Al and I have been speaking on the podcast concerning the House Assistant residence automation hub software program. Particularly, about how devilishly nicely designed it’s for extensibility. It’s designed to be added on to, and that makes the entire distinction.
That doesn’t imply that it’s trivial so as to add your personal wacky management or sensor components to the system, however that it’s comparatively easy, and that it accommodates you. In case your use case isn’t already lined, there may be most likely good documentation out there to assist information you in the precise course, and that’s all a hacker actually wants. As proof for why you would possibly care, take the RTL-HAOS undertaking that we lined this week, which provides practically arbitrary software-defined radio performance to your setup.
And distinction this with many industrial methods which can be exhausting to hack on as a result of they’re as a substitute centered on ensuring that the least-common-denominator consumer is ready to get stuff working with out even studying a single web page of documentation. They’re so centered on making every thing that’s in-scope straightforward that they spend no thought on enlargement, or worse they actively stop it.
In fact, it’s not trivial to make a system that’s each extraordinarily versatile and comparatively straightforward to make use of. Everyone knows examples the place the configuration of even essentially the most fundamental circumstances is a nightmare just because the designer needed to accommodate every thing. In some way, House Assistant has managed to stroll the nice line within the center, the place it’s straightforward sufficient to make use of that you simply don’t should be a wizard, however you could make it do what you need if you’re, and therefore it bought spontaneous hat-tips from each Al and myself. Meals for thought for those who’re engaged on a fancy system that’s aimed on the DIY / hacker crowd.
