I Ditched Alexa and Upgraded My Smart Home

Until recently, my smart home setup was successful chaos. After years of testing, buying, and upgrading to the latest astute location gadgets successful an effort to marque my beingness easier, it became a bloated messiness that was really making it much complicated.

My Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home apps were awash with dormant devices, duplicates, and automations that simply didn’t work. My Hue Bridge, trying desperately to necktie it each together, was creaking astatine the seams. And the much precocious platforms I hadn't rather committed to, specified arsenic Homey and SmartThings, were warring each different for bandwidth connected an already congested network.

I was fundamentally employed arsenic full-time tech enactment successful my ain house, conscionable to halt the kids moaning that their lights weren’t moving … again. It was clip for a reset—a accidental to embark connected a full rethink of what a broad astute location successful 2025 should look like. If that sounds daunting, it needn't be. Here's however I gave my astute location a much-needed reboot and brought harmony to my location erstwhile more.

Bye Bye, Alexa

A batch of radical speechmaking this astir apt walked the aforesaid way I did, of adding devices to Alexa aboriginal connected due to the fact that it was easy, past losing power arsenic the astute location roar outpaced the level that was meant to support everything successful sync.

This meant I ended up moving a web of prosumer-grade astute location products connected an operating strategy that, let’s look it, was designed to adhd dishwasher tablets to a buying database and punctual the kids to brushwood their teeth. It's not ever truly been chopped retired to negociate low-latency authorities changes crossed a 100 antithetic devices.

Alexa has got amended for mean astute location users though, with Amazon adding things similar Zigbee radios, Matter controller and Thread Border Router features to the premix successful caller years—all of which springiness it a spot much flexibility. But it is inactive much of a large integer adjunct than dedicated astute location system, and anyone looking to physique thing superior should look elsewhere.

I had already started porting immoderate worldly implicit to HomeKit a portion agone and Apple’s ecosystem is really a vastly superior 1 to Amazon’s for the astute home—it's good worthy considering if you’re each successful connected iOS and devices similar Apple TV and HomePod, particularly with the Thread vigor present built into astir modern iPhones too.

But adjacent that wasn’t rather up to the task of gathering a DIY astute location to rival nonrecreational installations from the likes of Control4 and Crestron; installations that radical walk an implicit luck on.

What I needed was a due mode to negociate everything, portion astatine the aforesaid clip keeping it casual for my household to power our devices utilizing the dependable commands and astute buttons that person go mean for them successful the past fewer years. And portion I was keen to determination connected from Alexa arsenic a platform, it is inactive the adjunct my household uses to power each of our astute home.

That's due to the fact that we’ve got an Amazon Echo Show smart display successful astir rooms, which not lone enactment arsenic intercoms truthful we don’t request to outcry up and down the stairs, but besides negociate a clump of routines that anyone tin trigger with elemental dependable commands. For the involvement of ease, I didn’t privation to alteration that.

But utilizing Alexa for this required changeless attraction and attention. Not lone does it not archer you erstwhile a instrumentality is offline until you effort to usage it—which is incredibly frustrating—but successful Amazon’s quest to marque our astute homes easier, it has really made things harder for thing much than the simplest setups. And the biggest contented for maine was duplicate devices.

This is due to the fact that erstwhile you're mounting up caller devices successful your astute location system, Alexa not lone uses its cloud-based Skills diagnostic to brace with them, but it besides adds definite brand’s devices straight erstwhile they link to Echo astute speakers—without you doing anything. This was particularly problematic for maine with Philips Hue bulbs, erstwhile I ended up with 4 oregon 5 variations of the aforesaid bulb showing up successful the Alexa app.

Not lone did this marque managing routines a nightmare, it besides made dependable power unusable. Every clip I heard, “I recovered aggregate devices with that name. Try renaming them, oregon putting them successful a group,” a tiny portion of maine died.

Trying to support connected apical of this chaos was lone made each the much hard erstwhile Amazon killed the Alexa web portal successful 2022, which was the lone spot it was imaginable to wide delete devices. It besides rejigged the Alexa app truthful that each the devices connected—even ones that had been manually disabled—were listed successful the aforesaid place.

Deleting devices 1 by 1 is simply a immense clip suck, and often requires a mill reset of an Echo talker to wide long-dead devices from its cache. (Pro tip: crook disconnected the Device Discovery enactment successful an Echo speaker’s settings earlier attempting a large Alexa tidy-up.)

Local Knowledge

What I truly needed was to ditch the unreality and marque everything tally locally. That’s ever been the extremity for astute location “enthusiasts,” but until precocious it was easier said than done for anyone unfamiliar with what a YAML record is.

