In all, I have quite a few components keeping my home automation system running. Some are apps I use every day, some are for managing different parts of the infrastructure and a few are for entertainment. Nearly everything here runs in docker on my NAS or one of two dedicated docker servers.
- Home Assistant powers the automations and connectivity between a wide range of smart devices. Security system, locks, lights, HVAC, weather, various sensors and internet services glue a complex system into a mostly voice controlled house.
- Frigate is becoming the primary way we interact with video. It sits with Home Assistant on a dedicated server with a TPU and GPU to power 15 cameras of object detection. This is used as a sidecar to Surveillance Station.
- Surveillance Station is the storage system for the security video. There over 20 cameras total, but not all need object detection. This system keeps the video for a week and manages time lapses.
- OpenSpeedTest is just a tool I can use to diagnose network issues.
- searX Metasearch Engine is a search engine aggregator I use to connect multiple search engines to Open WebUI for adding web search context to LLM queries.
- Ollama Open WebUI is my private “GPT.” When I need to send thousands of queries without paying OpenAI, I use my own server. It’s using a 4070 and 2080TI to allow me to host both large language and vision detection models at the same time.
- Gitea is where I keep my code.
- Metabase is an interesting visualization platform I have been checking out.
- phpMyAdmin is how I work with MySQL. I use MySQL to store data for internal services that store weather data or the haikubox bird data. My Ollama server also hosts a handful of python scripts that are scheduled to gather data from various places and store it in MySQL for later use.
- Plex is where I keep video I can’t find to stream. Basically it’s two categories of content: Things we watch when the internet is down and things we can’t find on the streaming services we pay for.
- Audio Station is not something I really use much, but it has come in handy a few times. Essentially it’s the end of my iTunes backup strategy. My PC downloads music I purchase from iTunes. SyncFolder keeps it backed up to my house NAS, and my house NAS keeps a copy synced to the smaller NAS in the shop. I have decades of music so I try not to lose it.
- Cisco Switches are all here for management over IP.
- Synology DSM for both the house and shop NAS. It’s how I manage backups, docker, updates, etc.
- Dozzle is on all servers to keep visibility of what docker containers are up to for all 3 servers.
- Netdata is not on the Synology NAS, but I run it on the other two for visibility.
These are the top level apps I use, but there are many integrations to Home Assistant I use connect it to all of the smart devices it manages.
All of the complex automations that you can create are amazing, but sometimes it’s the simple things. It takes a lot of batteries to keep all of the sensors and locks running. Home Assistant lets me aggregate the battery status to a single view. Time to change that Front Driveway Motion battery.
I have been asked about Home Automation as a product and I hope this helps explain my position. Today, to connect up all of the various services, protocols and devices securely, keep everything up to date and manage all of the configuration and automations requires an engineer. If you are willing to spend hours of your personal time it can be amazing, but it’s the furthest thing from “set and forget” there is.
