I Let AI Control My House

I run Home Assistant OS on a Home Assistant Green. I’ve had it running since May 2026. I’ve hooked Claude into it recently, and some of the stuff I’ve got working is honestly insane.

The setup integrates with 67 devices and has 44 automations, with 25 of those running in the past week for an average of about 1,000 runs a day. I’ve got everything from smart lights and plugs that track power use to automatic cat feeders and a robot vacuum. Tailscale gives me remote access, and there are add-ons for Matter and MQTT too.

Before buying anything, I check what works locally.

Privacy

I want my data to stay in the house, off someone else’s servers.

Reliability

I want things to work when the internet or a vendor goes down.

Speed

I want commands to respond right away, without the few seconds of cloud lag I’ve seen with cloud integrations.

Ownership

I’d rather own my setup than rent it, with a company deciding how long its service lasts or changing the terms.

When every Zigbee device disappeared, restarting Home Assistant did nothing, but restarting the coordinator fixed it. That’s happened more than once, so I’d add an alert for the coordinator itself.

The mmWave sensors pick up Flo and Marv too, so when I need to know it’s a person, I use PIR motion sensors. Those never fired for the cats alone in ten days of motion history, though I wouldn’t take that as a promise.

One automation ran successfully without delivering its notification because a newer Home Assistant notification action rejected the iOS critical-alert options it used. Now I check that the notification actually reaches the phone, and after replacing or renaming a device, I check the automation references too.

I’d start with a Home Assistant Green and an Ethernet coordinator for both Zigbee and Thread.

For sensors and plugs, I’d go with cheap Third Reality Zigbee sensors and IKEA’s Matter-over-Thread sensors and plugs. A mmWave presence sensor would go in each room where I sit still, though I’d keep in mind that it’ll pick up the cats too.

After about six months with this setup, I’d check which features work without the vendor’s cloud before buying anything. A “works with” claim on the box doesn’t tell you which features need it, and my Govee lights still need the cloud for scenes and effects.

Z-Wave

I’m looking at Z-Wave as a fourth network: it’s local like Zigbee and Thread, but uses 908.42 MHz in North America, which is far away from the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, Zigbee and Thread share.

Z-Wave is common for locks and in-wall switches. My SLZB-MR4U doesn’t do Z-Wave, so I’d need a separate Z-Wave stick, added through Home Assistant’s Z-Wave JS integration. I’ll still check what works locally before buying anything.