Home Assistant Config 🏠
🎄🎁 Advent of Open Source – Day 10/24: A deep dive into a comprehensive, privacy-focused smart home configuration.
(See my intro post)
Funny how things work out - initially, I didn’t care for home automation at all. But when in 2020 I discovered Home Assistant was written in Python, my favorite programming language, I suddenly found a new hobby. Over the years, I’ve built a comprehensive setup with over 137 automations (and counting!). These automations are triggered by everything from simple motion sensors to complex patterns of conditions and sensor states, creating a home that responds intelligently to our needs.
📖 Origin Story
What started with basic light controls evolved into a complete home automation system. In the beginning, my wife was continuously annoyed by lights turning on at the wrong moment or not at all. However, as I debugged and refined the system, things started working exactly as expected, and she began to really appreciate it. When we moved from The Netherlands to the US in 2022 (and two more times since), we felt like we were back in the stone age having to manually control lights. The annoyance had shifted from buggy automations to not having Home Assistant fully installed yet!
Unfortunately, I’ve been less active lately with my Home Assistant setup because so many other projects draw my attention. One of these “projects” is my 1.5-year-old twin boys, who now have their own room with specialized automations, including 100% local cameras with ML pattern detection for monitoring without compromising privacy.
🔧 Technical Highlights
- 137 documented automations with auto-generated documentation
- Presence detection in every room
- Adaptive lighting throughout the house
- Privacy-focused baby monitoring
- Fully local processing
- 2,432 commits of continuous improvement
📊 Impact
- 1,747 GitHub stars
- 185 forks
- Used as reference by countless Home Assistant enthusiasts
- Featured in Home Assistant community
- Spawned several spin-off projects (like Adaptive Lighting from Day 2!)
💡 Lessons Learned
- Start small, expand gradually
- Privacy and local processing matter
- Automated documentation stays accurate
- Home automation is never “finished”
- Sometimes life (like twins!) brings new automation challenges
Want to explore my home automation setup? Check out the full config on GitHub!
#OpenSource #HomeAssistant #SmartHome #IoT #Python
