Founders and CEOs on Reddit

Paulus Schoutsen

Founder of Home Assistant and Nabu Casa

How we know it's theirs

"Founder of Home Assistant" flair from r/homeassistant's moderators

We retrieved 6 posts and 24 comments from u/balloob, dated 2013 to 2026, most often in r/homeassistant, r/pics and r/worldnews.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/programming

On “Python home automation”

Could you help us understand why this over something like http://www.openhab.org/ ?

u/balloob replied

Creator here. How it compares to openHAB? The projects have similar goals. OpenHAB is more mature, has more functionality and has a community. When I started this project I never intended to challenge openHAB. Home Assistant started out as a…

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Creator here.

How it compares to openHAB? The projects have similar goals. OpenHAB is more mature, has more functionality and has a community. When I started this project I never intended to challenge openHAB. Home Assistant started out as a simple script to turn on the lights when it got dark. Most commits to Home Assistant have been pushed by me wanting to learn more about Python, Polymer or me acquiring new devices that I wanted to be integrated.

More moments

A redditor posted in r/homeassistant

Voice assistants: Assist vs Alexa/Google

I still see a LOT of people still using Alexa, Google, or even Siri for voice assistants. I'm curious, what are the barriers stopping people from using HA's own Assist?

u/balloob replied

I (the founder of Home Assistant) would say that Assist is not yet ready yet to replace Alexa/Google. There are still a couple of things we need to solve before we hit that bar. Some of which we discussed at…

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It is our aim that by the end of 2024 it will be a no-brainer to pick Assist. You can pick up an ESP32-S3-Box-3 (if you find them in stock…) to follow along for the ride of constant improvements.

There are some really exciting updates coming next month which will bring us a big leap forward (both Home Assistant and ESPHome release).

The year 2023 was our Year of the Voice and we build the foundation to create the best privacy-respecting voice assistant. Now we're building and iterating to polish it up 👍

And to be perfectly clear: Assist is usable today and in many use cases it is great, if not better. However, to replace Alexa/Google, it needs to meet the expectations that every family member has from interacting with Google/Alexa devices (reliable voice pickup with background music, features like timers) and we're not there yet. However, as the 2nd most active open source project in the world, it's not a question of "if" but a question of "when"! 😁

A redditor wrote in r/homeassistant

On “Why is everyone german?”

Development of HA began in the Netherlands and still has a strong community of users based there

u/balloob replied

Small correction. I am Dutch, but I started Home Assistant while living in San Diego, California :-)

A redditor posted in r/homeautomation

eWeLink official Home Assistant add-on released.

You can easily manage eWeLink Support devices on Home Assistant Dashboard. Also, we designed a brand new WebUI, allowing you to view the temperature, humidity, power data, and configure features such as firmware upgrade, power-on state, inching (auto-off), interlock, and so on…

u/balloob replied

Founder of Home Assistant here. This add-on is a big hack and I would not recommend using it. Home Assistant does not have an API to provide entities in Home Assistant. We don't have this because we don't want vendors…

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Founder of Home Assistant here.

This add-on is a big hack and I would not recommend using it.

Home Assistant does not have an API to provide entities in Home Assistant. We don't have this because we don't want vendors to implement a proprietary Home Assistant API.

Our goal is an open home without vendor lock-in, we don't want to be part of this problem. We want vendors to create an open API that can be added to Home Assistant and other home automation projects alike.

Some internals of Home Assistant are accessible via the API and are being misused by this add-on. It will not be a good experience.

/u/ewelinkapp, please reach out to me and let's set up a call and I can help give some pointers on where to start building an official integration.

A redditor posted in r/homeassistant

People talk a lot about "wife approval factor" but legitimately, how can we make smarthomes more accessible and what can we do to give our significant others more control?

My wife likes a lot of the features of our smart home so "wife approval factor" hadn't really been an issue until recently, when we were discussing getting smart locks on the doors. My wife has been in some extremely abusive relationships in the past, and the idea that the locks…

u/balloob replied

With Home Assistant we use the term Home Approval Factor. It captures everyone in the house including spouse, kids, visitors, pets, etc. I wrote about it in the official newsletter: https://building.open-home.io/open-home-approval-factor/#home-approval-factor