Home Assistant: Take Control of Your Smart Home (and Your Privacy!)

[@sometimestraveller]

Ooh, super interested in this topic at the moment! Currently in early stages of researching for my own use cases, all of which will be HA-based (current apartment, new/next home, moto-camping van, office/studio/workshop, ...). Would absolutely love to see more of this content :D Thanks for the video!

[@truckerallikatuk]

Important tip for zigbee and zwave dongles: Buy a USB2 extension and plug the dongle into the extension. This will allow you to position the dongle away from interference and get better signal. USB3 cables don't work so well for this as USB3's signal rate is close enough to 2.4GHz to cause issues.

[@leito1996]

Actually no! Buy yourself an ethernet ZigBee device like UZG-01 or smlight stuff. Save yourself loads of headaches with usb altogether

[@NSFWHarold]

I value your take on this subject, and I hope to see you continue to visit it from time to time. You and I are on the same page about things like open source self hosted, etc. So I appreciate your perspective, specifically from a technically adept, not-just-consumerism angle.

[@BeardedTinker]

Awesome video - and thank you for including me in the list of creators 😉 really an honour

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Thank you for making really helpful Home Assistant Videos

[@heatedpoolandbar]

I really appreciate this channel! I was curious about home assistant and here you are publishing an informative video the day before.

[@nateymandm]

I instantly recognized the Madison Heights Micro Center lol. I’m so glad we’ve got one in MI

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

It’s a great store.

[@DovahDoVolom]

I agree with WiFi on most points but when it comes to something like ESPHome and making your own niche sensors it is hands down the best way to go about it. Recently i had to make a sound level sensor for a nursing home since they were having issues with residents complaining about the sound levels at night. Since you made the device you know it wont be "phoneing home" somewhere out of your network and keeping it up to date is done automatically through esphome in home assistant.

[@cr0ft-2k]

I too use Wifi but reluctantly and as little as possible. The backbone of my home automation is a combo of Zigbee and Z-wave. However, the Everything Presence Lite sensors are wifi and I suck that up because they're great. Same thing with the Amsleser product I got to plug straight into my European power meter - wifi is the only option. The Broadlink IR remote in the living room, same thing. But I do have managed switches so I put all those things on their own locked down VLAN.

[@kencabanaw4165]

my smartplugs are wifi but they run tasmota so it stays local. mains powered so no battery. these could easily be zigbee and some actually are, but these devices in almost all cases, have internal antenna, and are plugged into an outlet about a foot off the floor, probably behind a couch. I just couldnt maintain a stable zigbee mesh like that. I have switched to a Smlight SLZB-06 zigbee coordinator and 2 more of the same as routers. these were a game changer as far as stability. they have a giant external antenna that really brings in those distant devices on the floor behind a toilet.

[@TheBurntHoney]

Can't you use threads? Pretty sure some esp controllers support threads which as a result you can make your own matter device.

[@klfjoat]

Wait until you find out about Made For ESPHome! Or the dozens of devices out there that can be flashed from phone-home firmware to ESPHome! There are extant $10 power-monitoring switching plugs and $199 whole-home + per-circuit energy monitors that can be reflashed.

[@cr0ft-2k]

@@kencabanaw4165I make a point of using Zigbee smart plugs expressly because (almost) all mains powered Zigbee devices are routers, so they extend the mesh. However, I also live in a detached house and there aren't a thousand neighbors with 2.4 GHz wifi around here and other devices using the 2.4 GHz band. But I consciously pick the closest router unit when I pair in new devices that go in that general area and my Zigbee mesh is basically rock solid. Only a relative few units talk to my controller directly.

[@MatthewHill]

Nice! Been using this for a year or two now--it's great to see more people getting into it.

[@Obtuse94]

Love that a pro like Tom does the same thing I do and grabs the quickest implement nearby, blunt or not, to unscrew those "coin" battery covers on the back of devices!

