I've been using Home Assistant to control and automate my smart home for more than a decade.I don't regret my decision for an instant; in my opinion, it's the best smart home software there is.I just wish I'd known how much work it was going to be.
Maintenance is a full-time job The truth is that Home Assistant requires a lot of maintenance.This isn't something that you take some time to set up, and then will happily keep running in the background while you get on with the rest of your life.Once you start using Home Assistant, you're in for the long haul.
There's a lot you need to maintain to keep your smart home up and running.Unless you're incredibly lucky or incredibly smart, at some point, something is going to go wrong.Trying to find out why your bedroom lights turned on in the middle of the night isn't always a quick task.
I've spent hour after hour trying to fix problems in Home Assistant or to get things to work when they should.While the challenge of trying to solve the problem can often perversely be fun, I spend a lot more time trying to get things to work in Home Assistant than I ever expected.Then there's the smart home devices themselves.
This isn't a problem that's specific to Home Assistant; it's true for any smart home, but if you have a lot of battery-powered devices, then you have a lot of batteries that are going to need replacing at some point.I have an automation that monitors the battery levels of my Zigbee sensors and other battery-powered devices, such as smart locks and video doorbells, and alerts me when they're getting low, which helps to keep on top of the job.Even so, I regularly find myself recharging or replacing batteries around my home.
Related These Are the 7 Best Ways to Run Home Assistant Find the best hardware for your smart home hub.Posts 7 By Adam Davidson Dealing with constant updates Another time-consuming maintenance issue is dealing with updates.You might think that you'd maybe need to update Home Assistant once in a while and that would be the extent of it, but the reality is very different.
Home Assistant usually releases a core update every month, which isn't an enormous burden.However, core updates are far from the only updates you need to deal with.Add-ons, custom components, devices, integrations, dashboard cards, and more all require their own updates.
The "Updates" section of Home Assistant can soon become a long list.It's possible to set updates to happen automatically, but this isn't ideal.Many updates include breaking changes that may stop parts of your Home Assistant setup from working at all or require making changes to get them working again.
If you leave updates for too long, you can be hit with multiple breaking changes at once, which can take a lot of sorting out.You could just bury your head in the sand and leave updates untouched if everything is working how you want it to.However, this leaves you more open to potential security vulnerabilities, and you may find that some integrations still stop working anyway, as companies change their API or security structure.
Core updates usually bring excellent new features and additional integrations, so they're definitely worth the effort.It's still a lot more work than you might expect when first starting out.Device lifespans can be shorter than you think You might think that once you've filled your smart home with devices, you're golden.
Things don't quite work out that way, however.Sadly, smart home devices don't last forever, and the lifespan of some devices may be shorter than you think.One of my Philips Hue bulbs died recently.
I've had it for several years, but the bulbs are rated for up to 15,000 hours, and it definitely hasn't lasted anywhere near that long.I wasn't expecting it to die just yet, and it was a color bulb, which isn't cheap to replace.Sometimes when a device dies, it's not even possible to replace it.
For several years, I used a Harmony Hub and remote to control my AV devices so that I didn't have to constantly switch between eight different remotes.Logitech stopped making these products, so when it died, I wasn't able to buy a new one and, in the end, I had to resort to cobbling together something similar of my own.Upgraditis is also a significant factor.
Sometimes you might want to upgrade a smart home device just because you can.Other times, however, you might be forced into doing so; some people are now ditching their Ring video doorbells after concerns about how footage from those cameras is being used.Replacing devices isn't always a quick task, either.
You may need to spend some time fixing automations that relied on the old devices so that they work with the new ones.You become tech support for your home This is something I'd not considered at all when I first started out with Home Assistant.I wanted a way to be able to automate my smart home rather than just control it remotely, and doing so has been a lot of fun.
I'm not the only person who lives in my home, however.My family uses all the same devices that I do and needs them to work as they expect.It's all very well for me to remember that there's a button on my remote that will switch from the TV audio to the surround sound speakers if the volume control automation goes out of whack, but unless they know that too, they're going to be stuck unable to control the volume.
Trying to get my smart home to the point where "it just works" without having to provide a manual of instructions for the rest of my family is an ongoing challenge, and one that I don't imagine I will ever complete.There's always something that will go wrong eventually, and when it does, I become tech support for the whole home.I love Home Assistant.
It's genuinely inspiring that free and open-source smart home software exists, which is constantly improved not only by its developers but also by its users.While I never expected to have to spend quite so long working to keep it all running smoothly, I don't regret it at all.Even fixing tricky problems has provided me with hours of fun and a true sense of achievement when things finally work.
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