Thought it was time to step up the home automation effort, so a mention of HomeAssistant on a blog had me interested. So now the RaspberryPi is running some new software and I’ve been tinkering with this seeing what it can do. There’s not too many things in the house that are ‘smart’, but I can turn the TV off and control a WeMo switch. Much of the built-in functionality is impressive, so triggers for sunset or time let one test how it works. Integration with my phone also lets it track location and use geofencing for triggers also.

I’d be interested to see what can be done once I can integrate with other systems in the house, such as the alarm system, thermostat or pool controllers. Being open-source and open, there’s plenty of scope to ‘roll-your-own’ to meet individual needs.

Here’s a useful article on using the Hass.io version of HomeAssistant. Worth a look.