Starting on release 0.77 Home Assistant use by default its own authentication system and it will require you to create the owner’s user account in the first access to the frontend. With this system, every user of Home Assistant could and should have its own user account which can be created by the owner’s user account. Let’s see how.
Read More
If you’re here, you probably know what Home Assistant is. If not, you can take a look at my previous article about Home Assistant.
Probably the easiest way to start with Home Assistant is with a Raspberry Pi, but instead of using one of these I chose to install it on a different board, an Orange Pi Zero.
Well, compared to a Raspberry Pi 3, an Orange Pi Zero is a pretty capable board, powerful enough for running Home Assistant in a smaller footprint at a very reasonable price (links below).
The lack of an HDMI port in the Orange Pi Zero is absolutely no problem in this type of application. And the power consumption is slightly lower than on a Raspberry Pi 3.
In this post I will show you how to install Home Assistant in a Python virtual environment on an Orange Pi Zero running Armbian, however, these steps are likely to work on most boards running debian-based systems.
Using a virtual environment will prevent your Python installation and Home Assistant installation from impacting each other.
Read More
For a long time I’ve watched the world of home automation with eager interest in the hope that one day I would be able to apply it in my own home.
Over the years I have read about various systems and protocols used in home automation such as the X10, Z-Wave, ZigBee or Insteon. Some of them use cables or the power line for signaling and control, while others communicate wirelessly via radio waves. Some of them proprietary and others open. But usually incompatible with each other.
Unfortunately, due to their high cost, the difficulty of acquiring the components at that time, their technical limitations, their complex installation or their bad UX from inside and/or outside the home made it impossible for me to implement them in my own home. Until now.
Read More