HOME ASSISTANT / LOCAL CONTROL

Your home.
Your rules.

Bring your devices together with Home Assistant. Pick local-control gear, build one useful automation, then keep going.

Let’s build something

START HERE / MAKE SOMETHING USEFUL

A host. A radio. Your next project.

BUILD YOUR OWN SENSOR

Give an ESP32 temperature, motion and light.

Start on a breadboard, flash ESPHome and turn your first readings into a useful automation.

Make your first sensor

PRESS PLAY ON YOUR SCENES

Give your favourite automations a real button.

Pick a tiny Zigbee button or a wall remote, then build an all-off shortcut, a room scene and movie mode.

Choose your scene buttons

YOUR CONTROLS. ONE TAP.

Give your dashboard a place on the wall.

Choose a tablet and mount, build a screen you can read at a glance, and wake it when you walk up.

Build your wall panel

ONE MESH. YOUR FIRST DEVICE.

Make your first Matter-over-Thread device useful.

Choose a border-router route that fits your phone, share the credentials and build a presence lamp or room-temperature check.

Start your Thread setup

BRING BLUETOOTH CLOSER

Give SwitchBot and BLE sensors a nearby radio.

Flash a small ESP32 proxy, put it near your Bluetooth gear and leave Home Assistant where it is. Choose Ethernet or a simple USB-powered Wi-Fi board.

Build your Bluetooth proxy

WARM ROOM. LOCAL CONTROL.

Pick a thermostat that listens locally.

Choose Z-Wave, Matter or HomeKit Device, check the wires, then build an away setback and room-aware comfort routine.

Choose your thermostat

GIVE THEM A GOOD PROJECT

Gifts for the person who loves a useful automation.

Find a Zigbee-radio surprise, tools for the lab, printer accessories or off-grid radio projects. Choose a gift around what they already enjoy building.

Find their gift

YOUR FIRST BUILD

Home Assistant starter kit: your first 10 devices (and the automations to build)

A host, a radio and eight sensors. Build motion lighting, leak alerts, door reminders and a temperature nudge—with a parts list you can follow.

Build your starter kit

01 / CONNECT YOUR DEVICES

Best Zigbee/Thread coordinator for Home Assistant

Choose direct USB or Ethernet/PoE placement, then match the radio to Zigbee or Thread.

USB ZIGBEE PICKSONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 (Dongle-PMG24)

Start here for a direct USB Zigbee setup.

We earn a commission if you buy through our links — it doesn’t change our picks. How we make money → As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Check price on Amazon Read the coordinator guide

02 / CHOOSE YOUR HOST

Find a mini PC for your Home Assistant project.

Pick the memory, storage and network connections you need. Our mini-PC guide compares the configurations and upgrade paths.

RAMSTORAGENETWORKING

Explore the mini-PC guide

MAKE YOUR WATTS USEFUL

Find your local-control energy plug.

Choose Tapo for Matter, Shelly for tinkering or THIRDREALITY for Zigbee. Build a washer notification and hunt standby-power gremlins.

Pick your smart plug

CATCH THE DRIP

Build your leak-to-shutoff setup.

Meet your valve, choose the sensors and connect a local main-water shutoff. Finish with a damp-towel test.

Plan your leak protection

FOLLOW THE WATTS

Bring whole-home energy into Home Assistant.

Choose local CT monitoring, track your baseline and find the circuits doing the heavy lifting.

Build your energy dashboard

YOUR SENSORS. YOUR ALARM.

Build your DIY alarm with Alarmo.

Give your contacts and motion sensors Away, Home and Night modes, then add a siren, phone alerts and an optional keypad.

Build your alarm

STILL HERE. LIGHTS STILL ON.

Pick a presence sensor for Home Assistant.

Choose Zigbee, battery power or mapped room zones, then build desk lighting, fan control and a careful away shutoff.

Find your presence sensor

YOUR VIDEO. YOUR RECORDER.

Pick a PoE camera for Frigate.

Choose your lens and night lighting, connect one Ethernet cable and give Frigate separate detect and recording streams.

Build your local camera setup

POWER THE CAMERA CREW

Give your Frigate cameras the right PoE switch.

Count camera ports, leave room in the power budget and choose VLAN controls when you want a separate camera network.

Pick your camera switch

PUT YOUR DETECTOR TO WORK

Choose Coral, Hailo—or your Intel graphics.

