickly create automations and iterate. I prefer this to the inbuilt automation feature in Home Assistant. Some of the automations I have -
- Toggle the state of some devices depending on the time of the day
- Expose specific services in HA via HTTP / MQTT
- If I send something to a specific Telegram bot, it runs TTS on it and plays it on my speaker
- If the camera on one of the PCs we have in the house is enabled, turn on the bulb on in the living room.
- This is useful in case someone in the house is in a meeting
- Notify me via the Google Home Mini in my room that my 3D Print has been completed
- Turn on the light in the hall in case my presence is detected (This is WIP, more details on the proejct soon)
Integration link - MQTT
MQTT is a protocol meant for IOT devices. It's a super lightweight pub/sub messaging transport. It's faster and uses less data. I have self-hosted Mosquitto server that all my services connect to.