Discovering the Power of Home Assistant: Your Guide to Open-Source Home Automation

Home Assistant is an open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.

If you want to get an impression on the look and feel, you should check out the Home Assistant online demo.

Awesome Home Assistant is a curated list of awesome Home Assistant resources. Additional software, tutorials, custom integration, add-ons, custom dashboard cards & plugins, cookbooks, example setups, and much more.

Open-Source Home Automation

How to use

Awesome Home Assistant is a fantastic list for people trying to automate every aspect of their home. Automating your home is a long, hard, and never finished task that usually involves a lot of tinkering.

You can navigate through the list by:

Installing

Home Assistant has several installation methods; each has advantages and disadvantages. Many people have different opinions and personal favorites. Important to know that there is no wrong or right here; each technique installs the SAME Home Assistant.

Home Assistant recommends the Home Assistant OS installation method.

In case you need help

There are various ways to get in touch with the Home Assistant community. It doesn't matter if you have a question, need help, want to request a feature, or just say ‘Hi’.

Official Communities

Other Communities

Public Configurations

Some people store their full Home Assistant configuration on GitHub. They are an awesome source for learning and a great source of inspiration.

  • Carlo Costanzo - Probably the most documented configuration out there.
  • DubhAd - Also known as Tinkerer shares his configuration files.
  • geekofweek - Has over 300+ automations.
  • Mahasri Kalavala - Impressive setup, with lots of different hardware working together.
  • Alok Saboo - Also known as arsaboo. Regularly updated.
  • Aaron Bach - Also known as bachya. Regularly updated and includes numerous Dockerized services.
  • Franck Nijhof - Hass.io based, very different configuration structure compared to others.
  • Klaas Schoute - Hass.io based, Intel NUC, Ubuntu Server, Docker and regularly updated.
  • Andrea Iannucci - Also known as SeLLeRoNe. Regularly updated.

Add-ons

Add-ons are additional applications and services, that can be run alongside Home Assistant. The Home Assistant OS and Supervised installations types, provide the Supervisor, which is capable of running and manage these add-ons.

Official Add-ons

Created and maintained by the Home Assistant team.

  • DuckDNS - Updates your Duck DNS IP address and generate SSL using Let's Encrypt.
  • File editor - Browser-based configuration file editor.
  • Mosquitto - Fast and reliable MQTT broker.
  • Terminal & SSH - Allows logging in remotely to using a web terminal or SSH client.
  • Samba - Access your configuration files using Windows network shares.
  • NGINX SSL proxy - Reverse proxy with SSL termination.
  • deCONZ - Control a ZigBee network using ConBee or RaspBee hardware by Dresden Elektronik.
  • TellStick - Run a TellStick and TellStick Duo service.
  • Ada - Ada is voice assistant powered by Almond which is open and privacy-preserving.
  • Almond - The Open, Privacy-Preserving Virtual Assistant.
  • HomeMatic - HomeMatic central based on OCCU.
  • Let's Encrypt - Get a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt; an open and automated certificate authority (CA).
  • MariaDB - An open source relational database (fork of MySQL).

Third Party Add-ons

Anyone can create an add-on, the following are created by the community.

