Migration to Home Assistant Green

Migration to Home Assistant Green

How it started

When we moved into our new house, I installed quite a few smart home devices.

Philips HUE for light and the Bosch Smart Home system. And for the beginning, I was pleased with it.

I have chosen those two systems, as they integrate and both were able to run completely offline. You can use the cloud - but it's optional. Another reason was, that I only needed the Bosch app to control everything.

As of Today

This hasn’t really changed much… but I’ve started seeing ads in the HUE app, and the Bosch app feels quite slow. And, of course, we’ve added even more devices over the years: a robot vacuum, a robotic lawn mower, an electric car, and more.

Making it simpler...

So, a few months ago, I installed Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi and started integrating all kinds of devices.

From the project side:

Awaken your home

Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. 

Homepage: https://www.home-assistant.io/

It is possible to control my lights, heating, vacuum cleaner, and everything else.

One thing I especially like is being able to see our energy consumption and PV energy generation in a single app. I’ve even added many of our individual devices, so I can see exactly where the energy is being used.

My idea now: why don't I move everything to Home Assistant? Getting rid of all those smart home apps and just using one? And maybe even one step more: getting rid of some of the bridges? Philips HUE perhaps?

Next Level

Now I wanted to upgrade to the next level, and I got myself Home Assistant Green for more "power and stability" compared to the Raspberry Pi! I also ordered the ZBT-2 antenna so I can directly connect my Zigbee devices to it.

The long-term idea is that I get rid of the Philips HUE Hub and use Home Assistant as the main controller (currently it's Bosch Smart Home for automation and triggers).

Backup and Restore was effortless to migrate my data to the new hardware, and I only had to adjust some IP address settings. For example, my Home Assistant auto-backs up to my Synology NAS. But that was easy.

In the next weeks I will add the first devices directly to Home Assistant. Stay tuned!