BekahHWToday is day 24 of my 29 Days of Open Source Alternatives series, where I'll be exploring open source alternatives to proprietary software in the categories of Game Development and Multimedia, Development Tools and Platforms, Productivity and Collaboration Tools, and more. If you'd like to see the list of the open source alternatives I'll be covering this month, head over to my 29 Days of Open Source Alts Page.
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid I was into science fictions and imagined I'd be living in a Jetson's world.
That hasn't exactly happened, but that doesn't mean that science fiction hasn't become a reality in our lives today. Now that we have so many automation tools out there, our tools can anticipate our needs. Take our homes, for example. You can have automations for adjusting your lights, temperature, and even entertainment systems depending on the time of day. This is just the beginning. Imagine some of these scenarios:
- A morning routine that gently wakes you up by gradually increasing light and playing soothing music.
- A security system that automatically arms when you leave and disarms when you return, including real-time notifications.
- A movie night experience that dims the lights, sets the perfect temperature, and even starts your streaming service of choice.
Comparisons
| Feature | Home Assistant | SmartThings | Hubitat | Amazon Alexa | Google Home |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Local-first | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Number of supported devices | 1000+ | 200+ | 1700+ | Many | Many |
| Custom automations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited | Limited |
| Voice control | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free | $12/month | $12/month | Free | Free |
Why Open Source Home Automation is Important
- Freedom: You're not by limited by a single product's offerings.
- Customization: You can create automations that match your lifestyle.
- Privacy: You can keep your data on your own devices, not in the cloud.
- Beyond the Basics: You can make your dreams come true but building your own projects. For example, you can build custom dashboards to monitor your home's energy usage or create voice commands for your smart devices or connect and personalize your Home Assistant to third-party services, from weather forecasts to traffic updates.
Spotlight: Home Assistant
Home Assistant is open source, giving you complete control over your data and devices. They also have a thriving and lively community of contributors.
You can see over the last thirty days how evenly distributed the contributors are:
We also see a lot of open source activity from their community members, with the top repository being home-assistant/core
You can check out the full contributor insight page here
All Time Stats
With their all time stats, we can see there are a lot of contributors and users of the product. According to their GitHub page, they have 2.3k users.
🌠 67.4k stars
👀 1.3k
Forks: 27.2k
Last thoughts
Are you using home automation? What types of automations do you have set up? What devices are you using?
I can't find the video right now, but one of my favorite use-cases is for opening up a chicken coop door to let the chickens out when the sun comes up.