After a shaky start, the emergence of Matter arsenic a superior unit for astute location interoperability has made things a batch simpler, but the large operator for maine was the information that Home Assistant is present vastly much user-friendly than it ever has been. It’s nary longer the Raspberry Pi hacking task of yesteryear; the open-source astute location golden modular is yet plug and play.

That’s not to accidental it’s been dumbed down (a disapproval that Samsung has faced with its SmartThings platform); it’s inactive incredibly almighty (and incredibly confusing) if you spell beyond the aboveground level.

But for anyone with adjacent the slightest spot of tech savviness, it’s present straightforward to person Home Assistant moving your astute home, particularly with a instrumentality similar the Home Assistant Green, which is benignant of an authoritative Home Assistant hub, and the easiest option for getting started with the platform.

It truly is arsenic elemental arsenic plug and play, with the Home Assistant OS already loaded and acceptable to spell the infinitesimal it’s plugged into your router. Once I fired up the app it recovered a batch of my connected devices automatically and I was capable to manually configure beauteous overmuch everything other done the immense catalogue of "Integrations".

You volition request other antennas to adhd things similar Zigbee and Z-Wave to the premix (which simply plug successful via USB) but Home Assistant doesn’t truly attraction what the connection protocol is it’s using; it lets you premix and lucifer to your heart’s content. And for the fewer things determination wasn’t authoritative enactment for, I was capable to plug the spread with Matter.

The operation of Home Assistant and Matter means that I person got the bulk of my devices moving locally now, which is large for information and stableness of course, but besides means things similar question sensors triggering lights hap overmuch quicker.

In Home Assistant you don’t conscionable spot devices arsenic a full either—instead they are divided down into their features truthful you tin conscionable usage definite aspects of them. Home Assistant calls these “entities” and it means that you tin bash things similar usage the humidity speechmaking from your thermostats oregon radiator TRVs kick-start your AC, oregon person a astute talker punctual you to unfastened a model if the aerial prime drops.

Yes, technically, Alexa tin bash this too, but it’s unreliable and heavy cloud-based. With Home Assistant, I person recovered it conscionable works due to the fact that it was built that mode from the start.

You tin besides usage these information points to way patterns implicit time—think vigor usage, mean temperatures successful bedrooms, the magnitude of times a fridge doorway is opened each day; there’s an endless magnitude of info that you are capable to dive into. And since everything is tracked locally, determination are nary worries of Big Tech spying connected you and your habits.

Home Assistant present powers 90 percent of my automations, a fig that could deed 100 percent if I motion up to its $6.50/month unreality subscription. That would fto maine import Home Assistant automations straight into Alexa (as Scenes) and trigger them by voice.

The Invisible Upgrade

Getting Home Assistant up and moving has besides allowed maine to commencement sorting a load of different astute location issues that person been connected my to-do database for ages. I had a batch of orphan devices that weren't truly connected to anything, and a clump of discontinued worldly that truly needed replacing.

The astir high-profile casualties were my Google and Nest devices. I went successful beauteous hard connected Google Home aboriginal on, and we could easy person gone down that way arsenic a household alternatively of Alexa.

But portion Google Home has stagnated (with immoderate airy connected the skyline via Gemini for Home), I inactive had a clump of Nest Protect fume alarms and Nest Cams that needed clearing out. The Protects are present discontinued, and the Cams are beauteous mediocre now, compared to the competition.

The assemblage is inactive retired connected the fume alarms (I’m presently investigating models from Aqara, Shelly and X-Sense, positive First Alert’s caller astute detector), but for cameras, I’ve been moving everything to Reolink. Its cameras are packed with features astatine competitory prices, don’t necessitate subscriptions for afloat functionality, and connection section retention to support things retired of the cloud.

We are present a fewer months into our caller setup and to beryllium honest, my household hasn't noticed overmuch difference. And of course, they weren't expected to. They are inactive utilizing Alexa arsenic their dependable assistant, arsenic they ever have, to crook lights on, set the heat, disarm the alarm, oregon unfastened the blinds.

But for me, arsenic the unofficial location IT manager, removing Alexa arsenic the level that everything runs on, and streamlining the process has been the agelong overdue astute location upgrade we needed. The operation of a user-friendly dependable adjunct retired beforehand and a almighty astute location operating strategy successful the inheritance is simply a immense measurement up successful keeping things moving smoothly time successful time out. If you’ve been putting it off, don’t. It’s easier than you think, and it’ll prevention you a ton of hassle successful the agelong run.