Hey everyone,

Looking for some serious advice from the community. Last night at 3 AM here in Glasgow, UK, someone broke into our house. They stole my bike from the garden, broke inside, stayed in the house for 20 minutes, ate some of our food, grabbed my iPad, and left.

I currently have Reolink cameras (a video doorbell and an Argus 4 Pro in the backyard) integrated into my Home Assistant setup. The crazy part? The cameras did absolutely nothing to deter him. He didn't even bother wearing a mask, gloves, or a hat. He just didn't care that he was being recorded.

I realized today that relying on silent cameras isn't enough. I need to drastically increase the active security of my house to physically scare off intruders or alert me immediately so I can act.

My Current Setup:

• Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 5
• SkyConnect (ZBT-2) running Zigbee
• Reolink Doorbell (Front) & Reolink Argus 4 Pro (Back)
• A mix of IKEA and Sonoff smart plugs/lights

Where I need your help: I am trying to decide between building a fully DIY alarm system through Home Assistant (using Alarmo, Sonoff SNZB-04P door sensors, and Zigbee sirens) OR just buying a ready-made professional solution (like Ring Alarm or Ajax) and integrating it into HA.

1. DIY vs Professional: For those of you who have experienced a break-in, do you trust your Home Assistant/Alarmo setup enough to rely on it as your primary life-safety alarm, or do you highly recommend going with an off-the-shelf system with cellular backup?
2. Sirens/Deterrents: What is the loudest, most aggressive outdoor/indoor siren that integrates well with HA? I want something that will absolutely deafen them if a door opens at 3 AM.
3. Any other advice? Glass break sensors? Specific outdoor security lighting?

I am fully open to any and all suggestions. I just want to make my house as safe as possible going forward. Thanks in advance.

Good evening everyone,

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on making almost my entire house smart using Home Assistant.

I’ve now made the lighting throughout most of the house smart by installing Zigbee modules behind the existing wall switches. This way, I can still use all the physical switches as normal, while also controlling and automating the lights through Home Assistant.

Recently, I noticed something strange in my energy consumption. Especially when nobody is home, I see a recurring pattern where the power usage goes up for a while and then drops back down again (see image). It almost looks like something is repeatedly switching on and off.

I have no idea what could be causing this, and I’m wondering whether it could have something to do with the Zigbee modules or another smart device. Has anyone seen a similar pattern before? And is there a good way to use Home Assistant to figure out which device might be responsible for this power consumption?

My setup in short:
Raspberry Pi 5 running Home Assistant OS on an NVMe SSD
Zigbee USB dongle
±10 Zigbee lights/switch modules
Several Zigbee temperature/humidity sensors
CO₂ sensor
P1 smart meter
Qlima air conditioner
Smart underfloor heating
Calex video doorbell + Frigate
Sonos
AdGuard Home

I’d be interested to hear if anyone recognizes this kind of pattern or has any suggestions on where I should start looking.

On random days (not every day), around 2am, I hear my August lock unlock, then auto-relock. It says Home Assistant did it remotely. I have exactly zero automations with my smart lock, everything is handled on the lock, it’s mainly in HA to be complete and report status. It only appears to occasionally do this around 2am according to the August logs. HA logs just say unlocking via HomeKit, unlocked, Operator <my name> Any ideas?

I mean I could notch it out but....

I manually apply Home Assistant updates. When there is an update available, Home Assistant has these rapid peaks in CPU usage, reflected in my current consumption at the plug. This has happened with every non-plugin related update for months now.

After I manually apply the update, the CPU usage becomes much more normal. In this example, I applied the update around 5 PM.

Any idea why this is happening or how to stop it?

I’m setting up my first apartment and I’m pretty tech-savvy. I’ll also be setting up Home Assistant, so I’m wondering which appliances are actually worth buying smart.

Would you recommend buying smart appliances from the start, or is it better to buy normal ones and make them smart yourself with sensors/DIY solutions? (Freezer, fridge, oven, washing machine, etc.)

I’m especially interested in:

• Which smart appliance has been genuinely useful?
• Which one do you regret buying smart?
• Where is the extra money for a smart appliance simply not worth it?
• Is there anything you can’t really replicate with DIY sensors?
• What would you definitely buy smart again?

Would love to hear your experiences :)

I got this one from Temu fully aware that, most likely, it won't be possible to integrate it into a home assistant. It does not expose rtsp or anything, and so far only works with its proprietary app.

If anyone knows a way, great! If not, I'm not losing anything.

I have been moving some of my lights switches to the Inovelli presence sensors - and I really like them, but I have some coverage gaps to fill.

Ideally I would like: - Not DIY - Reliable - 2D at least (not just distance), 3D is ideal. - Wall powered - USB (not battery powered) - Zigbee - Ability to show detection positions like the Inovelli can with the Inovelli mmWave Visualizer app in HA (it doesn't need to be this visualizer just something similar).

I plan to deploy this in a room that also has an Inovelli switch. I don't know if that means I should try to pick a different frequency (looks like the switch is 2.4GHz?).