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Hahha, yes!

[@TEverlith]

Nice video, thanks for the content... new subscriber. One important thing that I think you (and other creators new to Home Assistant) missed is it's (along with it's partners) recent move to The Open Home Foundation, a non-profit that prevents it's sale... a very important piece of info for new users just getting into HA and the knowledge that their investment in time time and money won't go away. It just keeps getting better and better...

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Thanks and that is some great news!

[@volcolby]

I really like that this is moving in the integration direction. I am hoping that soon the entirety of the smart home setup will be simpler and more easily working together without all of the work and thought that is currently involved. I think those of us with a good number of smart home devices do somewhat enjoy the setting up and the configuring of everything, but I imagine a good percentage of the population just wants it to be there to use.

[@pokemonfreaky100]

I really recommend to NOT using a microSD card if you want to run HomeAssistant on a Raspberry Pi. Because the SDcard will fail pretty quickly since HomeAssistant will constantly be updating the states of all sensors and is thus writing almost constantly on that SD card

[@dmiller9786]

Also, few new HA users pick RPi anymore unless they are already in that ecosystem. It's like 2020 in here. Users should usually pick a prebuilt HA system or N100 if they want to build their own. With SSD of course. Many new users buy nothing and use Docker on an existing system.

[@gozirraizroose]

Been using Home Assistant for years, it's come a long ways. Thanks for your point of view on it.

[@jim7smith]

Excellent overview, Tom.....enjoyed much. Happy New Year

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Thanks and happy New Year to you as well!

[@BillyDickson]

Home assistant yellow owner here, been using it with a SMLIGHT SLZB-06 dongle over ethernet and z2mqtt. Works well, My advice is to use what works for you 👍

[@kevinhilton8683]

I have the SLZB06p7 device but wonder if you're being bitten by the freeze issue that seems to be pretty prevalent with this device and z2mqtt

[@Saturn2888]

I've been using Home Assistant for a while now, and it solved so many issues. I got off Nest and onto Ecobee and other tech. Replaced all my WeMo with Zigbee smart plugs, and added motion and presence detection to so I rarely have to touch the lights

[@moelassus]

Just the other day I was wondering to myself who the Tom Lawrence of Home Assistant was. 😀

[@chrisumali9841]

Thanks for sharing your insights and how you use Home Assistance. Brilliant. Happy New Year, and have a great day

[@JeremyMarkel]

Great video! I've been using HA for several years now and like it so much that I donate to the project. If you put the time into tuning it for you needs, it's about the best home automation platform you're going to find. My HA instance is a vm running on my Proxmox cluster. I have a zigbee and a zwave usb dongle attached to one host that is passed thru and it works perfectly fine for connecting to various devices. I don't bother with any high availability features, being that only one host has the dongles, so I just manage downtime as needed. In return, backups and restores are super simple, being tied into my Proxmox backup server. On the subject of presence detection, I use it to turn some of my inside Unifi cameras on or off (using their privacy mode feature), depending if my wife and/or myself are at home as well as for some alerts when doors or locks are opened when we're not home.

[@jarboer]

Good video, it was pretty simple. A few tips I have though is, I’d recommend is customizing the actual device names instead of just on the dashboard card because it will sync everywhere and show up when you export to other smart homes like Apple Home or Google Home. Instead of copying the code you can click the 3 dots on the card before you edit it to copy the card or duplicate it. Finally, the new sections dashboard type is even more simple and easy to use for new users with drag and drop functionality, headers, etc. and it looks nicer.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

I think in 2025 ill be going down this rabbit hole! great video Tom and happy new years

[@DPCTechnology]

It's deep.. LOL

[@MactelecomNetworks]

@@DPCTechnology 😂

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Happy new year and I want to warn you, it's addicting.

[@vinzzbe]

Home Assistant is crazy! I even have Zigbee hall sensors on my refrigerator doors now!

