How to: Smart Home Automation
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**Smart home** is a process that allows homeowners to control appliances, thermostats, lights, and other smart devices remotely using a smartphone or tablet through an internet connection.

Most **smart devices** have their own [Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLAN) with little to no internet access with broadcasts forwarding to LAN [Subnet aka Subnetwork](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/network-layer/what-is-a-subnet/) for discovery. Using software such as **Home Assistant, Homebridge, ESPHome, etc.** help simplify the process of controlling and automating all your smart devices.

[Matter](https://buildwithmatter.com/) is an open standard for smart home technology that lets your device work with any Matter-certified ecosystem using a single protocol. Matter comes from the [Connectivity Standards Alliance](https://csa-iot.org/), an organization of hundreds of companies(Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast, Zigbee Alliance, and Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) creating products for the smart home.

**Proprietary Smart Devices**

 * [Amazon Alexa](https://alexa.amazon.com/) is a smart virtual assistant software to manage Alexa-enabled devices, control music playback, view shopping lists on the go, keep track of upcoming reminders, check on active timers and much more. 

 * [Google Assistant](https://assistant.google.com/) is a smart virtual assistant software on mobile and home automation devices.

 * [Apple HomeKit](https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all/homekit) is a software framework that enables your app to coordinate and control home automation accessories from multiple vendors to present a coherent, user-focused interface. Using HomeKit, your app can: Discover HomeKit-compatible automation accessories and add them to a persistent, cross-device home configuration database.

 * [Samsung SmartThings](https://www.smartthings.com/) is a sofwtare framework that you can connect, monitor and control multiple smart home devices quicker and easier. Connect your Samsung smart TVs, smart appliances, smart speakers and brands like Ring, Nest and Philips Hue all from one app.

 * [Philips Hue](https://www.philips-hue.com) is  a smart lighting system. The smart lights, Hue Bridge, and smart controls will forever change the way you experience light.

 * [Sonos](https://www.sonos.com) is the wireless home sound system that fills as many rooms as you want with great-sounding music, movies, and TV. 
 
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[Home Assistant](https://www.home-assistant.io/) is an open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Home Assistant is powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts that runs great on Raspberry Pi. [$13 USD voice assistant remote for Home Assistant](https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/thirteen-usd-voice-remote/)

_Add-ons are additional applications and services, that can be run alongside
Home Assistant. The Home Assistant OS and Supervised installations types,
provide the Supervisor, which is capable of running and managing these add-ons._

**Home Assistant Official Add-ons**

_Addons created and maintained by the Home Assistant team._

* [DuckDNS](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/duckdns/DOCS.md) - This updates your Duck DNS IP address and generate SSL using Let's Encrypt.
* [Almond](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/almond/DOCS.md) - An Open, Privacy-Preserving Virtual Assistant.
* [HomeMatic](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/homematic/DOCS.md) - HomeMatic central based on OCCU.
* [Let's Encrypt](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/letsencrypt/DOCS.md) - Get a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt; an open and automated certificate authority (CA).
* [MariaDB](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/mariadb/DOCS.md) - An open source relational database (fork of MySQL).
* [File editor](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/configurator/DOCS.md) - Browser-based configuration file editor.
* [Mosquitto](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/mosquitto/DOCS.md) - Fast and reliable MQTT broker.
* [Terminal & SSH](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/ssh/DOCS.md) - Allows logging in remotely to using a web terminal or SSH client.
* [Samba](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/samba/DOCS.md) - Access your configuration files using Windows network shares.
* [NGINX SSL proxy](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/nginx_proxy/DOCS.md) - Reverse proxy with SSL termination.
* [deCONZ](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/blob/master/deconz/DOCS.md) - Control a ZigBee network using ConBee or RaspBee hardware by Dresden Elektronik.
* [TellStick](https://github.com/home-assistant/hassio-addons/