About Local Home Lab

Local Home Lab is a small, independent site focused on one thing: helping people run a smart home on Home Assistant that they actually own and control. No subscriptions to lose access to, no vendor cloud outage locking you out of your own lights.

What we cover

Our guides walk through installation, core concepts (like why "local-first" matters), device protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, Matter/Thread), practical automations, and the unglamorous-but-critical stuff like backups and recovery. We aim for guides that are useful whether you're setting up your first Raspberry Pi or refining a five-year-old install.

Our approach

• Plain language first. We explain acronyms before we use them.
• Vendor-neutral. We don't accept payment for product placement, and we're not chasing affiliate commissions on gadget lists.
• Practical over theoretical. Every guide is built around a real task you're trying to accomplish, not just a features list.
• Honest about tradeoffs. Local-first isn't always the easier path — we say so when it isn't.

Who's behind it

Local Home Lab is run by a small team of home-automation hobbyists who got tired of losing evenings to forum threads and outdated blog posts. We test the setups we write about on our own Home Assistant instances before publishing.

Get in touch

Spotted something outdated or incorrect? We want to know. Reach out via the contact details on our GitHub repository, and we'll review and correct guides as Home Assistant evolves.