Al and I have been speaking on the podcast concerning the House Assistant house automation hub software program. Particularly, about how devilishly effectively 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 individual 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 obtainable to assist information you in the proper course, and that’s all a hacker actually wants. As proof for why you would possibly care, take the RTL-HAOS mission that we lined this week, which provides practically arbitrary software-defined radio performance to your setup.
And distinction this with many industrial techniques which are laborious to hack on as a result of they’re as a substitute targeted 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 targeted on making all the pieces that’s in-scope straightforward that they spend no thought on growth, or worse they actively forestall it.
After all, 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 probably the most primary circumstances is a nightmare just because the designer needed to accommodate all the pieces. Someway, House Assistant has managed to stroll the advantageous line within the center, the place it’s straightforward sufficient to make use of that you simply don’t need to be a wizard, however which you can make it do what you need if you’re, and therefore it received spontaneous hat-tips from each Al and myself. Meals for thought should you’re engaged on a posh system that’s aimed on the DIY / hacker crowd.
