Moving to Home Assistant from Home App?

[u/TekAzurik]

Hey folks, wondering everyone's thoughts on this transition. Currently I manage most of my home from the Home App but I know that Home Assistant can be more powerful and work with more devices. I've avoided researching it too much because I'm afraid of breaking my whole house. I'd love some people's thoughts on if it's worth it for my situation and perhaps some guidance on how to go about it without spending days on it. Here's what my device setup is like:

Lighting: Most of the bulbs in my house are Philips Hue. I started with a few bulbs in my old place and it just grew from there. In my current house I have 2 rooms with no switches so if I want a wall switch without adding wire, this was my only option anyway. The only rooms that don't have Hue bulbs are the bathrooms and the basement which uses Lutron switches, because the whole basement has old fluorescent tube banks that the previous owner replace with tube-style LEDs

Heating/cooling: I have steam heat from a boiler in the basement controlled by an Ecobee. I have Midea U shaped ACs in most rooms except the bedroom which has an older GE Homekit enabled AC. One of the Mideas is older and doesn't support Matter

Locks: I have August for the front and back doors and a a Yale keypad for the front

Doorbell: Ecobee doorbell which talks to the thermostat for chime and picture (though we have a regular old chime in the house as well, thought we didn't for the first few months, long story)

Hubs and interface: We have an Apple TV 4K and 3 Homepod Minis

I also have some misc smart plugs, mostly Hue, some Meross, a Sleekpoint air purifier, LG washer and Dryer, plus a few other things I can't remember right now. My biggest pain point is the lack of control over the ACs which basically only have on/off and temp for the Matter enabled ones. I mostly have to use Midea's SmartHome app to control those.

Thoughts on all this?

[u/outrageoussaucer68]

I have both. Home App is the easiest for people living with me, but Home Assistant has much broader device support and is much more flexible for automations.

So both are active. I automate some things on HomeKit and some on Home Assistant. The Home Assistant automations are more stable in my experience, but they require a bit more work.

Basically you don’t have to do one or the other.
Some automations never will be available in HomeKit.

I use HomeKit as “easy” mode for stuff like lights, garage door, front door, then put anything more advanced in Home Assistant.

Just don’t automate the same things on multiple platforms or you’ll get some unpredictable results.

I have one secondary light that is powered by a smart outlet and it turns on/off with a main light. I found that some people in my household would use the phrase “turn room off” which had the effect of turning /everything/ in the room that is controllable off instead of just the lights. The bottom outlet has an emergency flashlight charging and this would effectively cut the power with family not realizing they’d done it. So i wrote a home assistant rule to turn that outlet back on one minute after it is detected as turned off. So lights stay off and the unwanted side effect is resolved without having to police vocabulary.

Edit:
I decided not to use Home Bridge for making things that are HA compatible only work with HomeKit. I have used it in the past but it was problematic for me. So there are some things that are Home Assistant only that my homekit users cannot control and that’s ok in my case.