How do you solve the problem of growing a popular smart home platform committed to open source, open standards ideals into something even bigger that stays true to those ideals? You create the foundation. At least, that's the approach Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen has chosen.
This week, Home Assistant announced that it is now part of the Open Home Foundation. The newly formed nonprofit organization will own and manage Home Assistant and all of its affiliated entities. Its founders and first board members, Mr. Schaussen, Mr. Guy See, Mr. Pascal Viselli, and Mr. J. Nick Coston, all work on Home Assistant, and the foundation has no other members at this time.
The foundation said in a press release that its aim is to “combat surveillance capitalism and provide a counterbalance to Big Tech's influence in smart homes by focusing on the privacy, choice, and sustainability of smart home users. “This is the case.''
The Open Home Foundation is the new owner of Home Assistant.Image: Open Home Foundation
As a community-built, open-source smart home platform, Home Assistant is different from major “big tech” competitors like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. The reason is that the following he provides four functions at the same time. It's more reliable than the cloud, and you have rights and access to all your data. Compatible with almost any connected gadget, regardless of protocol or manufacturer. and the ability to coordinate them. Many competitors offer some of these, but few offer all of them.
“We want to be clear about what our intentions are for the world: We are driven by a purpose higher than money. And we are not for sale. ”
Home Assistant is known for its unparalleled power and flexibility, but so far the platform, which has an estimated 1 million users, has struggled to reach the mainstream. Home Assistant can have a steep learning curve, especially when compared to the relative simplicity of platforms like Alexa and Apple Home. Device onboarding can be complex, the UI has a lot of room for improvement, and integrations can be hit or miss.
“Home Assistant isn’t anyone’s first smart home platform,” Shotsen said. “People turn to Home Assistant when their existing systems reach their limits and they need more control.” But he feels the platform is at a tipping point.
With the advent of the industry-backed smart home standard Matter (in which Home Assistant is heavily involved), smart home adoption is becoming mainstream. Home Assistant hopes to continue swimming alongside Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and Google, which have been competing in the smart home space for about a decade. Home Assistant has never taken on investors before, and Shosen said he believes it is the best way for the foundation to grow.
Schoutsen outlined the platform's future roadmap during the annual State of the Open Home presentation on Saturday, April 20th. In an interview ahead of the livestream, he told The Verge about some of the big changes planned for Home Assistant after this transition.
The Home Assistant Green smart home hub goes on sale on Amazon this year, marking the first time Amazon sells it directly to consumers. A new line of Home Assistant Connect dongles for Thread/Zigbee and Z-Wave will follow. These connect the hub to gadgets that use those protocols (replacing the SkyConnect dongle). The Home Assistant Works With program, which provides certification for products that work with this platform, is expanding. New partners include Aqara, Ultraloq and Jasco. A new Home Assistant voice-controlled hardware device running Home Assistant's local smart home voice assistant is expected to be released at the end of the year. Home Assistant is working with his Nvidia to incorporate local AI models into the system. Home automation platform. The platform has been researching ways to improve the UI so that everyone in the house can easily use the home assistant. The company calls this the “home approval factor.” This is a variation of the wife or spouse approval element that encompasses everyone in the house.
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Works With Home Assistant badges are starting to appear on products to indicate that they are certified to work with Home Assistant.Image: Home Assistant
Learn more about the future of Home Assistant here.
Launched in 2022, the Home Assistant Works With program expands partnerships with more smart home companies to certify their products as Work With Home Assistants. Partners include Leviton, Aqara, Ultraloq, Jasco, Third Reality, and more. “This label means that we can guarantee that it will work with your home assistant,” says Shosen. Each has a type of connectivity that works, and there are no cloud-only partners. “We only allow cloud badges as secondary badges other than local badges. (For cloud-only products) we cannot guarantee that it will work if you turn cloud off at some point.”
Adding voice control hardware
Work on locally-based home assistant voice assistants that began last year continues with the development of home assistant voice assistant hardware devices. “We want to create unique hardware that people can install in their homes and use instead of Google or Amazon,” says Shosen. He said the device should arrive at the end of this year, hinting at future screen-based devices. “We're looking at screens, and we don't have anything to announce officially, but we're looking at E-ink. We don't need advertising, so we don't need color.”
