The Vision

Most "smart homes" are just remote-controlled homes. You still have to pull out your phone to turn on the lights or adjust the thermostat. I wanted a home that thinks — one that understands context and anticipates my needs.

The Stack

My setup is entirely self-hosted (because privacy matters):

• Home Assistant: The brain. Open-source, runs on a Raspberry Pi 5.
• n8n: The nervous system. Handles complex workflow automation.
• AWS Bedrock (Claude): The intelligence. Provides natural language understanding for voice commands and status summaries.

The Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│  Voice Command  │
│  (via Alexa)    │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│  Home Assistant │◄──────┐
│  (Core Hub)     │       │
└────────┬────────┘       │
         │                │
         ▼                │
┌─────────────────┐       │
│     n8n         │       │
│  (Orchestrator) │───────┤
└────────┬────────┘       │
         │                │
         ▼                │
┌─────────────────┐       │
│  AWS Bedrock    │       │
│  (Claude 3)     │───────┘
└─────────────────┘

Key Features

1. Natural Language Home Summaries

Instead of opening 5 different apps, I ask: "How's the house?"

Claude processes sensor data and responds: "All doors are locked. It's 72°F inside, 45°F outside. The garage door was left open 2 hours ago — I've closed it for you."

2. Presence-Aware Automation

Using a combination of:

• Unifi cameras with person detection
• Phone geofencing
• Bluetooth beacons

The house knows who's home and adjusts accordingly. Lights follow me, the thermostat optimizes for occupied rooms, and security mode activates when everyone leaves.

3. Predictive Maintenance

n8n workflows monitor device health. When my water heater's efficiency dropped, I got a notification before it failed.

The Implementation

Secure Remote Access

I used a Cloudflare Tunnel to expose Home Assistant securely — no port forwarding, no dynamic DNS headaches.

# cloudflared config.yml
tunnel: home-assistant
credentials-file: /etc/cloudflared/creds.json
ingress:
    - hostname: home.mydomain.com
      service: http://localhost:8123
    - service: http_status:404

n8n Workflow Example

Here's a simplified version of my "Morning Routine" workflow:

1. Trigger: Alarm goes off (via Home Assistant webhook)
2. Action: Gradually increase bedroom lights over 10 minutes
3. Action: Start coffee maker
4. Action: Query weather API
5. Action: Send summary to my phone via Pushover

Lessons Learned

1. Start simple: Don't automate everything at once. Start with lights, then expand.
2. Always have manual overrides: No one wants to be locked out by a misbehaving script.
3. Monitor your monitors: Use healthchecks.io to ensure your automation hub is actually running.
4. Privacy-first: Keep it local when possible. Your home data shouldn't live on someone else's server.

What's Next?

I'm currently experimenting with:

• Local wake word detection using Whisper
• Visual AI for camera-based automations (is the stove on?)
• Energy optimization using historical data and ML predictions

---

Want to build something similar? Check out the Home Assistant docs and the n8n community.