[Beginner] What's a good start in 2026?

Hardware Home Automation
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Hi there, I didn’t see a lot of “state of the home automation” posts, so please bear with my beginner questions.

What I want:

I live in Germany and I’m interested in starting automating things in the house. Main priorities (in order) are:

  • Automating my heating in order to reduce costs. It’s definitely the most important to me.
  • I’m rethinking my lighting situation, so I’m interested in smart lights.
  • Smart shades/blinds would be next
  • Maybe some small solar panels in the future

Where I am

I’m a free software and webdev guy, so that’s why I’d love to use openHAB. Flashing and configuring devices should be no problem to me. Still, I’m not looking to tinker a lot. Installing, configuring, ok, but always adjusting is not my jam. But I can solder and DIY too if needs be.

I’m open to having a non-free solution if it means convenience and ease of use, as long as it’s not collecting my personal data. So this excludes Apple, Google and Amazon solutions.

I’ve read that matter over thread is the future so I’d like to go this way entirely. Though I’m open to counter-arguments.

Server Questions

  • Is a Raspberry Pi still the best way to start? Are there smaller boards that could work? Are there reasons to choose a “real” beefier hardware?
  • If I want local services running on a server (media player, DIY smart TV etc.), is it interesting to run openHAB on it too? or should I just separate everything on different hardware?

Matter integration

So I’ve read I’d need a Matter/thread hub. I’m eyeing the SMLIGHT SLZB06M, but also stumbled upon their nanoHUB. If I understand it right, the nanoHUB would allow for the matterbridge to run even though my openHAB board doesn’t. Is it a use case I need to think about or is the SLZB06M just enough for my needs?

Are there better configs for my simple use case?

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Hi @OpenMastering !

Welcome to the openHAB community.

Regarding hardware, it’s possible to use Raspberry Pi, and I believe the newer versions with more RAM are more suitable for when you need to expand your automation system in the future.

I use a Rock Pi 4B+ and I’m very satisfied with it.

A Rock Pi 5 would be better. Maybe in the future I’ll upgrade my environment.

Currently, I use a mix of WiFi, Zigbee, and some parts with 433 MHz, since my system is old and I update and expand it whenever possible.

I believe using matter is more suitable for those starting a system from scratch.

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Interesting question.

Most people tend to go with what they know so ones preference would be different from another.

If I had my time over I would go entirely with Zigbee instead of Z-wave for my primary protocol, however Aoetec have a dual protocol dongle which can control both, this means I don’t use the Hue hub any more. Personally I don’t like to have too many things running.

This is what I use, with the Aeotec Pro10 plugged into the USB.

If it was me, I wouldn’t want to place all my eggs in one basket, however it may be beneficial if services you want are available at a ‘localhost’ level, one unit might be better in those circumstances.

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If you don’t require any GPIO pins on the RPi to do anything (serial, I2C, digital IO etc) it’s hard to choose the RPi over a mini pc. A second hand NUC would be a good choice, no need to get anything with up to date specs that will break the bank.

3 Likes
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The whole point of openHAB is you don’t have to choose any one technology to standardize on. The state of home automation is so fragmented, and Matter is so new (and complicated), that you likely will not be able to reach your goals using just Matter. There simply isn’t the variety of devices available yet.

Note, I’m not aware of any purely Thread based devices short of a couple products from Nest. Do you really mean Zigbee?

RAM is the limiting factor. So you’ll want the equivalent of at least an RPi 4 with at least 2GB RAM, 4GB + is better. And it’s really just the lack of RAM on the RPi 3 which makes it unsuitable.

For the price, often a refurbished mini-pc gives you more for your money. However, using them with openHABian can be trickier and more involved. So it depends on whether you want a turn-key system or to manually install and configure everything.

That’s up to you really. It all depends on how beefy the computer(s) are you run this stuff on, how you want to manage and maintain everything, and what your tolerance for downtimes are.

The turn-key approach of openHABian would have you run openHAB and just a few other home automation related services on one machine and everything else would run somewhere else. Some people use Proxmox clusters or Kubernetes and the like with automatic failover.

Except for the fact that openHAB requires certain ports, there’s nothing inherent in it that makes it incompatible with other services on the same machine.

Technically called a Thread Border Router (TBR) to bridge between the Thread network and IPv6 network (Matter does not work on IPv4). You only need one if your Matter devices use Thread instead of WiFi. Many hubs support Matter but do not provide a TBR. So watch out for that.

I haven’t done much with Matter yet so I don’t have any opinions about the hardware you point out. However, the OH add-on doesn’t yet support inclusion a new devices yet as far as I know. So you will need something, usually an app on your phone, that works with the hub to do inclusion. Inclusion usually requires scanning a QR code as I understand it.

Most people use these just for inclusion. Once a device is part of the Matter network OH can see it and represent it.

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