Home Assistant for everyone

With Home Assistant, we want to help people live their life, while helping out in the background. I wrote about this in 2016 when I detailed my view on the perfect home automation. We’ve been working towards this ever since.

In 2019 we focused on “Make It Easier” (see State of the Union for details). We made Home Assistant easier to use, configure and to contribute to. Every time we make it easier, we become accessible to more people. There is still a ton we can make easier, and that’s great because 2020 is around the corner and we need things to do :-)

During Thanksgiving, Home Assistant made it to #1 on Hacker News, a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. The comments had lots of users chiming in with their positive experiences. One comment stood out to me and I wanted to share it:

Just wanted to say that my life as a quadriplegic would be 13.4 million percent more crap without Home Assistant. Being quadriplegic and having something as open as Home Assistant is absolutely amazing, I have automated absolutely everything in the house and home assistant has not choked once.

Couple that with one of the friendliest communities for newbies I have come across in a long time and you have something really awesome.

I've been using it for a couple of years, I have tried all the other open source alternatives but nothing really comes close for me. I'm actually fiddling with my installation right now as it were.

I cannot plug my phone in to charge it up myself obviously, so I am writing a little automation that will check who is in the house and announce through the speakers my phone needs charging up or send them a text message if I have their phone number when my mobile phone charge gets below 20%.

Totally cool beanz and I am totally serious about how much easier this makes my life as a quadriplegic.

– escapologybb on Hacker News

This is just great. I love how this user can live a more comfortable life. It’s really motivating.

I also really like the first reply to the above comment. It highlights how we tend to judge things from our perspective and that our perspective might not paint the whole picture.

Thanks for your comment. I came to this discussion with my blinkers on, so to speak, pre -judging how I need less automation in my world, and you give concrete evidence how someone's "meh" can be balanced by untold advantages (13.4 million, in fact) of such a system.

Thanks for making me eat humble pie and broadening my views. Sometimes more tech is helpful indeed.

Ps: The way you're applying it is creative and awesome too!

– cmroanirgo on Hacker News

As Home Assistant grows and evolves, let’s make sure we don’t judge the additions and changes based on just our own perspective and needs. Think about how it can help other (potential) Home Assistant users. It’s our goal that a privacy-focused home automation platform is within everyone’s reach, regardless of background, location or income.

Paulus