Home Assistant is a remarkable tool that converts your home into a Smart Home, by connecting itself up to any smart appliances it finds in your home and issuing orders to those devices. Whilst Echo and Google Home Hub toyed with the public by promising to be an automation hub, but never fully delivered, Home Assistant does what they failed to do.
Home Assistant is open source and has a focus on both privacy and local control. Primary uses for Home Assistant are controlling lighting, heating, cooling, home appliances, and entertainment systems.
Unlike alternative devices, Home Hub works without remote servers located in the cloud. Home Assistant is independent of an external Internet connection, which speeds up operation and allays many potential security issues to do with using external connections.
Many home automation gadgets have their own app, but do you really want to have ten different apps on your iPhone or Android to control your home? With Home Assistant just one app will control all your devices and even place them into groups so that one command will impact several devices.
Home Assistant does not favor one brand over another and will happily work with many different devices, so if you already have some home automation devices and you buy the Joe Assistant, the Home Assistant will find your existing devices and communicate with them. You can also connect to services such as IFTTT easily and quickly.
Benefits
1. It’s faster: Because Home Assistant is hosted on your local server, it is so much faster than cloud-based alternatives.
2. It’s compatible: It works with 1000s of devices with no restriction by third-party hosts.
3. It’s secure: having fewer devices connected to the Internet will improve the security of your home, you have far more control.
4. It’s reliable: You are not reliant on cloud services, who might change their terms or service structure and even stop supporting your device.
5. It’s free: The Home Assistant has a free & open source code.
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