With a new ownership structure, Home Assistant is making its next big move
  • Home Assistant is now part of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit aiming to fight against surveillance capitalism and offer privacy, choice, and sustainability.
  • The foundation will own and govern all Home Assistant entities, including the cloud, and has plans for new hardware and AI integration.
  • Home Assistant aims to become a mainstream smart home option with a focus on privacy and user control, while also expanding partnerships and certifications.
  • jimerson@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    I took it to mean they’re going to put it in prettier packaging, simplifying its use for the average Joe.

    • shastaxc@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      I have been using it for years and still find some things confusing. Like idk why it’s so hard to figure out how to customize the dashboard and create new widgets for it. I’ve been a professional web dev for 8 years and if I’m struggling with it, you can bet most people aren’t even going to bother. Idk what’s so hard about providing simple html, css, and js like every other web framework.

      • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Because it’s either full-auto, or full-manual, with no wiggle room in between. That being said, they have made the right moves in hiring the right people in the community to be ICs on the project to fix stuff like this, and they are killing it. Ex: they hired the Rhasspy dev a year ago, and he has already revamped the entire voice assist workflow in HA. Great work.

    • kakes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I’m totally cool with that. Even as a more technically-minded user, I see a lot of things that could be way more streamlined.

      • jimerson@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        I totally agree! They’ve come a long way, but making it easier to use can only help grow support for the project.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Yeah I’m not using it yet, partly because I’m not at the home server level of Linux competency, but I do want to move towards it at some point

        • NekuSoul@lemmy.nekusoul.deEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          If you want to skip ahead, there are also a few ways to get Home Assistant running that don’t need any level of Linux competency:

          • They sell their own devices that are more or less plug & play.
          • Installing Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi is just flashing the image onto an SD card.
          • Installing Home Assistant OS onto a dedicated device involves shortly booting into Linux from USB to flash Home Assistant OS onto the internal disk.

          If you don’t want to run Home Assistant OS, and instead want to run Home Assistant as one of several applications running on a Server, that’s when you need to start getting comfortable administrating a Linux server.