[@andreassetterlind]

Very latest recommendation is to use a Intel N100 (or better x86-64) mini-PC to run Home Assistant if want to use fully local voice control, otherwise the Speech-To-Text process is too slow to be usable in practice. Alternative is to off-load STT to an online service like the Home Assistant Cloud by Nabu Casa.

[@kevinhilton8683]

I didn't know this --- currently using beelink nuc n100 device with proxmox as hypervisor with HAOS installed inside it. I've also used xcp-ng as the hypervisor as well.

[@schism8286]

Just moved into a much larger home. My one V3 samsung smartthings hub does not cover the entire house even with daisy chaining devices. You cannot believe how timely this video is as I was just about to dive head first into HA. Thanks Tom, and LS!

[@jaxwylde2139]

Would love to see a follow-up video (if not already done), on how you've set up HA in your network, wrt your VLANs, firewall rules, etc. Do you keep your HA on a secure/trusted VLAN, with the connected devices on their own IoT VLAN, or do you keep everything on your IoT VLAN, and how have you set up your respective fw rules?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Home Assistant is on the same LAN as my computer, the IOT things are on a different subnet that Home Assistanc can reach out to.

[@pilotbum]

I would love a video on the Synology integration, webhooks, and camera AI. I utilize Syno Surveillance Station but it's integrations with HA are minimal at this point. I'd also love to know how to better leverage the Syno SS advanced functions. Reolink cameras work great with HA as they are fully integratable AND affordable. I use them for motion/huan detections for outside lights. HA has by far the most integrations of any Smart Home system out there.

[@CaseyHancocki3luefire]

I wish we had Microcenter in the Tulsa Oklahoma area

[@andreassetterlind]

Z-Wave is no longer propriatory and you can add up to 4000 Z-Wave LR (Long Range) devices to a single network. So today just make sure to get a Z-Wave 800 Series Controller.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Kind of open, but certainly improved www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/05/08/zwave-is-not-dead/

[@Hemoforrage]

Great video thank you for this! Looking forward to setting up my first Home Assistant system. I already set up a Truenas Scale system and am looking to move on and install Home Assistant Supervised on it as a VM. Although it's hard to come by videos on this particular matter....

[@BullMoose1776]

Thank you Lawrence

[@P.J.McLaughlin]

The WiFi IOT home automation devices are still very useful and relatively easy to modify and get them off the cloud. They can be the less expensive alternative to Zigbee. I don't use Z-Wave and have never priced these items. The newer WiFi products use modules based around more secure Beken and RealTek chips. Modifying their firmware is done either by WiFi or external hardware attached to them.. What better way to really make a local IOT home automation system than by securing the devices yourself. The alternative firmware for these devices is integrated into the Home Assistant environment with the ESPHome system. My goal is to get every HA device and the VM that Home Assistant runs from onto an isolated home network (LAN and WiFi) that will never see a WAN.

[@jerryjohansson9236]

563 / 5 000 I have had homeassistant for many years and in the beginning I used 433mhz devices. Later switched to zwave. I can't really agree with what you say about wifi. At least not in my case. Poor range with zwave and many missed on/off commands made me switch to wifi. It works all the time and is much easier to add/remove devices. You can also control the devices locally in the webui of the device. All devices are in a NoT vlan that does not have an internet connection. You also don't need to have a zwave dongle connected to homeassistant.

[@misteraon]

Yes many wifi smart switches are cloud based. A number of years ago it was easy to buy said switches and flash them with custom firmware like Tasmota or ESP home and make them local control. But they wised up to that and changed the microcontroller in them. I like Shelly devices. I have a dozen of their wall dimmers and a couple relays. They have esp microcontrollers and can be flashed with custom firmware; however, I find the Shelly firmware more than adequate and even good. It can work with their cloud or local only. I have a Unifi system so it handles wifi well. Plus the Shelly home assistant integration is seamless. I’ve been adding a zigbee network as well. Especially for low power battery devices like door sensors and humidity sensors. I’m even starting to switch over to zigbee smart plugs the the ones from Thirdreality.

