My Home Assistant journey officially kicked off! 😄 I spent the first day diving into research – watching videos, reading guides, and gathering tips to get started on the right foot. A couple of important decisions were up first: choosing the hardware and selecting the right platform (installation type).
For hardware, I looked into two main options: a Raspberry Pi setup or a mini PC like the Intel NUC. The NUC offered more headroom for future projects, but I wanted to be mindful of my investment. To future-proof, I considered going with a more robust setup, possibly installing a hypervisor like Proxmox, which would allow me to run Home Assistant OS (HAOS) as a virtual machine and have capacity for other experiments down the road.
But after some additional research, I decided to keep it simple and practical for now. I went with the latest Raspberry Pi (v5 as of writing) dedicated to HAOS. I saw that many enthusiasts eventually outgrow the Pi and move to more powerful hardware, but adding complexity at the start would only delay me. So, Raspberry Pi it is! This choice lets me dive right in and focus on automations rather than setup hurdles.
Setting up was quick! In one evening, I got everything assembled – a bare Pi, plug, SD card, and a basic acrylic frame to hold it all together. I also added a SONOFF Zigbee dongle for device connectivity. Currently, everything’s running wirelessly, but I’ll switch to Ethernet soon for better stability and to prevent any interference between the Zigbee dongle and onboard WiFi.
My first impressions? Intense! There’s a lot packed into Home Assistant, especially if you’re new to it. But it’s surprisingly intuitive, and YouTube is a goldmine of guidance, tips, and tricks. My plan is to start with basic automations and gradually expand as I learn, with the ultimate goal of automating my home’s heating and security systems – though that’s probably a few years down the road.
So, here we are, and I’m excited to see where this journey leads!
What do you think?