this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. But that's just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it's getting worse.

It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage "cloud" "integration" involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you.

If you ever saw the South Park episode where they try to get the cable company to do something on their behalf and the cable company people just touch themselves inappropriately upon hearing the lamentations of their customers, well, I suspect that's what's going on here. The management of these places are fundamentally sadists, and they are going to auger all of these things into the ground to make their short-term money before flying the coop for the next big thing they can destroy.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would a Home Assistant Green be just as good?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I heard Home Assistant Green is made of people.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Don’t know about green but I got a Home Assistant Blue and it’s good enough. Tho You can just use a raspberry pi.

Side note I think you were being sarcastic when you said Home Assistant Green, so I wanted to make reply that sounded sarcastic but Home Assistant Blue and Home Assistant Yellow are real things, tho rereading my comment if one isn’t familiar with technology or home assistant talking about Home Assistant, colors, and raspberry pi for controlling light bulbs just sounds like trolling.

Edit: Sorry, Home Assistant Green is also real. It’s every level hardware that is more than enough for running home assistant and Home Assistant Yellow is the next step up in hardware. Home Assistant Blue was a limited edition run of the hardware prior to Home Assistant Yellow being created. To be clear, I am not trying to troll but to one that isn’t familiar with this technology these names might sound like trolling.

[–] nadir 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.home-assistant.io/green/ No idea who's serious anymore but just adding that the green is also a thing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh…well, I didn’t know green was a thing. Thanks for the info, I guess the serious description of each is Home Assistant blue was a limited edition with entry level hardware, essentially the same thing as home assistant green. Home assistant yellow is more of an enthusiast hardware that had zigbee built in and a raspberry pi is just a raspberry pi and runs home assistant just fine.

I personally run my instance on home assistant blue but have helped a few friends setup home assistant on a raspberry pi. So any of the options will work just fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, Green is their latest launch, supposed to be cheaper and easier for newcomers to start.

If that is the attitude that vets take when newcomers ask questions, good luck getting widspread adoption.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My apologies, before now I haven’t heard of green. I legitimately run my instance on the limited edition blue that kinda lead to yellow being created and before that I used a raspberry pi. My original comment was a little bit of me finding the naming for this stuff funny, not trying to discourage anyone that is new to the platform.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't know why you're being hassled. I legit had never heard of Home Assistant and made a dumb throwaway joke because the colors mentioned were Yellow and Green, which were also flavors of Soylent in the film Soylent Green. (There was also a Soylent Red, but thats immaterial to this)

I honestly thought the person mentioning Home Assistant Green was making a similar joke... So, your misunderstanding is valid, imho.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is why I downvoted you: I was asking a legit question but was treated as a joke. I was hoping the Fediverse would have less of Reddit's nonsense replies but I guess not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks, Green is quite new, I first heard of it like a week ago. Since I'm not familiar with the platform, thought I'd ask. Am anticipating moving to a new home in a few years time so am aiming to get it set up with some useful automation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not sure if you have an extra raspberry pi 4, but if you already have any smart home stuff there is no need to wait a few years, get it going now! (It can also be setup and run on a normal computer with windows/mac/Linux.

I keep mentioning the raspberry pi because they have so many uses that aren’t just limited to home assistant vs dedicated hardware for home assistant. Looking at costs tho it wouldn’t save you any money to get the Pi, a micro SD card, charger and a case vs the home assistant green coming with all that. But keep in mind you will need an adapter if you want to integrate devices that use Zwave or zigbee. They aren’t that expensive and the one I have is the Nortek HUSBZB-1, i think I paid about $30 for it and does both Zwave and zigbee, but the home assistant yellow has zigbee built in, if you choose to go that route.

But remember Home Assistant does need a little bit of knowledge with technology or some patience when you start. It’s selling point is that it can integrate almost anything, not that it is easy to integrate everything. I started years ago and had no knowledge so it was a huge learning curve, but they’ve made incredible progress with streamlining integrations and they have fantastic documentation so the learning curve isn’t nearly what it used to be. For reference, when I started automations had to be written in YAML, now it’s done through a UI. And contrary to how these comments may have seemed, the community is great, very friendly and very helpful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Don't own my current home, so am only looking to do so when I move. Though I'll take your advice on experimenting and learning, so I'll have a better of idea what to expect/to do when that day comes. Think Pi4s aren't too expensive to get and muck around with.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had never heard of any of these things, and am amused by them being real. They sound like parodies of parodies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the affirmation that it wasn’t just me thinking the names sounded like a joke to those that aren’t familiar.

But the software I’m referring to this is free and open source, if you have any smart devices, it is worth looking into for convenience and the amount of customization and integrations available, in addition to running locally and respecting user privacy.