La Open Home Foundation, a relatively new organization dedicated to fostering open source development in the smart home space, has recently established a collaboration with three prominent projects: HACS, microWakeWord and Music Assistant. This alliance aims to strengthen the open source ecosystem for Home Assistant and other smart home-related applications.
It is important to note that these projects will maintain their independence and will not be directly managed by the foundation. Instead, the partnership represents a mutual commitment to advancing smart home technology through open source collaboration. The Open Home Foundation considers that these projects are fundamental for the overall growth and development of the industry.
The foundation recently highlighted this collaboration in its newsletter, emphasizing the importance of open source solutions in contrast to proprietary models. This comes following LG's acquisition of Athom, the company behind Homey, which raised concerns about the future of open platforms in the smart home space.
Additionally, there were also other announcements from the Open Home Foundation, such as the latest Home Assistant update, version 2024.07, which introduces several new features, including improvements to voice assistants, script development, and over-the-air updates for ESPHome devices.
What is Open Home Foundation?
La Open Home Foundation is a relatively new organization that focuses on promoting and developing open source projects related to the smart home. In short, its goal is to create an ecosystem where anyone can contribute and benefit from solutions to automate and control their homes intelligently, without depending on large companies or proprietary platforms.
To do this, this organization focuses on:
- encourage collaboration- Unites developers, enthusiasts, and companies to work together on open source projects.
- Support key projects- Invest in projects like HACS, microWakeWord, and Music Assistant, which are essential to the Home Assistant community.
- Defend open source- Promotes the idea that smart home solutions should be accessible and modifiable by everyone, not just a few companies.
- Create awareness: informs users about the benefits of open source and the risks of proprietary solutions.
- Democratize home automation technology- Allows anyone, regardless of their technical knowledge, to personalize and improve their smart home.
- Guarantee independence- Avoids dependence on a single company or platform, which means greater flexibility and options for users.
- encourages innovation: Being an open ecosystem, it allows new ideas and solutions to emerge constantly.
- protect privacy– Open source allows users to understand how devices work and ensure their data is protected.
New projects
Between the new projects that OHF has adopted are:
HACS
HACS It's essentially the app store for Home Assistant. It allows users to easily discover and install a wide variety of plugins, from new features to aesthetic changes like custom themes and layouts.
Music Assistant
Music Assistant is a tool that gives you full control over your music. Whether you have a local collection or prefer streaming services, you can play any song on any device in your home without complications.
microWakeWord
microWakeWord It is a technology that allows small devices like the ESP32 to recognize voice commands without the need for an internet connection.. This means you can create local, personalized voice assistants for your home. It is compatible with platforms such as TensorFlow Lite and ESPHome, and devices such as the M5Stack Atom Echo.