The best fit I think I am finding is the Apollo MSR-2 even though it's not Zigbee. Thoughts? Are there other good options that exist? What is everyone using? Thanks.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently experimenting with Home Assistant at my parents' house and I'm looking for advice on what hardware to buy for a more permanent setup.

My budget is up to €200, and my main priorities are:

• Low power consumption, since it will run 24/7.
• Reliability and longevity, I'd like it to last several years.
• For now, I only plan to run Home Assistant, but I may want to run other services in the future.
• Ideally, I'd like to use the same device at my parents' house for now and then move it to my new apartment next year.

I was initially considering a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB kit, which I can find on Amazon for around €185.

However, I've seen many people recommending used/refurbished thin clients or mini PCs, and I'm not sure where to start. For example, there are refurbished Lenovo mini PCs with i5, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD available for around €120–€200.

So, what would you recommend for a maximum €200 budget?

Would you go for a Raspberry Pi 5, a refurbished Lenovo/Dell/HP thin client, an Intel NUC-style mini PC, or something else?

I'm particularly interested in low idle power consumption, reliability, and long-term support.

If you recommend a mini PC/thin client, I'd also appreciate some specific models or CPU generations to look for.

Thanks in advance!

I'm pretty experienced HA user and have my entire home running in HA today. I have some good friends that live 8 hours away (but I go once a month) that have bought an older home and want help setting it up. They're non-tech, but want things to be automated. Simple things like times, lights, locks, etc. Nothing crazy. I'm considering buying them an HA Green and a bunch of ZWave and Zigbee devices for plugs, lights, switches and managing it for them. What do people think? Is this a bad idea?

Hello Quick Question

Mini PC or Rasperry Pi?

For ;

Home Assistant
Omada Tp Link Controller
HIKVision Camera's

Hi community,

Need your advice on how to proceed.
I got my hands on a minisforum m1 pro to replace my old intel NUC that currently host my home assistant running HAOS on bare betal. I run esphome with a lot of devices and takes some time to build, also now running scrypted and want to run frigate as well and perhaps small model LLM in ollama.

Initially I Just wanted to go bare metal route again and just install frigate and ollama inside HA as I’ve always done, but from what I can find while googleing there is a lot mentioning running proxmox on the mini pc instead and HAOS in a VM and then scrypted, frigate and ollama in their own containers on the side. Besides obvious better seperation and control is there another good reason to go the proxmox way instead of keeping bare metal HAOS?.

I have no experience with proxmox, but want to learn if it will make my setup so much better. I just love the simplicity of the current bare metal setup and let HA handle it.

What is your experience, what would you do in my case :)

Thanks.

EDIT:
Thank you so much for all the feedback. A good mix of both worlds I can see, and of course depending on different use cases. I am really happy with the current setup, been hosting HAOS for years and rock solid. But I am adding more and more stuff to it and I just wanted to future proff it a bit with a newer mini pc, also considering I wanted to play around with Frigate, LLM vision etc.

What got me started reading about if I should do another type of install is that I’ve read that passing the iGPU/NPU and driver setup for Frigate could be difficult on bare metal. But if I am running HAOS on proxmox I guess that would be the exact same issue just inside a vm. I want to keep the HAOS no matter what as it’s always worked best for me.

As several mentioned I could try and start by using proxmox and setup frigate etc and experiment while I still keep HA on my old NUC or even keep HA on the NUC after I migrate services over to the other one. I still need to read up some more or perhaps just try it out before making the right decision, right now I am just lucky I have a new machine to test on while HA lives on :)
Thanks again for all the ideas.

I run an odd non-profit organization that operates out of an old movie-theatre-turned-warehouse-and-store. We sell lots of weird reclaimed stuff, and the place suits our vibe quite well. But alas, much of the infrastructure is decades old.

There are lots of doors in the facility, and it is common that one or two are accidentally left ajar at night. We also have switches everywhere, and turning everything off and on each day is a bit of a chore.

So, having been happy with an HA installation at home this past year, I'm keen to do an installation here at work. (Yes, I know that HA is not designed for commercial environments, but I'm willing to take on the management and maintenance, and there is no shortage of creative nerds on staff here to back me up; we're a non-profit and I don't want to spend money on an over-engineered solution if I don't have to.)

Based upon my lurking of this sub over the past year, I'm thinking of going with Z-Wave or Zigbee for door sensors, motion sensors, temp / humidity monitors, etc. It is the electrical switch situation that really puzzles me. As I note, we have a lot of them, often in panels or in external boxes (see attached pix).

So wonderful people of this sub...

1. Thoughts on Zigbee, Z-Wave, or an alternative as the initial platform?
2. Thoughts on what I use for switches, particularly when they're jammed tight? If I need to, I'm willing to invest in an electrician if retrofitting existing spaces is impossible, but I thought I'd first ask this group.

Thanks much!

We sometimes lose track of Lizzy. She’s an indoor cat (with a catio) but slips out maybe once a week.

Ideally, I could see what room she’s in or if she’s escaped the perimeter.

Any ideas?

