My Home Assistant setup #System

Seven years ago, I started digging into the home automation rabbit hole. Unlike many, I didn’t want to start with just a single smart plug. I already knew smart homes could be much more than turning lights on with your voice or impressing guests for about thirty seconds.
For full disclosure, I don’t even talk to my house. Even in 2026, talking to devices still feels weird to me. Especially, when it’s not faster than a physical interaction.

I wanted something robust, reliable, highly customizable, and adaptive. More importantly, I wanted a system that wouldn’t leak my data and personal habits to the rest of the world. After considering the open-source options available at the time, I decided to give Home Assistant a try.

The local brain of my home

My setup currently includes around 30 devices, all connected through Wi-Fi or Z-Wave. I haven’t felt the need to add any Zigbee devices to my mesh yet.

While Zigbee and Z-Wave are both excellent protocols, I opted for Z-Wave despite Zigbee hardware often being cheaper. Z-Wave operates on sub-GHz frequencies, which means better wall penetration, less network congestion, and zero interference with standard Wi-Fi channels. Furthermore, Z-Wave devices must pass strict certification requirements. This results in superior interoperability, more predictable behavior, and far fewer weird compatibility issues.

Today, Home Assistant controls my entire house. It doesn’t care what brand your tech is; its only job is to break down ecosystem borders and make everything talk to each other.

Total control over every plug and light

At this point, nearly every plug and light in my house is connected. I’ve setup routines to turn lights off automatically when a room is empty or cutting power to devices overnight so I don’t have to wonder if something was left on. But the real magic happens when Home Assistant constantly adapts the environment based on ambient light levels, motion sensors, and time of day.

For example:

• The Staircase: The lights turn on only when ambient light is low and motion is detected, shutting off automatically once the area is empty.
• The Living Room: The number of active lights and their intensity automatically adjust based on the natural light outside and whether the TV is on or off.
• The Nightstand: My homemade bedside clock—built using an ESP32—smartly illuminates only during the night.

I have also placed several NFC tags around the house to “manually” trigger specific automations that don’t rely on standard schedules. With a quick tap of my phone, I can instantly switch my desk setup into “work/meeting mode”, or put the house to sleep and arm the security system when heading to bed.

A premium alarm system—without the monthly fees

Speaking of security, one of the first major projects I tackled was tearing out the traditional alarm system that came with the house and replacing it entirely with Home Assistant.

The flexibility is incredible. The system automatically arms itself the moment everyone leaves the house. If a door opens or motion is detected while we are away (or even just on another floor), Home Assistant instantly flashes the lights, sounds a siren, and blasts an alert directly to our phones. From there, I can immediately pull up a live camera feed, while the system automatically records the event locally. It’s reliable, completely private, and costs absolutely nothing per month.

Even my 3d printer is connected

If you’re into 3D printing, you know the absolute anxiety of leaving a 15-hour print unattended. Thanks to Moonraker integrating in Home Assistant, it took only two clicks to add my printer to my Home Assistant interface.

Now, I can monitor print progress remotely and get phone notifications the exact second a print finishes. Once a job is complete, the smart plug powering the printer waits for the hotend to safely cool down before automatically cutting the power. Best of all, if a smoke or heat sensor detects any anomaly near the enclosure, Home Assistant instantly kills the electricity, potentially preventing a disaster.

The latest upgrade: music assistant

My latest addition is Music Assistant, which allows me to manage my local audio files and internet radio stations straight from the Home Assistant interface.

What makes it especially impressive is its multi-room, synchronized playback. I can choose exactly which devices serve as outputs, sync multiple distinct speakers together flawlessly, and move audio between rooms on demand.

Because it’s fully integrated with Home Assistant, whole-house audio can now be woven directly into daily automations. That may be another project ;)

Why I love Home Assistant

The real power of Home Assistant isn’t device control, it’s true automation. Once you start combining motion, ambient light, presence detection, and device states, you stop thinking about individual smart devices” and start experiencing a genuinely responsive environment.
To keep our privacy intact, our presence detection is handled entirely by checking whether our phones are connected to the local home network. I preferred this approach because I didn’t want our devices tracking us even more by relying on constant GPS logging.

Ultimately, what truly makes Home Assistant special is ownership. My home runs locally. My data stays with me. I am not dependent on cloud services suddenly disappearing or companies changing their APIs overnight. I can customize everything exactly the way I want, and the platform never stops evolving.

The community has built and continues to maintain an incredible tool. I can’t even imagine the sheer amount of work it takes to ensure compatibility with the crazy number of “smart” devices out there!

The only real danger of using a system like this? You’re always thinking of new automations to build.