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.
I'm automating my house because I nearly ended up being quadriplegic[1] and I want to be prepared next time if I loose my mobility.
I'm largely doing it with 433Mhz hardware, Raspberry Pi and python scripts. I didn't use Home Assistant because I presumed large project might be overhead and inhibit my choice of hardware; your comment has made me to rethink my strategy.
[1]https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...
Raspi is definitely a good starting place for Home Assistant (the Hassio distro makes Home assistant particularly easy to pick up). If / when you grow out of it, an older laptop or desktop would probably be more than enough for you. I’m a big fan of Home Assistant!
Are the integrations with non-branded off the shelf hardware (e.g. 433Mhz Gas sensor) instead of branded well known IoT sensors possible?
I integrated all my 433MHz devices by listening for them on a Sonoff RF Bridge (https://sonoff.tech/product/accessories/433-rf-bridge) which then pushes the signal to MQTT. From there it is easy to pick it up.
Generally speaking the main problem is the RF part (to be able to catch it somewhere, and reuse)
I should have mentioned that I'm using RTL-SDR to catch the signal.
And how do you interface to it? Do you send what you caught to MQTT?
I am considering having something else as the RF receiver but would need to forward what it received to MQTT (I can write that part myself - it is really the interface to the dongle I would like to understand)