Beyond Year One: Our Home Assistant Journey

It felt beyond satisfying to finally truck all of our decommissioned "smart" assistants down to the local electronics recycling center (the one that opens only on the most irregular schedule). The Echos and Hubs had long worn out their welcome in our homes. Especially those random, creepy conversations that would start up from a speaker in the middle of the night with no prompting at all. We know some of you know exactly what we're talking about. They seemed helpful in the early days, but it quickly became clear these gadgets were pulling in the opposite direction from what we wanted. So when we discovered the Home Assistant project, it was worth trying. We had a few spare Raspberry Pi units sitting in the parts bin (back when they were still affordable), pulled one out, flashed a microSD card, and gave it a spin. The setup was straightforward enough that within short order we knew we were on the right path. The only missing piece was voice control. The customizable web interface was…