I first got into the smart home world through tutorial clips about bringing devices into iOS with Homebridge. During that process, I also saw many people using Home Assistant, which could also be another way to bring non-HomeKit devices into Apple Home. But with HASS, people tend to use its own app and web interface to build custom control dashboards with complex customization, instead of treating it as a simple bridge for unsupported devices. That gave me a few biases:
- It looked like a heavy system with too many things that could break
- It seemed to rely mostly on code, making it hard for beginners
- The interface looked a bit "old-fashioned", and interactions did not feel responsive, so both UX and UI seemed poor

Because of those assumptions, I spent more than a year wandering through other platforms just to build the conveniences I wanted. I played with Node-RED to build backend logic, stored data in InfluxDB, then built dashboards in Grafana. I also used Prometheus to store raw data collected from node exporters to monitor system health. In short, I used a lot of overpowered tools for fairly small problems.

Then I was forced to install HASS because two features I needed were only developed for this platform: connecting a JK BMS board and viewing electricity-provider data. After successfully setting it up, I was genuinely surprised by how much HASS had evolved. Everything was much simpler than I expected, and I got pulled into exploring the platform day and night for two straight weeks.

It Looks Complicated, but Feels Surprisingly Simple

Most Popular Devices Are Discovered Automatically

The notification area immediately showed newly detected devices on the same network. I only had to approve them, and they were automatically configured and added to HASS. This worked for Google Cast devices like smart TVs and smart speakers, as well as Broadlink, Sonoff, Apple TV, and more.

Integrations Are Much Simpler

I tried searching for other integrations and quickly found official HASS support for many of them. For my needs, without heavy customization yet, that was already more than satisfying. Compared with platforms like Homebridge, where you need to install multiple plugins and know exactly how each config should be written, HASS felt unexpectedly simple.

The Open Source World of HACS

Beyond official integrations, HACS opens the door to community-built integrations, making it possible to connect almost anything you can think of.

I even emailed Solis, the manufacturer of my solar inverter, to request API access so I could integrate all inverter metrics into HASS and build energy optimization automations. That lets me know when charging systems should be turned off because the solar panels are not producing enough power for the current load.

More Than Just Tapping Buttons to Control Devices

The real strength of HASS is its ability to control and observe smart home devices, from monitoring data to building complex automation scenarios.

Building Dashboards for Important Metrics

Because HASS can integrate systems as sensors, I can easily build dashboards that track metrics exactly the way I want. In the dashboard above, I monitor and control the whole home energy system from a single interface.

I can also track other critical system metrics to detect and prevent risks that could take down important devices such as the router or home server. Temperature and device-health metrics are monitored 24/7. I even schedule speed tests so I know my maximum internet speed at different times of day, mainly to figure out whether slow network performance is caused by the ISP or by overloaded hardware before I complain to the provider.

I can create views that precisely monitor location sensors, the security system, and even whether I forgot to charge or replace batteries for devices around the house. The more battery-powered devices I have, the more annoying it gets when something runs out exactly when I need it.

Powerful Automation Capabilities

Automation systems in many smart home platforms usually revolve around IF/ELSE logic based on AND/OR trigger and condition combinations. That often creates limitations, forcing you to add intermediate steps to achieve the scenario you actually want, or simply give up.

With HASS, I can describe the automation scenario I want to ChatGPT, have it help write a YAML automation, then paste it back into the HASS Automation interface so I can visualize the conditions and adjust them to match my needs.

HASS automations help me handle scenarios such as:
1. Detecting when both my wife and I have left a room to turn devices off, and turning them back on when either of us returns
2. Sending alerts only when a door opens abnormally and only when someone is in a restricted area during restricted hours
3. Opening the garage only when I am already in front of the gate within about 5 meters, instead of opening as soon as I am merely near home
4. Adjusting lights based on ambient brightness, or keeping lights dim when I go to the toilet at midnight
5. Automatically restarting a web server when a website stops responding
6. Automatically turning charging for storage batteries or electric vehicles on or off based on solar production, avoiding the situation where excess energy goes unused while charging later draws paid electricity from EVN

With automation this open-ended, the only real limit is creativity. The tools are already there. I can keep refining scenarios so the house adapts to the habits of my family and me.

Deep Customization, Almost Like Styling a Website with CSS

At this point, I started to realize that I might be the one creating the stereotype that HASS is complicated. In short, HASS lets you do almost anything you can imagine for a monitoring and control system. You can customize how it displays information with HTML and CSS. I have not found a way to combine JavaScript yet, or maybe it is not supported in the way I expect, but you can already create custom interface animations if you want.

Final Thoughts

Using HASS for a smart home system requires stronger hardware than Homebridge, but in return you get a very different and much richer experience: simple when you need it, deeply customizable when you want it. At minimum, I would use a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, or a mini PC, if I wanted it to run reliably. TV boxes modified just to run HASS are mostly for experimentation and cannot really unlock much of what HASS can do.

I hope you have an interesting experience with HASS. If you have any questions, ask me through the article or in the comments. See you in the next smart home posts.