[@antoinechatelain550]

I relay like the new thumbnail

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Thanks

[@DobuDobuDobuDot]

16:12 I can see you have had the same problems I had when it comes to opening the damn thing to stick a new battery in. 😆

[@firstof9]

FYI, you can set your notification to tell you which sensor has become moist too.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yeah, I need to figure out what variables to send. I tried it but had something wrong. The good news is it's only ever went off twice and both times someone had spilled something.

[@andrewtfluck]

Your ecobee can probably be brought in via HomeKit which will allow it to work locally 😁

[@fonte935]

Finally he gets in.

[@MrCWoodhouse]

Thank you @lawrencesystems for applying your prodigious knowledge and skill to HomeAssistant, the best and most actively deveveloping, manufacturer agnostic, locally hosted home automation system! 2025.1 Release Party is scheduled on Friday. Tune in to see everybody live.

[@xxErmis]

Home Assistant series?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Maybe a few more, but not a series. Those channels I listed cover it way better than I can.

[@hanley-development]

​@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS one thing they don't cover is the actual hosting options. Reverse proxy, cloud, VPN, internal vs external....

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

@@hanley-development I will be doing that as a future video as it's more on topic for my channel.

[@xxErmis]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Thanks!

[@SuspiciousArra]

Now that you've mentioned it, my smart home has been built for exactly this same purpose, to be able to use it offline. Never tested this actually. I am using WIFI only devices, no batteries. I am keeping everything very simple, with very few automations. I will not replace a simple PIR sensor that controls lights, with a smart sensor that ads zero value just to see its state on the dashboard. Yes, I am that kind of a guy. No clouds, no sbscriptions for anything.

[@FrancescoCarucci]

Aqara FP2 is a decent presence sensor I base my automations on. Not perfect, but decent.

[@KieronConnolly]

Hi Tom, great video, worth looking at the SMLight SLZB-06 ethernet POE hub iith built in web interface, instead of the USB dongle it an interesting alternative

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Thanks for the tip!

[@JoaoOliveira-cj6ut]

As you're going through presence detection, please let us know what you think about tracking Private BLE Devices and "Air Tag" beacons on Bermuda... Also please tell us what you think about the solution if you find it interesting for triggering automations and for dynamic dashboards... Been following you along since I started with home labing ahah Thanks

[@gregtanner308]

Funny, I’ve been thinking about this but haven’t had the time to dig into it.

[@the1stkujo]

TP-Link Kasa can be used local only.

[@ss-xy2im]

Great vid, thanks. Bookmarked the product compatibility page you made, am sure it will come in handy.

[@jh491]

Just getting started with HAOS. Hoping to expand and get my house working smoothly for me and keep the WAF high

[@Jepper333]

this video also needs a warning... if you start with home-assistant it becomes an adicting hobby real quick haha.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yeah, it's an addiction for sure!

[@michaelsims7728]

must be nice to have a MircoCenter ;)

[@ggfrt96]

i almost did a spittake when you said microcenter sponsored you -- when i worked there 10 years ago they insisted they don't do advertisements and only go by word of mouth

[@Mesrop109]

you need to get on the thread over matter bandwagon. I paired the aqara u200 deadbolt with the AI dome at the front door, and its fast!

[@mjjf8297]

I think for protocols thread could be a replacement for both, but there aren’t enough devices yet. What do you think about thread

[@mjjf8297]

And I think more Smart Home devices should use Ethernet or even PoE

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Too early to tell

[@ShadyBroccoli]

Does Alexa etc still send data to AWS etc whilst being part of a home assistant setup? Or does no data leave your network at all if you use home assistant?

