I hope you’re all doing well! I’ve been diving into the world of DIY electronics and am looking to build a home automation system. I’ve got some basic knowledge, but I’m a bit stuck on where to start and what components would be best for a beginner project.
Here’s what I’m aiming for:
Controlling lights and appliances remotely
Basic security features like motion detection
Integration with existing smart home devices
I’d love to hear your suggestions on:
Essential components or kits that are beginner-friendly.
Any good tutorials or resources to follow.
Common pitfalls to avoid or tips from your own experiences.
Home automation is becoming an ever easier task. Similar to the project that you posted, there is a Raspberry Pi solution to this project. Home Assistant is a dedicated operating system that should integrate with your current smart home devices.
There is quite a bit of community support surrounding this OS as well so if you run into issues you will hopefully get a solution
Another happy Home Assistant user here. It is local and Open Source, minimising the risk that the manufacturer goes out of business or starts charging for their cloud-based infrastructure.
There are a ridiculous number of devices which can be integrated, and features being added every month - but you can start simple and add devices/features as you get more confident. Some people do complain that HA do a release each month … but that is because so many people are contributing to all the different parts of the project.
Anyway, do also check out their community forum, and Community Guides for tutorials (particularly for tutorials on installing on various hardware configurations). As Jack mentioned, it is designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, but I can vouch that it was easy to upgrade to a used PC as my requirements grew.
