Open-source Philips Hue alternatives

Home Assistant is open-source home automation software built around local control and privacy. It runs on hardware you own, such as a Raspberry Pi or a small home server, and brings smart lights, sensors, switches, thermostats and other devices together in one place. The core is written in Python and released under the Apache-2.0 license.

The documentation is organized around automations and dashboards, voice control, grouping devices by area, tracking energy use and templating, with configuration through the interface or YAML files. The project lists more than 1,500 integrations, and it can be controlled through assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant. Companion hardware, including Home Assistant Green and the Voice Preview Edition, makes first-time setup simpler.

Home Assistant is a project of the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit that states the project cannot be sold or acquired. It suits tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts who want a home automation hub that does not depend on a single vendor's cloud, as well as people who want to unify devices from many brands under one dashboard.

WLED is firmware for ESP32 microcontrollers that drives addressable LEDs, from simple strips up to large 2D matrices and HUB75 panels. Once flashed to a board, the lights can be controlled over WiFi. It was originally created by Aircoookie and is now maintained by a community of contributors.

The firmware ships with more than 200 built-in effects, including classic animations, audio-reactive effects and 2D matrix effects, plus over 50 color palettes and a built-in custom palette editor. Segments let different parts of a setup run different effects at once, and up to 250 presets store colors, effects and segment layouts, with playlists for automatic cycling. A nightlight function and a per-output auto brightness limiter are included.

Hardware support covers all ESP32 variants (original, S2, S3 and C3) with up to 17 LED outputs, many addressable chip types such as WS2812B, WS2811, SK6812 and APA102, RGBW and RGB+CCT strips, and PWM outputs for analog LEDs. WLED is written in C++, licensed under EUPL-1.2, and runs on the device itself.

Zigbee2MQTT lets you use Zigbee devices without the manufacturer's bridge or gateway. It bridges events and allows you to control your devices through MQTT, so they can plug into whatever smart home infrastructure you already use. It is written in TypeScript and released under the GPL-3.0 license.

Because it speaks MQTT, it works with almost any home automation system. The README highlights integrations with Home Assistant (including an official add-on), Homey, Domoticz, Gladys Assistant and ioBroker. A Zigbee adapter connects to the host, and documentation guides installation and explains Zigbee terminology for newcomers.

Internally it is made up of modules developed in separate GitHub projects. The zigbee-herdsman module talks to the adapter, such as Texas Instruments hardware, and exposes an API, while zigbee-herdsman-converters maps individual device models to the Zigbee clusters they support. It runs on your own hardware, so there is no vendor cloud involved.

Home Assistant Operating System, formerly called HassOS, is a Linux distribution tuned for hosting Home Assistant and its apps. It is aimed at people who want a dedicated home automation appliance rather than installing Home Assistant on top of a general-purpose distribution.

It uses Docker as its container engine and by default deploys the Home Assistant Supervisor as a container, which in turn controls Home Assistant Core and its apps in separate containers. The system is built with Buildroot instead of being based on a distribution such as Ubuntu. It targets single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi and ODROID, and it also supports x86-64 systems with UEFI.

Listed features include a lightweight, memory-efficient design, minimized I/O, over-the-air updates, offline updates and a modular architecture. The project is written mostly in Python, licensed under Apache-2.0, and its supported hardware is defined in architecture decision records, with the official getting started guide covering installation.

Gladys Assistant is an open-source home assistant that puts privacy first: it runs on a machine in your home and keeps your smart home data local. It has been developed since 2015 and is written in JavaScript on Node.js. The code is released under the Apache-2.0 license.

It is aimed at home automation and IoT setups, where you connect devices and build automations around them from one place. A local instance can be started quickly with Docker or Docker Compose, and the project provides step-by-step installation guides for a mini-PC, a NAS, or a Raspberry Pi, which makes it practical to run on small, always-on hardware.

Gladys is developed by a community that welcomes code, documentation, translations, and feature ideas, and the repository includes guides for contributors. It suits people who want to control a smart home without sending data to a cloud service, and who are comfortable running a small server at home.

openHAB Core contains the core bundles of the openHAB runtime, an open-source platform for home automation and the Internet of Things. The README is explicit that Core is not a product by itself but a framework for building solutions on top of it. The repository is mainly an artifact repository of OSGi bundles that the main openHAB distribution picks up and that can be used within smart home products.

Building it uses Maven and a Java SE Development Kit 21. The README walks through checking out the source, setting Maven options, and running a clean install with the spotless formatter, with quicker variants that skip tests or checks for faster local builds. The code is Java and licensed under EPL-2.0.

People who want to run openHAB at home normally install the main distribution instead of building Core. The repository itself is aimed at developers and contributors, and it points to contribution guidelines. Topics mention home automation, the Internet of Things and Java.