Home Assistant is looking to incorporate generative AI into home automation, but the key is to use local processing. “Some people use ChatGPT in Home Assistant, but it's very slow,” says Schoutsen. They are working with Nvidia to power his LLM for Home Assistant using the Jetson platform.
The overall goal of all these efforts is to push home assistants to become a more mainstream, out-of-the-box option for smart home users. “We want to be a consumer brand,” says Schousen. “I went to the hardware store and said, 'I value my privacy. This is the smart home hub I need.'
The foundation will also advocate for the development of “better” smart home products, Schottsen said. Reliable home because he needs products that are compatible with his assistant. ”
Is your home assistant all grown up?
Schoutsen, who started Home Assistant in 2013 with a Philips Hue smart lighting bridge, a Python script, and a mission to control the lights the way he wants, said he needed a foundation to protect and move Home Assistant forward. We believe that this is the case. “We want to be clear about what our intentions are for the world: that we are driven by a higher purpose than money. And we are not for sale,” he said. says. The new ownership structure provides a stronger platform for growth. “This allows people to take us seriously and allows us to reach a wider audience,” he says.
Until now, Schoutsen says Home Assistant's unofficial way of operating has been confusing for businesses looking to partner with the platform. The launch of Nabu Casa, a for-profit company five years ago, provided Home Assistant with a revenue stream through optional cloud computing services and currently supports 33 full-time employees.
The foundation, which was established last month as Swiss Verein (the “Association”), formally separated Nav Casa from Home Assistant. This foundation will own all open source projects, standards, drivers, and libraries related to Home Assistant, along with ESPHome, ZigPy, and Wyoming.
Nabu Casa will continue as a commercial entity operating the cloud and selling home assistant hardware, and will act as a commercial partner of the Foundation. “Funding and support will only flow in one direction, from Nav Casa and his future partners to the Open Home Foundation and its projects,” said Pascal Viselli, Nav Casa co-founder and Foundation Director. he says.
It also prevents Home Assistant from being sold. Swiss law prohibits members of the nonprofit organization Verein from receiving its benefits, Schossen explained to The Verge. “Our article states: 'We do not make any distributions directly to members in return for work done on behalf of the association or as any other form of gratuity of any kind,'” he said. To tell. Similarly, the foundation only receives income from membership fees, donations, licensing programs and contributions from partners, he said.
The Open Home Foundation's principles are privacy, choice, and sustainability in the smart home.
Still, Home Assistant users may be wary of these major structural changes. The Verge asked Schossen how concerns that this would negatively impact current users could be allayed. I can't help but draw parallels with SmartThings' move to a more “consumer-friendly” platform following its acquisition by Samsung.
“We're always trying to balance ease of use with advanced features, but we don't know how we're going to continue to do that,” he said. “But we can't forget about power users. The platform is open. Perhaps at some point there will be a split between basic and advanced UI. We don't know how that will work. But because we're open and have access to our data, they're all part of the community, even if they're not using the specific tools we're building.”
“The audience I want to reach doesn’t exist today.”
While he recognizes the need for growth in home assistants, he is also cautious about getting into the business side of smart homes. “We have to be very careful when moving into this space,” he says. “The challenge with partnership people is that they're very business-focused. And that's not how we operate.”
He hopes the foundation will provide the building blocks needed for growth while upholding the platform's core beliefs and values. “Now that we have this foothold, I think we can grow even bigger. The Foundation is an entity. I think people will take us more seriously. I think the press will take us more seriously. The audience you want to reach is not there today.”
Current mainstream smart home platforms offer simple and convenient ways to control smart lights, locks, and other gadgets, but lack access to data, limited options for local control of devices, and the overreliance of some platforms on the cloud, putting users at a disadvantage.
Matter is designed to solve some of these problems, with the aim of enabling local control and interoperability across all smart home devices and platforms. But Matter is not a platform. To control your home, you must use an app on your phone or computer. Home Assistant wants to be that app.
Can we move fast enough? There's a long way to go from forming the foundation to filling Home Depot with Home Assistant hubs and gadgets pledging allegiance to Home Assistant. Meanwhile, Matter is also giving other platforms, such as Aqara, Homey, and Hubitat, the tools to expand and grow into a more viable alternative to big tech in smart homes. It will be interesting to see where everything lands.