  • SSH & Web Terminal - SSH and Web-based terminal with tons of pre-loaded useful tools.
  • UniFi Controller - The UniFi Controller allows you to manage your UniFi network using a web browser.
  • Node-RED - Flow-based programming for the Internet of Things.
  • Plex Media Server - Your recorded media beautifully organized and ready to stream.
  • IDE - Advanced web-based IDE, based on Cloud9 IDE.
  • Dasshio - Easily use your Amazon Dash Buttons.
  • InfluxDB - Scalable datastore for metrics, events, and real-time analytics.
  • Grafana - Open platform for beautiful analytics and monitoring.
  • Tor - Protect your privacy and access your instance via Tor.
  • Spotify Connect - Spotify Connect client for playing music on your Home Assistant device.
  • zigbee2mqtt - Zigbee to MQTT bridge, get rid of your proprietary Zigbee bridges.
  • AppDaemon - Python Apps and HADashboard.
  • TasmoAdmin - Centrally manage all your Sonoff-Tasmota devices.
  • Aircast - AirPlay capabilities for your Chromecast players.
  • AirSonos - AirPlay capabilities for your Sonos players.
  • Dropbox Sync - Upload your backup snapshots to Dropbox.
  • Log Viewer - Browser-based live log viewing utility.
  • Tautulli - Monitor and get statistics from your Plex server.
  • motionEye - Simple, elegant and feature-rich CCTV/NVR for your cameras.
  • JupyterLab - Create documents containing live code, equations, visualizations, and explanatory text.
  • Backup to Google Drive - Backup snapshots to Google Drive.
  • Glances - A cross-platform system monitoring tool written in Python.
  • Matrix - A secure and decentralized communication platform.
  • AdGuard Home - A network-wide ad-and-tracker blocking DNS server with parental control.
  • Traccar - Traccar is modern GPS Tracking Platform.
  • Home Panel - A touch-compatible web frontend for controlling the home.
  • Hass.io Google Drive Backup - A complete and easy to configure solution for backing up your snapshots to Google Drive.
  • Grocy - ERP beyond your fridge! A groceries & household management solution for your home.
  • EmonCMS - A powerful open-source web app for processing, logging, and visualizing energy, temperature, and other environmental data.
  • CrowdSec - A next-gen collaborative IPS/IDS to protect you from intrusion.

Dashboards

The Home Assistant frontend is already pretty, but you can customize it to fit your needs or taste better.

Icon packs

Themes

It is all about the looks, apply some style.

  • 📺 Themes Tutorial - Quick tutorial/example on how to configure themes.
  • Midnight - A dark theme by Marcel Hoffs.
  • Dark Cyan - A dark theme with cyan accents by Ryoen Deprouw.
  • Grey Night - A dark theme with grey accents by ksya.
  • Dark Red - A dark theme with red accents by Ryoen Deprouw.
  • Halloween - Pumpkins colored by Mahasri Kalavala.
  • Black and Green - A dark theme with pale green accents by GreenTurtwig.
  • Vintage - Give your frontend a vintage look with this theme by Anup Surendran.
  • Carbon Green - Light carbon theme with green accents by Reua.
  • Many Themes, One Repo - 13 Themes in a convenient ZIP file.
  • Slate - A dark theme close to the vanila looks from seangreen2.
  • Synthwave - A theme influenced by the cover artwork of modern Synthwave bands.
  • Google Home Theme - Two themes (light and dark) matching the design of Google Home Hub.

Custom Cards

The Home Assistant Dashboards allows people to build custom cards on top of it, which you can easily add to your instance.

Alternative Dashboards

  • TileBoard - A simple yet highly configurable Dashboard.
  • Dwains Dashboard - An fully auto-generating dashboard for desktop, tablet and mobile.

Custom Integrations

Additional integrations for Home Assistant, that were created by the community.

  • Lutron Caseta Pro - Integrates Lutron Caseta Smart Bridge PRO / RA2 Select.
  • SmartIR - Integrates devices using Broadlink IR.
  • Xiaomi Hygrothermo - Sensor platform for Xiaomi Mijia BT Hygrothermo temperature and humidity sensor.
  • Volkswagen Carnet - Integrates Volkswagen Carnet (requires valid Carnet subscription).
  • Untappd - Connects with your Untappd account.
  • Elasticsearch - Publishes events to Elasticsearch.
  • Alexa Media Player - Allow control of Amazon Alexa devices.
  • iCloud3 - Improved version of the iCloud device tracker component with a lot of capabilities.
  • HACS - This is a manager for your custom integration (components) and plugin (lovelace elements) needs.
  • Circadian Lighting - Circadian Lighting slowly synchronizes your color changing lights with the regular naturally occuring color temperature of the sky throughout the day.
  • HASS Aarlo - Asynchronous Arlo integration. Similar to the Arlo web site; monitors events and states for all base stations, cameras and doorbells.
  • Xiaomi Cloud Map Extractor - Presents a live view of a map for Xiaomi (Roborock/Viomi/Roidmi/Dreame) vacuums without a need for rooting.
  • WebRTC Camera - View RTSP streams from IP Cameras in real-time through WebRTC or MSE with Pan/Zoom controls.
  • Sonoff LAN - Control Sonoff devices with eWeLink (original) firmware over LAN and/or Cloud.
  • Spotcast - Start Spotify playback on an idle Chromecast device as well as control Spotify connect devices.
  • The Watchman - Keep track of missing entities and services in your config files.

