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I was originally considering openhab, but then I discovered Home-Assistant (https://home-assistant.io/) and I've been hooked since. It ticks off a bunch of check-boxes that made it a great home OSS solution:

Pro's

- No internet required, can run entirely on a Rasberry Pi

- Integrates with most everything thanks to the huge component library (https://home-assistant.io/components/)

- Easy to write your own Python component to integrate with new stuff

- Can use existing SmartThings/etc hubs or Z-wave usb stick to talk to most anything

- Fairly easy to write automations

- Well written Python 3 code-base that's fairly easy to read and see what's going on yourself

Con's

- Definitely more for the DIY tinkerer

- Need to write YAML for the automations, though a new GUI makes this easier for many cases

Setting up an SMS to me when a motion sensor tripped was pretty easy, my automation was:

    - alias: Alerting on bedroom motion
           initial_state: False
           trigger:
             platform: numeric_state
             entity_id: sensor.bedroom_burglar
             above: 0
           action:
             - service: notify.aws_sns
               data: 
                 message: "Bedroom alarm sensor has been tripped!"
                 target: HassAlert
I've had it running for over a year now, and it's been quite nice.


Home-assistant also has a great homebridge plugin (https://github.com/home-assistant/homebridge-homeassistant) to easily bridge devices to HomeKit. I got home-assistant talking to zwave and zigbee with a Linear HUSBZB-1 stick (new version does both) and finally threw my wink hub in the garbage. Even through Home app -> homebridge -> home-assistant, everything is super fast and 100% local, unlike most of the commercial hubs.


I second the Home Assistant suggestion - I've also been running it for a while now, and it's pretty easy to get the hang of once you've been using it for a while.

Admittedly I'm definitely a tinkerer myself, but I honestly like the config just being a bunch of YAML files. It's really easy to back up that way.


What would be the steps you'd take when you receive the SMS "Bedroom alarm sensor has been tripped!"?


sounds pretty nice. thanks, i'll check it out.




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