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Comment by kwanbix | Hacker News Reader

I didn't know what it was, so: https://www.home-assistant.io

It's the Land Rover of home automation systems.

(Very capable, but also making programmers out of home owners since 2012)

edit: I was referring to a sticker that I’ve seen often on enthusiasts' forum posts 'Land Rover - Proudly turning owners into mechanics since 1948'.

The old school Defender is a very capable off road vehicle, but its need for regular unscheduled maintenance is legendary.

Greetings from a Toyota HZJ80 driver :)

Are Land Rovers extra hackable? Will be in need of a new car in a few years and that would help o.0

I think they were referring more to Land Rovers making mechanics out of car owners (Due to their famously bad reliability), but I may have misunderstood the joke.

Definitely, I heard som many bad jokes like you need to buy 2 evoque models to be able to drive at least 1 etc. Really bad reliability despite good design.

He meant shit keeps breaking and youll be constantly fixing it

HA is not hackable, is a massive blob

huh? it's OSS

Only on paper.

How is it only open source on paper? There are thousands of contributors and it's super easy to get your code in.

There's also HACS for plugins which they don't want to merge.

What is Land Rover the Land Rover of again? Highest cost per repair? Least likely off-road brand to be taken off-road? No.1 brand owned by rich land-owners? I legit don't get what that reference was going for.

Home Assistant is a free and open source way of cross-connecting smart devices. It is incredibly powerful. It can easily save you money (e.g. garage door/motion sensor + thermostat temp adjustments), or allow you to craft bespoke convenience/security features.

It is the central hub of a smart-home. Very reliable in my experience.

Closest to the first. He's joking that you can't own a Land Rover without being a mechanic and you can't use Home Assistant without being a programmer.

I love Home Assistant, and except for the occasional update breaking config files it's been very reliable, but there is no way 95% of people could get it installed, let alone get it set up to do anything useful.

yeah I f'ing love HA, it's my favourite hobby. But as it turns out I'm a programmer so I guess it fits :D

HA is only good for normies if there's a techie setting it up and keeping it running.

I have an Apple HomePod Mini (with Matter support), and HA with Homebridge, and every now and then I see evidence in HA of tighter integration. Not sure where it might all end up tho. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some day it will magically become self-aware and make everything "just work".

You probably don't need Homebridge if you run HA. You can expose whatever you like from HA to HomeKit so it works great with Apple devices.

>What is Land Rover the Land Rover of again? Highest cost per repair? Least likely off-road brand to be taken off-road? No.1 brand owned by rich land-owners? I legit don't get what that reference was going for.

excepting the recent dross from them with the death of the real defender...they can usually be fixed roadside with a hammer and some grease, they're easily the most ubiquitous off-road vehicle globally (well either landrover or toyota) and with 80% of all made still running.

Not sure why your reaction was so emotional, but I think you're thinking of Range Rovers, again though, the old ones were superb, the new ones are for rappers, footballer, and the other assorted nouveau riche.

It's also the largest project on GitHub by number of contributors

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/11/18/event-wrapup-g...

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