Home Assistant is the best smart home platform I've used. It's also the one that required the most swearing to get running properly.

I've been using it for a couple of years now. The setup I have today — 40-odd devices, automations that actually work, dashboards that don't look embarrassing — is the result of a lot of iteration, a lot of YouTube rabbit holes, and a fair bit of trial and error.

If you're thinking about getting started, or you've just installed it and you're staring at the UI wondering where to begin, this post is for you.

Why Home Assistant?

The short version: it runs locally, it works with almost everything, and it doesn't require trusting some company's cloud to keep working.

I've used SmartThings, I've used Philips Hue natively, I've used Google Home. They all hit walls at some point — usually when you want to do something slightly off the beaten path. Home Assistant doesn't have those walls. It has a learning curve instead.

The hardware question

Home Assistant runs on a Raspberry Pi, a mini PC, a NAS, a VM, or a dedicated appliance. I run it on a Beelink mini PC and it's rock solid.

If you want the easiest starting point, the Home Assistant Green is the official plug-and-play box. It's not the cheapest option, but it just works, and that matters when you're starting out.

👉 Home Assistant Green on Amazon ★ — affiliate link, see disclosure below

If you want more horsepower (for running other things alongside HA), something like the Beelink EQ12 is worth a look.

The actual guide

I've written a much more detailed getting started guide — covering installation, initial setup, integrations, and the automations I'd build first. It covers things the official docs gloss over.

Download the complete Home Assistant Getting Started Guide →

It's a practical PDF guide built from real-world experience. Worth it if you want to get up and running without the frustrating detours.

What's next

In future posts I'll go deeper on specific bits — Zigbee vs Z-Wave, the integrations I actually use, and the automations that turned out to be genuinely useful versus the ones that were clever but annoying in practice.

Subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to catch those.

— Sam

Links marked ★ are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.