Match Frigate detection to your host. Try OpenVINO first on an Intel mini PC, or choose Hailo for a Pi and USB Coral for a retrofit.

Find your Frigate detector

GIVE YOUR SWITCHES A RADIO

Start your Z-Wave network with Connect ZWA-2.

Choose a radio, add your first contact sensor and give wall buttons useful jobs—with SmartStart setup and three lighting recipes.

Build your Z-Wave setup

SEE WHO’S THERE / KEEP IT LOCAL

Give your doorbell local video and useful alerts.

Choose Reolink PoE or wired Wi-Fi, send a snapshot to your phone and let your lights announce a visitor.

Build your local video doorbell

NO CLOUD KEY REQUIRED

Bring your garage door into Home Assistant.

Match Security+ or dry-contact control, add real door status and build alerts plus confirmed arrival opening.

Choose local garage control

PUT YOUR DOOR ON LOCAL CONTROL

Choose a smart lock that works with Home Assistant.

Pick Z-Wave or a Matter bridge, measure your door and build auto-lock, bedtime alerts and guest-code expiry.

Find your local-control lock

LIGHTS THAT GET THE HINT

Build your local smart lighting.

Choose Hue, Caséta, Zigbee bulbs or Z-Wave switches, then build sunset, pathway and movie scenes.

Make your lights useful

DAYLIGHT / ON YOUR TERMS

Give your blinds and curtains a little automation.

Match the wand, rod or track, then build sunrise opening, hot-room shading and movie mode with your lights.

Choose your window retrofit

FRESH AIR / USEFUL DATA

Give your air a Home Assistant dashboard.

Choose CO₂, particles or radon, match the local or cloud route, and build fresh-air nudges plus a weekly report.

Choose your air-quality monitor

FIND THE COLD ROOM

Give every room a temperature graph.

Choose display or tiny sensors, compare rooms and build cold-room alerts, humidity fan control and a weekly report card.

Build your room-sensor setup

OLD BUTTON / NEW TRICK

Give a dumb button a Bluetooth finger.

Set up SwitchBot Bot locally, add a proxy for reach, and build coffee, PC and older-AC controls without a cloud hub.

Make your first Bot press

A COPY OUTSIDE THE BOX

Give your backups an unplugged escape route.

Choose a portable SSD, save the encryption key and practise a restore before you need it.

Build a backup rotation

LOCAL CLEANING

Let the robot clean. Know who sends the command.

Choose Matter for local basics, and keep cloud maps and room tools in their own lane.

Choose your vacuum route

REACH THE BOOT SCREEN

Give your host a recovery console.

Compare Comet, JetKVM and PiKVM for the screen, keyboard, installer and power-button path.

Choose a remote KVM

OLD REMOTE / NEW SHORTCUT

Put your AC, TV and fan on the dashboard.

Choose Mini for IR or Pro for compatible RF, learn the buttons and build three useful recipes.

Teach your remote new tricks

ONE CABLE TO THE WALL

Power your dashboard with PoE.

Choose a USB-C adapter, match the charging profile and keep the wall panel tidy.

Plan your tablet power

RAIN GETS A VOTE

Your own local weather.

OUTDOOR DATA / USEFUL ACTIONS

Let rain, wind and soil readings earn their keep.

Choose an Ecowitt kit, send readings locally and build watering, frost and wind alerts.

Build your weather station

LESS UNPLUGGING / MORE TWINKLING

Give the lights an evening routine.

HOLIDAY LIGHTS / LOCAL CONTROL

Choose an outdoor plug that works locally.

Pick two-outlet Matter control or Z-Wave watt alerts, then build sunset and vacation routines.

Make the lights smarter

ONE CABLE / BETTER-PLACED WI-FI

Build the wireless side of your lab.

Choosing the main router too? Compare Wi-Fi 7 routers by wired ports and local management before planning the IoT network.

OMADA / UNIFI

Choose the AP and its controller together.

Compare Wi-Fi bands, PoE budgets and local management, then plan IoT SSIDs without breaking discovery.

Choose a PoE access point

OLD STEREO / NEW TRICKS

Put your music on the dashboard.

WIIM / LOCAL PLAYBACK CONTROLS

Keep the speakers. Add the smart part.

Choose Mini, Pro or Pro Plus by the connections you need, then make a favourite preset play from Home Assistant.

Choose your WiiM streamer

STOP THE SENSOR GHOSTING

Give Zigbee a better path.

ROUTERS / CHANNELS / PLACEMENT

Make the next sensor report count.

