I have a production openHAB 4 system, an openHAB 4 lab system and a Home Assistant installation. All in virtual machines. Today I recommended Home Assistant to a work colleague saying, “This is easier for you, openHAB is better, but too complex for beginners.”
Home Assistant comes with its operating system HAOS as ready-to-load VMs. In the colleague’s case, all you had to do was import and launch the OVA in his Synology in Virtual Machine Manager.
On to the first launch. Short questions about location, units, quickly create a user account (real user accounts with rights) and then the first devices found in the network are already detected. You only have to nod off what you want to have and still answer the questions about rooms in which the devices are located.
To stay in the openHAB language, many bindings (integrations) are automatically selected because the devices are detected. If you confirm the usage, the items (entities) are created directly. The names are logically composed of the device name and the associated function.
In the case of devices such as routers from AVM or Hue, rooms are taken over as rooms and only need to be nodded off. This allows a quick start and a good feeling.
The automations are also essentially clickable together by mouse, are stored in YAML and can be edited that way as well.
The makers of Home Assistant are striving to make more and more configurable via the UI, YAML as a configuration path is becoming less and less. A lot of work is done on the UI to make it modern and usable.
In detail, however, there are already quite a few problems, for which I did not want to switch at the moment. But in order not to get blinders, the look in the other community is helpful.
But apropos community. I found the openHAB community in recent years much nicer and more helpful. A clear plus for openHAB. However, I must also say that I also think that openHAB is too little in the focus of the public. The computer magazine c’t from Heise Verlag in Germany was mentioned here. I like to watch their YouTube videos and listen to their podcast. When something is reported on the topic of smart home, openHAB is factually never mentioned. Node-RED and Home Assistant are clearly leading the way. Even in their magazine MAKE.
From a beginner’s point of view, I’m not surprised. I once tried to set up a KNX actuator via UI in my lab version (I’ve been working with files since I got into openHAB). Now I knew the connections, but a beginner certainly does not find himself easily pure. Even if he understands what a binding is, what he wants to address, the binding is installed and the device is recognized by openHAB, happens: nothing. You have to create items, link them and if you just click, you have items with random names that do not reveal their content or function and unfortunately cannot be renamed. Being able to change things is one of the most important functions for me in a system, and unfortunately openHAB fails there with its UI. With Home Assistant, an entity can be renamed at any time without destroying the system.
This perhaps as a first overview and my contribution to the discussion.