DIY

Do It Yourself; rather than buying home automation hardware or solutions, you could also build them yourself!

  • ESPHome - Program ESP8266 boards and ESP32 boards using YAML.
  • Magic Cards - RFID scannable cards that you can program to do anything.
  • Tasmota - Firmware for ESP8266 boards and devices.

DIY Gateways

  • OpenMQTTGateway - A flexible MQTT gateway for IR, RF, BLE, MiFlora, SMS, and many sensors.
  • esp8266 Milight Hub - Alternative hub for Milight/LimitlessLED devices that uses MQTT.
  • zigbee2mqtt - Zigbee to MQTT bridge, get rid of your proprietary Zigbee bridges.

DIY Projects

Online Resources

Links to various users of Home Assistant that regularly publish Home Assistant focussed content.

Blogs

YouTube Channels

Sit back, relax, watch, and learn.

  • Home Assistant - Official YouTube Channel where new launches and live streams are held.
  • BRUH - Ben has great tutorials for getting started, unfortunately, inactive lately.
  • BurnsHA - Great informational and tutorial videos.
  • DrZzs - Great how-to videos and also streams live.
  • The Hook Up - Tutorials and more, also has videos on home automation in general.
  • HASSCASTS - Tips, Tricks & Tutorials, moving to mainly live streams.
  • JuanMTech - Easy to follow how-to videos, product reviews and more.
  • vCloudInfo - Publishes videos based on his home and GitHub repository.
  • digiblurDIY - Tutorials on hardware projects and Tasmota automations.
  • Intermit.Tech - Tutorials & reviews: Camera's, Home Networking, ESP8266 boards, Node-RED.
  • BeardedTinker - Tutorials & 3D printing.
  • Smart Home Junkie - How-to videos and tutorials for starters and advanced users.
  • Everything Smart Home - Focuses on Smart Home, Home Automation, general tech reviews, guides, and step-by-step DIY projects.

Podcasts

Get inspired, while commuting, doing your morning routine, or at the gym!

Twitter

Keep up with the latest news and updates, 280 characters at a time!

  • @home_assistant - Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.
  • @hass_devs - Latest news on the development of Home Assistant for contributors.
  • @balloob - Founder of the Home Assistant project.
  • @pvizeli - Core developer and creator of the Hass.io project.
  • @frenck - Creator of this Awesome list and maintainer of the Community Hass.io Add-ons project.
  • @ccostan - Blogger of all things Tech. Smart Home, #IOT & other Geeky subjects.
  • @HomeTechHacker - Guy friends call when #tech happens. Tweet 25-50x/week about #smarthome, #homenetwork, #cybersecurity, #Linux, #gadgets, and #life.
  • @hassioaddons - For all commmunity add-on news and updates.
  • @Dr_Zzs - Great how-to videos and also streams live.

Uncategorized

Valuable links, that don't fit in any of the above categories (yet!).

Alternative Home Automation Software

Home Assistant isn't the only home automation framework out there, here are some alternatives.

  • openHAB - Java-based and aims at being a universal integration platform.
  • Domoticz - A lightweight Home Automation System.
  • Gladys - Open source program which runs on your Raspberry Pi.
  • SmartThings - Commercial home automation hub by Samsung.

This Awesome list is not created, developed, affiliated, supported, maintained or endorsed by Home Assistant.

All product names, logos, brands, trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. All company, product, and service names used in this list are for identification purposes only.

Use of these names, logos, trademarks, and brands does not imply endorsement.

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