[@veepee78]

for the automations node red is kinda mandatory, way more options than ha itself

[@MrAltairantares]

Would have loved to see how your phone is setup network wise - does it have to be VPNed into your home network permanently if you want home assistant to work? Are there ways where you don't need that?

[@syndaquil4838]

Yes, that's what I do, but I really don't need to access the app that often outside my home. You can also expose it directly or pay for the home assistant cloud to access your local instance remotely

[@cr0ft-2k]

I use Tailscale and have a Tailscale install acting as a local router at home. So all I have to do is connect to Tailscale (which on the phone is the push of a button) and have access to my entire home network, including using the HA app. Using the Nabu Casa cloud option is even easier I believe and supporting them is a good thing to do.

[@MrBilliam29]

I would really like to do this. Unfortunately, I live in a condo with seemingly “pea soup” for my RF environment. I routinely see 10 or more unique WiFi SSIDs on 2.4 GHz. I've always assumed Zigbee would be next to impossible in such an environment. Yes, there's Zwave devices as mentioned. But let's be realistic. They are a tiny minority of what's out there. At least as far as I've been able to tell.

[@RVTMechantronics]

Awesome video. Any chance you to make a video that goes over self hosting Home Assistant on a Pi and accessing it behind CGNAT? Basically a in between on your last 2 videos.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Easiest way would be to use the Nabu Casa proxy service or an overlay network such as Tailscale or Netbird. More work would be to use the CG-NAT wireguard method.

[@TheAppleFreak]

Another solution could be to set up something like Cloudflare Tunnels to tunnel it to the public internet. If you're using Home Assistant OS, there's an addon available in the official repository that makes that process very easy.

[@RVTMechantronics]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Thanks for the suggestion. I watched your other video on Tailscale & Netbird. Had Netbird setup and self hosting a simple webpage in under an hour.

[@CedroCron]

I just buy devices that also work when there is no internet (lan only) in their apps on my smartphone and that also have physical over-ride switches in case the WiFi or Internet is down. I found Smart Assistant way too complicated and I have so many devices that setting them all up again in Home Assistant would take hours because there is no bulk-add items features to speed it up. My internet is so reliable I can count on one hand how many times it was down in the last decade and I can hot-spot my network to my phone if I really needed to in order to control devices that aren't LAN-only controllable which is very few in my network. My internet is also Fiber to the home and since converting to Fiber I have had 0 outages in 4 years.

[@tomstechnews]

Great vid Tom! You animated me to change my ha config! small downside.. not all my lamps, dishwasher, oven etc. are ha capable 🤔 @TechnoTims ha vid shows managing server Hardware, Software, Proxmox, Docker etc. What you think about using ha as a full controlling management console for all ict devices onpremise and cloud-based?

[@cherriagana]

Hi Tom and everybody, I am interested while doing a total renovation of my home to add more home automation without cloud dependencies and have been looking into this already. I do wonder about one thing tho: What if I ever wanna sell my house? How will I be able to give control to the new owners in a secure way as I presume most things are registered to a personal account? I wouldn't wanna risk any legal issues (especially if I would use synology for the cameras) IF I ever would wanna move or be faced with having to offer tech support for the self made system if something would break. kind regards and happy newyear ;)

[@syndaquil4838]

Get stuff that works both smart and not smart. What I mean is if you get smart light switches, they should still be switches that would work for the future owners as regular switches without any smart stuff. This also highlights another benefit of using local-only devices. They're not tied to an account that you'd have to transfer over. For example, things like ZigBee devices could be adopted easily by the new owner and you wouldn't have access anymore after your ZigBee antenna is no longer there. The future owner could also 100% ignore them and use them as normal light switches

[@Ajicles]

I have added my car to Home Assistant, then exposed the entity to Google Home. After that you can start the car from a smart watch.

[@Dextermorga]

Great video! I missed the part about installing it on Synology Docker. I personally love voice commands. I have my whole house set up with Alexa-it’s faster than opening an app or leaving buttons everywhere. I’ve never had any issues over the years.

