Works with House Assistant turns into a part of the Open House Basis

Artwork by Clelia Rella

After two profitable years of Works with Home Assistant, we’re persevering with our work to enhance this program. With this in thoughts, this system will transfer to the non-profit group that owns House Assistant, the Open Home Foundation, which is able to guarantee it’s at all times aligned with the values of the Open Home.

Learn on to see how we’re making a number of small however vital adjustments so as to add extra readability to this system, and finally working to construct a greater, bigger {hardware} ecosystem of good house gadgets.

Table of Contents

What’s Works with House Assistant

When you want to add something to your smart home the choices can be daunting; we want stable, supported devices that are built on standards that last. We understood how hard it could be to navigate all this and set up Works with Home Assistant in 2022, clearly indicating to users which brands provided the best smart home experiences and will continue to do so into the future. While also encouraging brands to step up their openness, compatibility, and long-term support.

This program has been quite successful and now includes seven companies, including Leviton, Third Reality, Ultraloq, Jasco, Heltun, HomeSeer, and HomeWizard. Our community regularly recommends the brands in this program, not only because they carry the “Works with” logo but because they just work. This seamless operation is because Nabu Casa tests devices and works with the brand to ensure their software meets our requirements to provide what we consider to be the best Home Assistant experience. They also guarantee when joining that they will address issues and maintain support with Home Assistant over time.

We have had lots of positive feedback from the brands in the program. First off, if you’re already doing things right, i.e. focusing on local control, supporting users, and keeping software compatible, it’s relatively easy to join. It is also significantly more affordable compared to other partner programs. We want to connect our users to good hardware and help reward the brands that make the right decisions: win-win.

Open Home Foundation steps in

This year we announced the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit group that now owns and governs the House Assistant challenge. It makes logical sense that Works with House Assistant now sits alongside its guardian group, however there are different key advantages. Particularly, it’s now clear that this program isn’t a business endeavor; it’s solely right here to encourage a better-supported {hardware} ecosystem for House Assistant.

Nabu Casa, the business companion of the Open House Basis, beforehand efficiently administered this system. By inserting this system beneath the muse, it supplies one other layer to make sure this system stays targeted on its mission.

The replace

While we’re making this shift from Nabu Casa to the Open Home Foundation, we’re also taking the opportunity to do some housekeeping, improving the program on several fronts.

From now on the program will be certifying individual devices instead of whole brands. Previously, an integration was approved for Works with Home Assistant, and all devices that could work with the integration could fall under the program. By making testing and certification device-specific, it becomes much clearer to users which devices they can purchase with confidence. We will soon start listing devices that have been certified specifically.

No brands have used the Cloud badge before, so no one is affected by its removal.

The cloud badge has been discontinued and this is due to our belief, and observation, that all cloud-based products are always doomed to stop working, some ahead of others. Contemplating the cases over the past year of cloud-based gadgets changing into ineffective after the cloud service they relied on was shut down, and the lengths wanted to maintain them considerably purposeful, we not imagine the Works with House Assistant promise will be upheld by cloud-based gadgets.