Home Assistant is one app that talks to the switches, sensors, inverter and cameras you already bought — on your own network, not on a server in another country.
That sentence is the product. The rest is packaging.
In South Africa the useful part is not the pretty dashboard. It is this: when fibre drops or the vendor app has a bad day, the automations still run if the box and the router still have power. Load shedding made that more than a hobbyist talking point.
You do not need Home Assistant on day one. You need it when the pile of apps becomes the problem.
What it is, without the forum argument
Home Assistant is open-source software. You run it in the house. Devices check in locally. You build dashboards and automations that you own.
It is not Alexa. It is not eWeLink. It is not a monthly subscription that dies if we stop selling a particular brand.
What people in the shop actually want from it:
- One place to see geyser, gate, lights, and “is the garage closed”
- Schedules that still fire when the internet is sulking
- A way to join Sonoff, Shelly, and later an inverter without four logins
- A tablet on the kitchen wall that the rest of the family will use
What they do not want, and should not be sold:
- A weekend lost to YAML
- A Raspberry Pi on a dying SD card
- Forty tiles on one screen that only the installer understands
When eWeLink is enough
Stay in the vendor app if:
- You have one or two devices
- The only job is “geyser off at 09:00”
- Nobody else in the house needs a dashboard
- You are still deciding whether this smart-home thing is real
The start-here path still stands: one circuit, then sensors, then a brain. Jumping to Home Assistant with zero devices is how people buy a Green and let it sit in a drawer.
Move to Home Assistant when any of these is true:
- You have more than two or three apps
- You care about the house during load shedding, not only when Wi‑Fi is perfect
- You want the gate, geyser and lights on one screen
- You have an inverter and you are tired of a separate solar app
- A family member who is not you has to live with this
What it costs in Rand
Hardware prices move. Check the Home Assistant shelf.
Typical September 2026 numbers:
| Piece | Ballpark | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Home Assistant Green | around R4 499 | Official box. Plug in power + ethernet. This is what we recommend for most homes. |
| Small UPS for router + Green | R800 – R2 000 | Without this, “local control” dies with Eskom. |
| USB Zigbee / Thread dongle | R400 – R900 | Only when you start adding Zigbee sensors. Not day one. |
| Kitchen tablet (optional) | whatever you already own | An old iPad is fine. A new panel is not required. |
Labour in Gauteng is quoted after photos of the network cupboard and a list of devices. A clean Green install with a handful of Sonoff/Shelly devices is a different job to “please also bring the Sunsynk, three cameras, and last year’s Tuya mess.”
Software itself is free. Nabu Casa cloud is optional if you want easy remote access without opening ports. Plenty of houses run without it and use a VPN instead. We will tell you which one fits after we see the network.
Green vs a Pi vs a mini PC
Full comparison: Green vs Pi vs mini PC.
Short version. The longer comparison is the next post in this cluster.
- Green — buy this if you want the house to work. Official hardware, eMMC storage, no SD card to corrupt. Boring on purpose.
- Raspberry Pi — fine if you already own one and you boot from an SSD. A Pi on a microSD in a SA house will fail. Not “might.” Will.
- Mini PC — when you also want camera detection, local voice, or other services on the same box. Overkill for a geyser and a gate.
If someone is trying to save R2 000 by building a Pi and they have never flashed an OS, sell them the Green. The “saving” comes back as a support call.
What we actually install
On a normal first job the list looks like this:
- Green on ethernet, next to the router, on a UPS
- Existing Sonoff / Shelly devices brought in so they are not cloud-only
- Geyser and gate as the first two dashboards tiles that matter — see the geyser post
- Two or three automations the family will notice (not twenty they will disable)
- A backup of the system before we leave
- A five-minute handover: here is the app, here is the user for your partner, here is what not to tap
We do not leave a dashboard that looks like an airport.
Load shedding, said plainly
Read: Does Home Assistant work during load shedding?
Home Assistant does not create electricity.
If the circuit is dead, the relay is dead. If the router is dead, you cannot open the app from the couch even if the Green is still up on a UPS.
What a local hub *does* do:
- Automations already loaded keep running if the hub and the devices still have power
- You are not waiting for a Chinese cloud to come back before the gate button works on the LAN
- You can tie “Eskom is about to go” to “switch the geyser off” once the inverter or a calendar feed is in the system
That last part is a later post. The first move is still: UPS on the router and the Green.
Privacy and “is this overkill”
Everything stays in the house unless you choose to expose it. That is the adult reason to use Home Assistant instead of stacking Tuya accounts.
It is overkill if you have one smart plug and a curiosity. It is not overkill if you already bought eight devices and you are the family IT desk.
DIY or pay us
DIY the Green if you are happy to:
- Plug it into ethernet
- Create an account
- Add devices from the UI
- Read an error without panic
Pay for an install if:
- The Wi‑Fi is a mess and the geyser cupboard is a dead zone
- You want the inverter in the same dashboard
- You have a mix of Tuya, Sonoff, Shelly and something that only works on Tuesdays
- You want it done on a weekday and handed over working
Gauteng on-site, national shipping for the box itself. Start from the about page with suburb + a photo of the router cupboard.
You do not have to be a millionaire for this. You do have to treat the hub like a small appliance that deserves a cable and a UPS, not like a toy.
FAQ
Is Home Assistant free? The software is free. The Green is not. Electricity for a small hub is negligible. Optional cloud or a better access point is extra.
Does it work with Sonoff and Shelly? Yes. That is most of what we join first. Vendor app to prove the device lives, then bring it into Home Assistant so the house is not stuck in eWeLink forever.
Will it work when the internet is down? Local automations and local dashboards will, if the hub, the Wi‑Fi, and the devices have power. Remote access from the office will not.
Do I need to know YAML? No. Not for a normal house. If your installer leads with YAML, ask them to show you the dashboard a teenager can use.
Can I start with the app and add Home Assistant later? Yes. That is the intended order. Get the geyser or the gate honest first.
Do you install outside Gauteng? We ship the hardware. Install labour is Gauteng unless a later package says that has changed. Your electrician can fit the line-side bits if you send us the device list.