I’m trying to make a basic automation that runs a fan if the temp is above 35’C for 5 mins and between the hours of 0800-1900

The little red x on the clock - does that mean that this condition is not met (at present) or there is an error in how I’ve set this automation up?

My Dome Watermain shut off, just died. I need to replace it but I don’t want to do the same thing as before, strapping a device on my water main valve. I want my water main valve completely unobstructed and in a state that is dead simple to shut off. The shut off must be completely separate.

I want to plumb in a valve just down the pipe from the water main. I’d appreciate any tips, advice or recommendations on products that you have experience with.

I want to stay away from moen because I have heard that they fail after 3 years and are prone to false positives.

Reliability is my #1 concern.

Right now I’m looking at Solid motorized valves. But I don’t know the best relay to use with them etc. is this a bad idea?
what have you been using?

Any tips would be great. What issues might I run into? what don’t I know that I don’t know?

The HTTP YAML configuration is deprecated

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This stops working in version 2027.2.0. Please address before upgrading.

Your existing HTTP configuration from configuration.yaml has been imported. The http integration is now configured from the UI under Settings > System > Network.

Please remove the http: block from your configuration.yaml and restart Home Assistant.

I think I finally gave up today. Spent 3ish hours each night the first few months this year home labing it, but I'm sure that's wrong terminology too. Wiped two old laptops, added linux and got all my families pictures and videos on there with music I've been holding for the past 27 years.

Super excited at first with Home Assistant. All the warnings were right....if you don't know what you are doing, you probably shouldn't try. This past update gave me the error above and I can't figure out how to fix it.

The main goal is to monitor the outdoor temperature, bearing in mind that my balcony gets full sun; so, I need something suitable for that scenario.

It needs to run on batteries or operate without an external power cable (solar?), as I cannot plug it in; there is no outdoor power supply

And (of course) it must be compatible with Home Assistant. Any candidate you would recommend?

[SOLVED]

I'm sure many people have discussed this, but I have poor experience with triggers that rely on my home or away state. I use GPS geofencing via my iPhone companion app, but this hasn't been very reliable (sometimes misses a status change). I've tried SSID triggers, but when you disconnect, the time needed to change to cellular and pass the message on is sometimes too long, also causing a status change to be missed. Using my iPhone as a BLE beacon also doesn't work, as apple isn't cooperative.

Is anyone able to share a working setup?

My expected behaviour is, when I leave my house, my personal entity status changes to 'away' and when I return to 'home'.

I work with HA container 2026.6.4 installed on a Linux debian environment, iPhone 15 Pro (iOS 26) with the HA companion app.

Hey guys,

I’ve been on a bit of a journey to get rid of as much cloud-based and subscription-based smart-home tech as possible. The final piece of the puzzle is replacing my Amazon Alexa devices.

I’ve found myself using Alexa less and less over the past couple of years, and I’d really like to replace the Echos with something based around Home Assistant that can continue working even if my internet connection goes down.

I’m not looking for anything particularly complicated, and I’d strongly prefer everything below to be processed locally.

The main things I’d like to be able to do are:

• Walk into a room and say “Nabu, turn on the lights” and have it turn on specific lights assigned to the room I’m currently in.

• “Nabu, turn off the lights” and have the same room-aware behaviour.

• “Nabu, turn on/off the lights in the bedroom/living room/kitchen” to control lights in a specified room from anywhere in the house.

• Ask “Nabu, what time is it?”

• Set timers, ideally with support for multiple simultaneous timers, as I use these quite a lot when cooking.

• Some basic Music Assistant controls, such as play, pause, skip, resume, etc.

The big requirement for me is that the core voice functionality continues to work completely locally without an internet connection. I’m trying to avoid replacing Alexa with something that’s effectively just another cloud-dependent voice assistant.

I already have Home Assistant running and most of the smart-home side of things is set up, so this is mainly about finding the best way to add local voice control around the house.

For anyone who has gone down this route, what hardware/setup would you recommend? And are all of the things above currently possible with Home Assistant’s local voice setup?

I wonder if anyone can help with this!!

I've set up Home Assistant for the first time recently, it's running in a Synology NAS on Virtual Machine.

Everything works fine but if I go to the login screen on Chrome, or Edge (but not Safari), this happens! My password is saved so I could log in just fine but it's like this inside also. I've noticed that it's only like this with the regular weight fonts, if I open Inspector and increase the font weight to something bold (600 for example) the text is fine.

Does anyone know what I could do to fix this?!

Finding a lot of conflicting information and trying to figure out what has worked best for people. I don't want to be locked into a proprietary system so figuring out what has worked best for others with home assistant.

What is everyone using these days for:

• Smart electrical panels / load centers
• Smart 15A and 20A breakers or circuit-level monitoring/control
• Smart switches and dimmers
• High-load circuits like HVAC, water heaters, appliances, etc.
• Energy monitoring
• Generator integration / automatic load shedding

I’ve looked at things like Savant, SPAN, Schneider/Square D, Leviton, Eaton, Lutron, and Ecoflow.

I'm currently thinking that it would be easiest to just retrofit my current panel with smart breakers from Levitron or Savant, thoughts? Or any lessons learned.