[@mikedsjr]

if you have a ring doorbell camera triggered by a person can it pop up a screen on the Apple TV or is that more complicated than some setup and event triggers?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I don't have Ring doorbell so I am not sure.

[@fodaceportugal]

Any home system that is local instead of cloud and with logins?

[@northendtrooper]

Hiw does synology plus amcrest fair compared to unify solution? Seems having synology hook in the dashboard is a win.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I have not tested Home Assistant with UniFi but I might in the future. The new UniFi AI cameras are really nice

[@jason7i2]

Do you keep you Home Assistant on your Lan, IoT, or DMZ network?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

LAN

[@Dainis_M]

I was hoping to see pfsense firewall settings for HA

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

For security reasons I keep those things separate

[@Dainis_M]

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS I meant more. How COULD look like settings for that VLAN where are HA.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

@@Dainis_M I don't understand the question.

[@v6transplant]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Just starting down this rabbit hole... Maybe a future video of recommended pfsense config settings/layout for what the HAOS instance really needs access to? Should the HAOS live on its own vlan? If someone wanted to connect it to other network items, security cameras, sonos speakers, nas for media/music/videos, best way to do that. If someone wanted to use a device that was both zigbee and wifi, should it be on another vlan? Thanks for all the content you produce and helping the community!

[@jason7i2]

I tried putting HA in my DMZ but Matter IIRC uses IP6 in my LAN and I couldn't get the routing through the firewall quite right.

[@AndyHernandez18]

Anyone know how to adjust the polling for the zwave? I have the same USB dongle and since migrating to zwave js my thermostat does not update regularly like it used to on the old zwave integration.

[@rwashi]

Hi happy newyear, question, do you have a domain server setup in your home?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Nope, I don't use any Windows servers in my homelab unless I am testing something that needs Windows.

[@Kido1986]

Does this feature any high availability features? I have two TrueNAS boxes. Would be nice to have it on one as primary, copying over to the backup incase the primary goes down.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Not that I know of.

[@kevinhilton8683]

Honestly I'm not sure however I suppose like for example is you had a 3 node proxmox setup you could possible set this up.

[@mypetiscool2]

What was the card in your dashboard for the version of HA and its different parts and them being up-to-date or not? Looked around online but couldn’t find anything obvious for it.

[@BrandonIngli]

That looks like the standard Entities card referencing the several update entities Home Assistant (and other integrations) provide.

[@mypetiscool2]

@@BrandonIngliThanks for the reply. See that’s where I’m always confused. There is no entity in my HA for its current version or anything. Maybe this is a HACS thing?

[@BrandonIngli]

@@mypetiscool2 update.home_assistant_core_update is an example. This is for HA core.

[@JimmySelgenNielsen]

I ran Home Assistant for a few years, but switched to Homey Pro about a year ago. A bit simpler, and yet almost the same. My usage may be atypical since my family exclusively uses the Apple Home app, so any “family oriented” automations runs in HomeKit, and devices are bridged across from the Homey Pro. The “serious” stuff, like monitoring my smart meter and reducing EV charging current when the main fuse max current is almost exhausted, that runs on the Homey Pro. And of course there are the hybrids, like controlling thermostats and heat pump. Automations mostly run on Homey, but since presence detection is an absolute pain, I tend to run presence aware automations in HomeKit.

[@GarNelson1]

11:50 Is there anything special you have to do to have notifications show up on your phone, AND your wife's phone? Right now, my automation notifications only show up on my phone and don't show up on hers.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Nope, I know I followed a tutorial from EverythingSmartHome but it's been so long I don't recall which one.

[@BrandonIngli]

All you should have to do is make sure both your phones have an action to be notified. If the automation ran recently, you should be able to use the "traces" (should be in the kebab menu when editing an automation) to try and see where it went wrong.

