Tech
5 smart home brands to avoid if you use Home Assistant
You love Home Assistant, and so do we, but not everyone is as excited about an open smart home platform as the rest of us. Some brands have gone out of their way to break Home Assistant integrations, while others do things in a way that feels antithetical to the open-source smart home concept.
So here are some examples of brands that you’ll want to avoid (or replace) if you’re going all-in on Home Assistant.
Ring
We have a whole guide about adding a Ring doorbell to Home Assistant. Actually syncing your Ring camera with Home Assistant is relatively easy, thanks to the main Ring integration, but you will need to set up your camera using Amazon’s official app and an account first.
With your camera functioning, you can log in via Home Assistant to add it to your smart home. Alternatively, you can use the ring-mqtt add-on to save videos locally, but even if you go this route, your Ring camera’s streams will still be dependent on Ring’s cloud servers, and 24/7 live streaming is not supported.
This means that Ring cameras won’t be able to integrate with network video recorder (NVR) local storage solutions like Frigate, and it means you’re reliant on the cloud. To remove a layer of risk from your smart home setup, particularly when it comes to an important facet like home security, ditch Ring for a local video doorbell instead.
Chamberlain/Liftmaster/Merlin
You might want to avoid Chamberlain and its associated brands if you’re shopping for a new garage door opener that you want to integrate into Home Assistant. The company uses a proprietary smart home system known as MyQ, and even though the Home Assistant community developed a means of controlling these devices using a MyQ integration, Chamberlain made moves to specifically block it.
The good news is that there are workarounds using devices like the ratdgo32 and OpenGarage, which add Home Assistant support via microcontrollers. These cost extra (as does Chamberlain’s smart system), and because they’re third-party, there’s an element of risk in terms of compatibility.
I installed a ratdgo32 on my Merlin garage door not long ago, and I’ve not been able to get it to work consistently (though I’m determined not to give up). In my case, I had no alternatives, so I rolled the dice. This isn’t a knock against these workarounds, but Chamberlain’s decision to reduce functionality by crippling the MyQ integration is reason to avoid the company where possible.
Eufy
While Eufy makes some solid hardware, notably cameras with excellent image quality, integration with Home Assistant can be hit and miss. The Eufy Security add-on is still in alpha, requires that you “set Streaming Quality to LOW and Streaming Codec to LOW in all possible places,” and not all devices are actually supported.
While some users report that their Eufy cameras work well, even with NVR solutions like Frigate, other user reports are not so rosy. In addition, the company has a spotty history. In 2023, it was revealed that Eufy lied about security vulnerabilities in its “no clouds or costs” cameras that were supposed to keep camera feeds offline and encrypted.
While you might get lucky and have no issues with your Eufy camera, the questionable support and privacy concerns are enough to put me off. If you have a Eufy camera, you may be able to flash open-source Thingino firmware on it if you’re lucky enough to have a supported model.
Wyze
Wyze is another brand that you might want to stay away from when it comes to cameras and doorbells. The company has no integration with Home Assistant, and though there was once firmware available for some models that enabled local camera feeds over RTSP (which worked locally with Home Assistant), the company has since abandoned support.
The best you can hope for with a Wyze camera is that the Thingino project has some open-source firmware you can flash. Doing this will void any warranty you have left, which is fine if you’ve got an old camera and you’d like to get some use out of it, but it makes little sense if you’re actively making a new purchase.
Arlo
Another brand that is mostly known for its cameras and doorbells, Arlo gear is notoriously difficult to integrate with Home Assistant. Given Arlo’s dependence on the cloud and use of short-lived API tokens that make even integrating the camera difficult in the first place, you’re probably better off picking another brand entirely.
One Reddit user put in the hard yards creating some useful automations for anyone who has invested heavily in Arlo equipment. There’s also the hass-aarlo custom integration that is available via the Home Assistant Community Store, but as the author notes the integration was written by reverse engineering Arlo’s APIs, and often breaks since Arlo likes to change things.
Research before you buy
While these are the companies that we’d avoid at the time of writing, there’s always a chance that things will change in the future. Though shoddy Home Assistant integration can sometimes be intentional on the part of the manufacturer (particularly when they have a cloud subscription they’d love to sell you), new products arrive all the time, and sometimes that brings positive change.
Always check the state of Home Assistant support before you buy anything for your smart home. You can do this by looking up official integrations on the Home Assistant website, by searching forums like Home Assistant Community and r/HomeAssistant, and consulting resources like Internet of Trash.
