A first generation Google Nest Hub and a few smart light bulbs from IKEA, that's been the entirety of my smart home until recently. I had the lights set to turn on in the morning on workdays (and turn off when it's time to leave), and I use Nest hub for timers, mostly in the morning for my pot of tea, and for cooking pasta. That was pretty much it.

While I'm not very technical, tinkering is something I sometimes enjoy, so I do have a few other devices around the flat. I use an OSMC Vero V to watch things on my dumb TV, this is fed by Jellyfin on a Raspberry pi 4 running CasaOS. The Pi also has a few other services such as Navidrome for music.
Another pi runs PiCorePlayer and connects to a few different speakers. Things work fairly well.

A few months back I got the Home Assistant Green as I was curious about the device and what I might be able to do with Home Assistant itself. I set it up but didn't really have the energy to actually learn how to use HA, even with the improvements in UX and onboarding they have apparently made over the last year or so, it was a bit much for me at the time. I'm always a bit extra tired this time of year. So the Green has been sitting idly, while IKEA has kept turning my lights on and off for me while Google let me know when the tea was ready.
But I really want to replace the Nest hub. In my quest to de-Googlify my life, that single piece of equipment had been a pain point. I use Proton for email and cloud storage, I use DuckDuckGo and Firefox for the web, and Freetube and Pixelfed for videos. But that Nest Hub in my kitchen has just been so convenient. Getting something from Amazon or Apple was obviously not going to happen, I'm not going to choose one Big Tech company for another.

Enter the new Home Assistant Voice PE. Combined with my currently idling Green, I hope for some simple automation magic to happen soon. At first, as I get a little more comfortable around HA, I'll probably just use it to turn on and off the lights, set timers and to play music, but after that? I don't really know. I'm looking into getting some smart blinds or curtains. For me things like thermostats, energy use, garage doors, cameras etc aren't relevant, but future projects might include some limited gardening, a wall mounted screen, and possibly using AI with the Home Assistant Voice.

I've already begun by unplugging my IKEA Hub (which apparently doesn't work with HA anyway) and pairing my lights with the Zigbee dongle I have, and made my first automation. And it worked! I can control my PiCorePlayer from HA too now, even if I'm a bit confused about the whole set up, it does work. I preordered the HA Voice yesterday, and with a bit of luck it won't take too long to get here.

I've no idea yet if this is a one off post, or if I'll make a few more as I explore this and delve a little deeper into home automation. Space, needs and funds are all limited, but as I mentioned earlier - it's fun to tinker sometimes.

#HomeAssistant #HomeLab #HomeAssistantGreen #PiCorePlayer #OSMC #Kodi #HomeAssistantVoice #NabuCasa