Summary

Don’t you wish you could make all of your devices talk to each other? Check out Home Assistant, the Python 3 platform for unified automation. Paulus Schoutsen shares the story of how the project got started, what makes it tick, and how you can use it today!

Introduction

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• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Paulus Schoutsen about Home Assistant, the Python 3 platform for unifying your home automation.

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• What is Home Assistant and what was the initial frustration that inspired you to create it?
• How useful would home assistant be for someone who doesn’t have a lot of the so-called ‘smart home’ technology?
• Given the fact that the intended context for Home Assistant is in the user’s house or apartment, how do you ensure that their data and privacy are safe?
• Reading through the documenation for installing and configuring Home Assitant, it seems prohibitively complex for someone who is not technically inclined. Has any work been done to try to package the project in a way that is more friendly to a casual user?
• What are some of the most difficult challenges that you have faced while building Home Assistant?
• Why did you choose Python 3 as the technology for building this platform?
• The list of supported services and integrations is quite impressive. How does the current architecture allow for that kind of growth?
• How has the architecture of Home Assistant evolved from when you first started it?
• What are some of the products or platforms that you consider to be competitors of Home Assistant and how do you differentiate yourself?
• What are some of the most interesting or unexpected uses of Home Assistant that you have seen?
• What do you see as some of the most promising and the most troubling trends in the future of home automation?

Keep In Touch

• Gitter Chatroom
• Forum

Picks

• Tobias
  • Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
• Paulus
  • Read a Newspaper

Links

• Mycroft
  • Interview
  • Project Homepage
• Let’s Encrypt
• Voluptuous
• JSON-Schema
• Home Assistant PyCon Presentation
• asyncio
• Open HAB
• Merai Botnet

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA