The popular free and open source home automation platform, Home Assistant, has announced a move to the Open Home Foundation. Newly founded specifically for the purpose of hosting various open source smart home projects, the Open Home Foundation has been established as a “bulwark against surveillance… and open source projects becoming abandonware.”
Home Assistant is probably then most well-known of the 240+ projects joining the Open Home Foundation, and in doing so the foundation aims to ensure its long-term survival.
Connectivity Standards AllianceHow will these changes guide the future development of Home Assistant, and how will this impact its involvement with Matter?
Benefits that the Open Home Foundation brings to Home Assistant
Initially conceived as an enthusiast-oriented platform, Home Assistant is seen as having a steep learning curve for beginners. By bringing the Open Home Foundation’s aims of standardization to Home Assistant, its creators and maintainers hope to extend its reach beyond the enthusiast community.
The Open Home Foundation is a non-profit that aims to ensure homeowners have “privacy, choice, and sustainability” in their smart home tech. Its founders have identified that “supporting open source projects, and open connectivity and communication standards” is the most direct way to achieve this.
For Home Assistant, it means joining with other projects such as Music Assistant and ESPHome. Significantly, the Open Home Foundation has confirmed that Home Assistant will remain open source.
Sustainability advantages
The Open Home Foundation’s aims to underpin sustainability as one of its core philosophies. Similarly, the Connectivity Standards Alliance sees Matter as a platform that can reduce abandoned hardware and landfill by ensuring compatibility across generations.
We’ve all seen smart home devices that have been dropped from manufacturer support, or by an industry that has moved on. This has an environmental impact when the devices are thrown away. So, the Open Home Foundation’s recognition of this is welcome. It goes further, too – smart homes of the future need to use less energy and be more efficient, and that is baked into Home Assistant.
This focus on sustainability also means the Open Home Foundation is committed to ensuring the development community works towards environment responsibility, using hardware and software than encourage a minimal environmental footprint.
Privacy, choice, and the future of smart homes
Matter is the most secure smart home platform yet, configured so that Wi-Fi credentials don’t need to be shared with every device. User security and privacy are major concerns in the age of hackers and smart homes, with obvious risks from unsecured smart locks and smart plugs. Further security and privacy measures are in use within the wider Home Assistant environment, however.
With this announcement, the Open Home Foundation has stated its dedication to user privacy, promising transparency over the use of cloud services. Users will full control over their data, and the adoption of Home Assistant into the Open Home Foundation will support customization and extended functionality as the smart home platform develops.