[@neho83_solar]

Hello and happy new year 2025 I really like video that talks about unraid in France we don't have many youtubers who talk about this operating system. can you translate your videos into French it would allow me to progress faster thank you very much.

[@ryanm9318]

11:45 warning trigger. Used word moist. My friend can’t stand that word. Why I don’t know.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yeah, I know a few people like that which is why I chose that word.

[@MrCWoodhouse]

Channel I follow: @paulhibbert

[@davidbeiler]

I dont think ive ever heard of micro center

[@thelegacyofdan]

Does anyone in the comments have any secret sauce on how to get my ecobee to work with my home assistant? Or perhaps you Lawrence? 🤞

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

nope, per the site as of March 28th, 2024, ecobee is no longer accepting new developer subscriptions, nor are existing developer accounts able to create new API keys. I set mine up before then.

[@BrandonIngli]

If yours is HomeKit compatible, you can add it via the HomeKit device integration, which is fully local. I don't think you need an existing Apple Home setup to do that. If you do have an apple home setup you want to keep using it with, you can use the HomeKit bridge integration to export it back out to HomeKit, using home assistant as a proxy of sorts.

[@vwestTube]

Is this home assistant has compatibility with Ubiquity G4 Doorbell Pro to use its Fingerprint to open doors or any?

[@FatherJoeMcCorny]

It should. I have the G4 Pro doorbell since one week, it integrates well with HA but haven’t tested fingerprints in practices yet.

[@basscheutjens6612]

I don't know about the door, because you'll need some kind of lock that has an integration in HA. However, I can confirm that the fingerprint of the G4 doorbell pro works. You have to create a webhook for it in Alarm Manager and point it to Home Assistant and make sure to set it to POST. In Home Assistant you have to create an automation to triggers on a webhook and this automation will have to open the door (which depends on the lock you have). The data that is passed into HA contains the details of the alarm (which triggers there are, which of the triggers is triggered and if it is a known fingerprint, the name of the person). However, and this is very important: The webhooks of HA are not protected. So, if you have exposed your HA to the outside world, this is a huge security risk

[@Raymond.Jansen]

No need for webhooks anymore!

[@zackkertzman7709]

I haven't played with it recently, but I believe there are integrations for both Unifi Protect, and Unifi Network

[@garethsnaim8174]

I want to love home assistant but its so needy and nerdy. Constant updates that need applying before things work etc and an insane 8 quid a month just for basic functionality like door bell rings, it became a nope from me. Alexa integration went away, I appreciate this video is not about that, but I am not in the mood for the levels of geekery that will be involved to make this work

[@servicingiq]

Challenge: This is were Linux Sucks and No Internet Access VM on ESXI host USB Sound Card Distributed sound and Mic in the House Automation,Door Opens and Plays a Sound file or TTS. And not VLC -- Tenet. Purely out the sound card. End of Line

[@charlesdoesmore5488]

It’s all fun and games until you realize that it costs money to remotely access it or makes you have to set it up to remotely access it. That’s what many people are turned off.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Using a VPN is not that hard, but if you thin it is then you can setup the Nabu Casa proxy for $65 per year.

[@misteraon]

Yep, I use a VPN through my UDMP for free. Works great and keeps things secure.

[@BwanaMouse]

Tailscale. Easy setup and free up to 100 devices.

[@charlesdoesmore5488]

@@BwanaMouse Yep, I used that. I said it under a person who does not have a tech-savy partner to help.

[@kevinhilton8683]

Wireguard VPN on pfsense?

[@thesecretreviewer8242]

do not use a raspberry pi. I hate people keep saying to use this system. I find a cheap intel machine is much better. Better yet a good previous generation PC with some beef to it.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Why?

[@speedracer9132]

I use home assistant, but I’m nervous connecting everything to it because if someone hacks my credentials they have control of everything from one set of credentials

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

With great centralized power comes great risk. Use 2FA and keep it behind a VPN.

[@Jimmhout]

First