Imagine if you could install Home Assistant in literally two clicks but Home Assistant was MUCH EASIER to use and ran straight on your computer!?! Homey just took the software out of their smart home hub and just said "here you have it, install it or whatever you want". It can be installed on a raspberry pi, an apple Mac such as a Mac mini, a Windows PC, or a NAS, and its mind blowingly good. My Raspberry Pi is in the drawer, feeling personally attacked. For years, running a proper local-first smart home meant buying a Pi, wrestling with SD cards, and learning enough YAML to feel something die inside you. Homey just quietly blew the door off all of that. If you've ever been curious about Home Assistant but ran away screaming the first time you saw the setup guide, this video is for you. I'm taking a proper look at Homey Pro's brand new self-hosted server — the software version of their smart home hub that installs directly onto your existing PC, Mac, NAS, or yes, still a Raspberry Pi if you're determined, in a handful of clicks. No proprietary hardware required, no cloud dependency, no monthly subscription, and no degree in computer science. Full native support for Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, Thread, infrared (IR), 433MHz RF, and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), plus integrations with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, SmartThings, and thousands of smart home devices across every major protocol. If you've been waiting for a Home Assistant alternative that doesn't cost you three weekends and a relationship, this might actually be it. This video is sponsored by Homey, all opinions are my own 🛒 GET HOMEY PRO SELF-HOSTED BELOW https://homey.app/en-us/homey-self-hosted-server/ ============================= BUY ME A BEER 🍺 Donate to the channel: http://paypal.me/PaulHibbert 🎥 Become a monthly contributor on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/paulhibbert ============================== ⏳ 0:00 - Homey Self Hosted Server Demo ⏳ 0:52 - What is Homey Self Hosted Server ⏳ 3:13 - Creating a Homey Flow For Spotify ⏳ 4:50 - Homey Self Hosted Server Setup, Alexa and Remote Access ⏳ 7:18 - Homey vs Home Assistant ⏳ 12:12 - Home Bridge for Zigbee, Zwave, Infrared, RF, and BLE ⏳ 14:08 - What's wrong with it? ⏳ 15:16 - Homey Self Hosted Server Summary #Homey #HomeAssistant #SmartHome #SelfHosted #SmartHomeHub #NoRaspberryPi #HomeAutomation #Zigbee #ZWave #Matter #Thread #AmazonAlexa #GoogleHome #AppleHomeKit #SmartHomeTech #TechReview #HomeyPro
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I'm fully committed to home assistant for myself because I like tinkering and love open source. That said, I'm so happy that Homey exists, because choice is great, and any platform that is fully local and not controlled by big tech is a huge upgrade for anyone. No tribalism here!
The effort that goes into creating these youTube videos must be huge. Content aside, the graphical tricks and storyline are amazing.
Homey is 80% owned by LG Electronics... I personally prefer open source, but for the less tech savvy and user friendly, this is ideal.
I will always prefer Home Assistant because it is an open-source project and isn't tied to a company that will jack up prices in a year or two once it has established a strong foothold in the market.
I dont know whats more impressive, your editing skills or smarthome skills
Happy Saturday everyone, hope you enjoyed a bit of Frank Sinatra! If you did, hit that subscribe button! 🛒 GET HOMEY PRO SELF-HOSTED BELOW /en-us/homey-self-hosted-server/
we got competition to Home Assistant before GTA 6
It looks great and simple but being balls deep in HA I can’t see me loosing that flexibility
Home assistant has never cost me a penny in the last 4 years. Like Homey a subscription is optional and actually not even needed with simple workarounds. Homey sounds great and I'll give it a go, but the constant implications that HA needs a Pi are irritating.
£6.50 a month or £65.00 one a year for Nabu Casa is a good price considering the software is updated every month and it gives remote access, encrypted backup to the cloud as well as other useful stuff.
YAML? Where we’re going, we don’t need bespoke configuration.yaml files. - Doc Brown
I never heard someone say "apple mac" like Paul does. Makes me chuckle somehow 😆
Tailscale I imagine would enable the "cloud" service operations you are looking for...
I always get a few chuckles out of my kids with your animations.😂
I am SOOO glad you published this video. Moving into a new house soon and was going to try to set home assistant but it seemed so dam complicated. Now I can just use this thing instead!! Also I really miss just one time payments. I hate having a million subscriptions to everything so excited!
I'll stick to home assistant to tinker with it.
Wow. This looks amazing. Been watching the channel for years and seeing the growth of the Home Assistant household. After decades with Alexa et al, lately I've been finally on the verge of biting the bullet with an HA system after years of procrastination, spent deciding on the best platform to use; and I have no great fear of Bespoke YAML Files🧔♀, as an IT nerd. But this Homey system – and hub! – looks to be the absolute best way to go, seeing as I am already deeply invested in a household of Apple tech and have server space to spare. Just wondering if there's a natural language voice assistant like in HA that could be used with Homey. That would definitely be a clincher. Though I'll probably get Homey anyway.
I’d love to see you do a video showing your experience editing home assistant/homey with Claude code via an MCP server. It’ll blow your mind if you haven’t messed around with it yet.
I'm all in on Home Assistant (thanks partly to you), but I'm glad to see more "local only" options and hope they keep going. Also I don't know why but I chuckle every time you say "Apple Mac".
I’ve been running Homey SHS on a Mac Mini M2 since it came out, with a Homey Bridge doing Zigbee/ZWave. I have about 200 devices connected, including Bezo-speakers. It’s been WAAY more stable than HomeAssistant ever was, and does everything I need. The Mac uses about the same power as a Pi5, and is way more stable and fast. The Mac does other stuff too including TimeMachine backups, content caching for the iDevices, runs Emby server, etc.