homeassistant

I also have a VPN set up to my home network that I can connect to with my mobile devices. once connected I use the HA mobile app pathed to my local HA server IP. I don’t use HA cloud or any other cloud service. It works well for me, I obviously can’t get notification on the mobile when not connected but I have not had a need yet. If/When I'm do want notifications I would most likely explore, e-mail, e-mail to SMS, SMS API or something that won’t involve external servers. I would not want to send sensitive info via SMS but a shot alert that said there is something to look at like “HA Alert: Motion detected cam 1” or such would be fine.

Install the nginx proxy manager add-on, set up let's encrypt for certificates and DuckDNS for name resolution, forward a port from your router. No need for homekit or a full vpn.

Update: It works! I get all notifications from my sensors and it's working great. Thanks everyone!

For future reference, my setup:

HASS OS running on an SSD (Kingston A2000 250GB) connected to a RaspberryPi 4B 4GB

And an addendum: If anyone is having trouble migrating their Zigbee devices from Homebridge to Home Assistant, what helped me was unplugging all previous zigbee router devices before setting up the new Zigbee network, otherwise the coordinator wouldn't start or some weird issue would pop up during setup. After disconnecting the router devices I was able to start the coordinator, and add the routers again to the new network.

If you have a device that acts as a home hub (Apple TV or HomePod) and expose your devices to HomeKit it will work remotely just like any other HomeKit device.

I have a setup like this, and it has worked great so far. I have a home VPN but wanted to have Apple Home access as well for a simpler remote option, and some of my family prefer the Apple Home app. I use the HomeKit Bridge integration to expose various Home Assistant connected devices to Apple Home running on an Apple TV 4K. It has worked well with nearly every device I've set up, including lights and light switches, environmental sensors, SwitchBot bots and more. The syncing/updating is near instant for me.

The only trouble I've had so far have been with my thermostat, which initially always appeared as "on" in Apple Home, and a couple of breakages with updates. However the thermostat recently started to behave properly, and any update incompatibilities have always been quickly resolved.

Using the HomeKit Bridge also allows you to use Siri to interact with Home Assistant devices which can be useful, especially if you gave any HomePods etc.