100+ posts so far and all because of a post based on misperceptions. Let’s throw another log on the fire.
I’ve watched a lot of videos about Home Assistant and the one thing I recall them all saying about openHAB is … nothing.
Please post links to the videos where they demonstrate Home Assistant’s superiority and make compelling, irresistible reasons to switch from openHAB to Home Assistant. So compelling that one is overcome with the desire to convert.
Oh and at least three such videos please … and I’ll show you an easy dozen where they don’t even mention openHAB.
Over its 5+ year development period, Home Assistant has gained mind-share among home automation hobbyists. Like openHAB, it’s an open-source project so its growth (or decline) is based on the participation and contributions of volunteers. There are many ways to contribute:
- Answer questions posted in the community forum.
- Submit new integrations (i.e. new bindings).
- Make videos explaining how to use it.
- Write blog posts.
- Share your configuration via GitHub.
- Produce a podcast that interviews users and discusses the latest release.
Both the openHAB and Home assistant communities do some or all of the above (and more). Both are competent products backed by enthusiastic communities and choosing one over the other is a matter of personal taste and suitability for your specific needs.
A year ago, I needed a new frontend for my existing home automation software (that I’ve used for over a decade). I chose openHAB and worked with it for about 6 months. There were parts of openHAB that I liked very much and other parts, less so. Last fall I decided to investigate Home Assistant. It suited my, admittedly limited, needs better (it was easier to create a frontend). So I stayed with it and, over time, have become deeply involved with helping other Home Assistant users.
I’ve read most of the 100+ posts in this thread and there’s misinformation and speculation about Home Assistant. I’ve spent a lot of time participating in its community forum and I feel comfortable in saying most of its users rarely ever discuss openHAB. The few times it is mentioned, and I have been one to do so, is to suggest that some users switch to openHAB.
Why would I do that? Because Home Assistant’s whirlwind 2-week release cycle often involves breaking changes (and a few bugs). For users who don’t bother to read release notes (listing the breaking changes) and who blindly upgrade … it can have unpleasant consequences. If the user wants a more traditional release cycle, they’re encouraged to use other software, such as openHAB. No harm, no foul.
The 2-week release cycle means rapid evolution of the product. One peek at its GitHub repo shows almost 500 PRs in a month. It also shows hundreds of issues although only a fraction of them are critical and most probably belong as tech support questions in the community forum. Anyway, at this stage in its development (which would be fair to call ‘late beta’) it’s not for people who want to do just one or two upgrades per year with no surprises.
For almost a year, the founder was employed by Ubiquiti for the development of Home Assistant. Honestly, I don’t know what Ubiquiti was getting out of the deal (other than saying it sponsored an open-source project) but they recently parted company. The founder has now moved to the business he started called Nabu Casa.
Nabu Casa effectively offers a paid version of openHAB Cloud. For US$5 per month, you get remote access and an easy way to integrate Google Home and Amazon Echo devices. These features are already available for free but require more work to implement (via a reverse-proxy
and related services to secure the connection). Nabu Casa’s cloud solution simplifies the process, as does openHAB Cloud. The $5 fee is also considered to be a donation to the continued (rapid) development of the product.
Given that there has been no announcement that even comes close to what you just described, it’s safe to say it’s all wild speculation. The first thing Nabu Casa’s service offered was merely the ability to easily integrate Google Home and Amazon Echo. The extra feature they promised was recently delivered and that’s remote-access. So now, Nabu Casa users have the same functionality as openHAB Cloud users and are equally ‘locked in’ to the cloud … which is to say not locked in at all.
Quick question: openHAB and openHABian, what’s the difference?
While your thinking of the answer, I’ll explain the difference between Home Assistant, Hass.io, and Hassbian. They’re all Home Assistant but in different installation forms.
Hassbian is what you claimed you could not find, namely a ‘one click pi image like openhabian’. That’s precisely what it is.
Home Assistant is written in python so it can be installed on any platform that supports python 3. Personally, I have it installed this way in a ‘python virtual environment’ (venv). In a manner of speaking, that’s the way I installed openHAB the first time (after installing a suitable Java environment for it).
Hass.io is comprised of two Docker containers (one with Home Assistant and another with a hypervisor). It is available as ‘one-click Pi image’ (along with a minimal Linux-based OS) or just the Docker containers (so you can run it on any other platform that supports Docker). The advantage of Hass.io is that it shields the user from the system’s inner workings. Add-ons are just Docker containers providing additional functionality (and tuned to work best with other parts of Hass.io). Instead of trying to understand how to install nginx or caddy or zerotier, you just select the Add-on, fill in a form with a few details, and the new feature is operational.
Last but not least is Home Assistant as a pure Docker container. I have Home Assistant running this way on my test server. Being a Docker container, it makes it very easy to perform upgrades (or downgrades) as well as add other containers for Mosquitto, Influxdb, Grafana, etc.
For long-standing openHAB users, they’ll recognize that at least three of the four installation methods I’ve described are also available in openHAB.
There’s nothing adversarial about the two communities. It’s just two different approaches to home automation and everyone is free to choose whichever works best for them.
Best wishes to the openHAB community!