Move the coordinator, add powered relay points and read the map before changing channels.

Fix a weak Zigbee mesh

PIXELS / PRESETS / LOCAL CONTROL

Give the holidays a colour palette.

WLED / HOLIDAY LIGHTS

Make the lights do more than turn on.

Pick an ESP32 controller, pair a 5 V pixel strip and let a saved preset take over at sunset.

Build your holiday scene

LOCAL REMOTES / MOVIE NIGHT

Give the popcorn a proper button.

GOOGLE TV / ROKU

Dim the lights. Open the app.

Choose a streaming player by its local HA controls, then put the lights and doorbell to work.

Build your movie-night button

PLUG / RELAY / POWER METER

Give an old appliance one new trick.

SHELLY / LOCAL RETROFITS

Pick the box for the job.

Choose outlet control, a dry contact or power readings, then make the washer announce its finish.

Plan your Shelly retrofit

START HERE / PICK YOUR PI PARTS

Build the cart before the box.

PI 5 / KIT OR INDIVIDUAL PARTS

Choose a Pi 5 kit that fits Home Assistant.

Pick the board, proper power, cooling and storage. Two shopping lists keep the official stack and closed-case options straight.

Choose your Pi 5 parts

START HERE / RASPBERRY PI 5

Small board. Real SSD.

PI 5 / M.2 HAT+ / NVMe

Build a Pi 5 Home Assistant box.

The full parts list, two builds and the install that boots from NVMe instead of an SD card.

Build the Pi 5 hub

START HERE / INSTALL

Two installs and one shortcut.

MINI PC / PROXMOX / GREEN

Get Home Assistant OS running.

Install it straight onto a mini PC or as a Proxmox VM, and pass the Zigbee stick through.

Install Home Assistant OS

433 MHz / RADIO TINKERING

Radio waves to dashboard cards.

RTL_433 / USB SDR

Catch the porch thermometer.

Pick a USB SDR, decode supported 433 MHz sensors with rtl_433 and add a frost warning.

Tune in your sensors

ZIGBEE / POE COORDINATOR

Cut the USB leash.

SLZB-06 / ZIGBEE2MQTT

Put the radio in the middle of the house.

Power a network coordinator over PoE, point Zigbee2MQTT at it and get an alert if it drops.

Set up a PoE coordinator

Z-WAVE / TROUBLESHOOTING

Rescue the stranded sensor.

REPEATER / PLUG / ADAPTER

Fix the free stuff first.

Extension cable, rebuild routes, then the right box for the gap, with a dead-node alert.

Fix your Z-Wave mesh

MINI PC / MORE PORTS

More ports. Fewer cable gymnastics.

POWERED USB 3.0 HUBS

Give the drives a home.

Pick a powered hub for drives and cables, and keep the Zigbee stick on its own USB 2.0 spot.

Choose a powered hub

DESK / TV CORNER

One cord. Six little light switches.

KASA HS300 / EVE ENERGY STRIP

Switch every outlet on its own.

Pick a strip by outlet count, then let the monitor's power reading switch the speakers and lights off.

Choose your smart strip

EXISTING ALARMS / USEFUL EXTRAS

Let an alarm bring up the lights.

ZEN55 / SMOKE AND CO REPORTS

Keep the detectors. Add the message.

Match a wired analog interconnect, add Z-Wave and test the light-and-phone response.

Plan your alarm bridge

LOCAL STATUS / FEWER SURPRISES

Give the printer a useful voice.

BROTHER / TONER AND DRUM

Know when the next cartridge is due.

Choose the paper-handling features you need, add SNMP monitoring and build one tidy reminder.

Add local printer status

LOCAL VOICE / ONE USEFUL COMMAND

Give Assist somewhere to listen.

VOICE / YOUR CHOICE OF PIPELINE

Choose a microphone, speaker and local speech route.

Compare M5Stack voice projects and a preloaded THIRDREALITY endpoint, then get one named light responding.

Build your first local voice endpoint

NEXT ON THE WORKBENCH

Coming next.

More projects. More local control.

COMING NEXT
Home Assistant OS on a mini PC
Give your local-control project a host of its own.

ACROSS THE LAB / OFF-GRID RADIO

Bring Meshtastic telemetry into Home Assistant →

Connect your own radio nodes to a local MQTT broker for battery graphs and useful alerts, with the privacy and radio-traffic settings in the right places.

Your home.Your rules.