What is Home Assistant?

Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform. It lets you manage all your smart home devices from one place — regardless of the manufacturer.

Where to start?

1. Choose your hardware

The easiest start is Home Assistant Green — a ready-made device you just plug into your router. Alternatively, you can install HA on a Raspberry Pi 4/5 or as a virtual machine.

2. First integration

After starting HA, it will automatically discover devices on your network. Start with something simple — like a Zigbee smart bulb.

3. First automation

automation:
  - alias: "Turn off lights at midnight"
    trigger:
      - platform: time
        at: "00:00:00"
    action:
      - service: light.turn_off
        target:
          entity_id: all

Summary

Home Assistant in 2026 is easier than ever. The community is huge, there are over 2000 integrations, and getting started takes literally minutes.