Why DIY smart home system
While many people are content to purchase a smart home system that is already assembled, others prefer to create their own system. There are several reasons why someone might choose to DIY their smart home system.
One reason to DIY is that it allows for a high degree of customization. When you purchase a smart home system that is already assembled, you are limited to the features that are included in that particular system. However, when you create your own system, you can choose the specific components and features that you want, and you can tailor the system to fit your specific needs.
Another reason to DIY is that it can help to protect your privacy. When you purchase a smart home system from a company, that company will have access to your data. This data can include information about your daily routines, your comings and goings, and even the contents of your home. If you are concerned about your privacy, then creating your own smart home system can give you peace of mind, knowing that only you will have access to the data that is collected by the system.
Finally, DIYing your smart home system can also save you money. Smart home systems can be expensive, and if you are not careful, you can easily end up spending more than you need to. By creating your own system, you can choose the specific components that you want and need, and you can find them at the best possible prices. In addition, you can often find used or refurbished components that can save you even more money.
Home Assistant
Home Assistant is a free and open-source software for home automation that is focused on local control and privacy. It can be accessed through a web portal or mobile App, or by voice commands through a supported virtual assistant such as Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.
Home Assistant has a large community of developers and users who contribute a lot of code and documentation. The first version was released in 2013, and since then, updates have been released almost every week.
Some of the key features of Home Assistant include:
-Open-source software for managing your home automation needs
-Integration with a wide range of devices and services, over 2000 integrations by today.
-Configuration through a web interface or text files (YAML format)
-Automatic detection of devices on your network
-Ability to create custom automation rules
-Notifications through a variety of methods (email, in App, SMS text)
-Control your home automation system through voice commands with Amazon Echo or Google Home and more
Start with Home Assistant
You can either build your own Home Assistant Hub from scratch, or purchase a Home Assistant yellow (a pre-installed Hub). If you decide to build your own Hub or server, it will require some skill and time, anywhere from hours to days.
Before you start, there is something you should know: Home Assistant is easy to use, but the advanced features or customization may require some hardware and software knowledge(Linux server). This is not an easy path for common people.
https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2021/09/13/home-assistant-yellow/
DIY Hub
If you’re interested in building your own hub, you should first consider your requirements for the hardware. A raspberry pi 3 or pi 4 would suffice for basic usage (local control), or you could choose a mini PC for advanced usage, making it more like a home server. Data computing, such as object detection, face recognition, and storing data files such as video recordings, music, movies, and photos, would be possible with a mini PC.
If you want to use your server solely for Home Assistant, then you should choose the “Home Assistant Operating System”. If you want to use your server for other purposes as well, then you should choose one of the other options. “Home Assistant Supervised” is a good choice if you want to use add-ons or Supervisor for highly customization.
Home Assistant provide four installation methods:
| Installation type | Difficulty | Decription |
| Home Assistant Operating System | Easy | Managed OS with Home Assistant |
| Home Assistant Container | Normal | Running on Docker, no add-on and Supervisor |
| Home Assistant Supervised | Difficult | Running on Docker |
| Home Assistant Core | Difficult | Installed with Python virtual environment, no add-on and Supervisor |
https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/
Control
You can use Home Assistant through the web portal (default address: http://{YOUR IP}:8123) or mobile app (for Android or iOS). You can also set up voice control for Home Assistant, but that requires additional work.
If you use Home Assistant OS and haven’t changed any of the defaults, Home Assistant will also be reachable at http://homeassistant.local:8123.
Resource for Voice-control:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/alexa/
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/
https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/
Remote access
If you want remote access or internet access to your smart home system, you have two options: use Home Assistant Cloud or reverse proxy (e.g. DuckDNS or FRP) if you don’t have a static public IP address.
https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/remote/
Integration
If you want to add devices or services for home automation, you’ll need to use integration. Usually, you’ll need to do some configuration to make it work, which is provided by the Home Assistant community. Alternatively, you can use the Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) to find more integrations on GitHub.
UI
Home Assistant dashboards are a quick, easy way for you to control their homes using their mobile devices or desktop computers. With 29 different cards that can be customized to each user’s liking, the dashboard is highly customizable and very user-friendly. Themes can be applied to each card, and you can even override entity names and icons if you want.
If you’re looking to create a custom style dashboard, you can use Frontend integration to change the theme which is installed by default. We highly recommend using Floorplan (install via HACS) to create an impressive look and real-time state display. Beware of that Creating floorplan SVG file with animations will take up a lot of time and effort.
Here is good floorplan example come from home assistant community:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/tablet-floor-plan-dashboard/324382
Automation and Scene
Home Assistant keeps track of all your devices and services, which you can view in the dashboard. This information can be used to trigger automations, like turning on the lights at sunset or pausing the music when you get a call. If you’re just starting out, you can use blueprint automations. These are ready-made automations created by the community that you just need to configure.
If you’re interested in creating your own automation, you can follow automation basics to get started. If you’re already familiar with Node-RED, you can use Node-RED add-on to create more complex automations.
https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/automation/
System Maintenance
While smart home systems are designed to make our lives more convenient, it’s important to remember that no system is perfect. Just like any other type of technology, smart home systems can go wrong, which is why regular backups and upgrades are necessary.
Backup
It’s fortunate that Home Assistant has a backup function to preserve your current system, including add-on data and configuration. The backup process differs slightly depending on your installation type: “Home Assistant Core” and “Home Assistant Container” use backup integration, while “Home Assistant Operating System” or “Home Assistant Supervised” use the built-in backup function.
Update
You should update your Home Assistant for the latest bug fixes and improvements. If you’re running a very old version of software, expect to spend a lot of time and effort to update it. Breaking changes accumulate over time, so the more major releases you’ve missed, the more work you’ll have to do to get up to date.
However, you should skip a major release because it usually includes significant changes that could introduce new bugs, and sometimes the bugs are pretty critical. for example: Saw a new release 2022.10? Skip 2022.10.0, and 2022.10.1 and hit “Update” once 2022.10.2 arrives.
Tips
Take official recommendations
HA is an open-source software with limited development resources. Follow the official recommendations to get long-term support.
Use Ethernet hardwired for Hub
Based on consideration of network speed and stability, using Ethernet cable for Home Assistant Hub/Server is the best solution.
Use the secrets.yaml file to store username and password
Store your private information in secrets.yaml, and use reusable variable names for your configuration, so you don’t have to exposed the real username or password.
https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/secrets/#using-secretsyaml
Use MariaDB instead of default SQLite
Home assistant uses SQLite as its default database. However, as the historical data grows, queries will become slow. Replacing SQLite with MariaDB will improve performance for larger datasets, even though MariaDB uses more hardware resources than SQLite. You can also use MySQL or PostgreSQL if you wish.