Allow Myself to Introduce... Myself to Home Assistant
After deciding to leave SmartThings, I decided to first try out HomeAssistant (henceforth to be known as HA). HA is an open source project that has the reputation of being compatible with hundreds (if not thousands) of devices and eco-systems with a large and powerful set of plugins. It sounds great, but it also has the reputation of being difficult to configure due to its reliance on text based yaml files. You also have to provide the hardware for it to run on which means that you need to know something about "computers" before getting started. Undeterred by what seemed to be minor technical hurdles, I dived right in.