You’ve decided you want to have a smart home. You have done the research to which protocols you want to use, and which sensors you want to monitor, and now it’s time to pick a hub. The brains. My recommendation is going to be Home Assistant.

Local Control

Home assistant can be built with complete local control. That means that you do not need to communicate with a cloud service to get it to work and you don’t need to have your personal information sent to a company’s server. It also means that if the internet goes down, you can still control your lights from your phone if you need to.

Integrations Galore

Home Assistant comes with a decent list of integrations right out of the box. There are built-in integrations for Z-Wave and Zigbee devices, some proprietary devices, even the ability to use MQTT. On top of what comes standard there are 3rd party integrations that add even more functionality. If you’re still not finding what you want, and you enjoying writing code, you can write custom integrations.

Robust-ness

Adding to the integrations, the software has the ability to pull sensor data from websites, APIs, external sources, and more. There are apps for iPhone and android devices that allow sensor data for battery levels, locations, and more. The system is designed to be as complex or as simple as you need it to be.

Cost

All of this for the grand price of, well, free. This can be slightly misleading because the software is only that, software. You will need a host system that will run the software and any USB dongles for protocols. The software can run on most computers as well as small boards like the raspberry pi. Sometimes an old laptop that is laying around can be repurposed into a Home Assistant hub.