I used OpenHAB for close to 20 years. I looked at Home Assistant years ago, didn’t like what I saw, and stayed put.
Then I moved into a new house and had to rebuild all of my home automation from scratch. That felt like the right time to look at the software stack again.
As soon as I opened Home Assistant, the scope of it was obvious. Device setup was clean. Dashboards were powerful. I could graph the history of my garage door right out of the box. In OpenHAB that same thing took me days and never quite worked. Almost all of the setup can be done from my phone instead of a PC, which OpenHAB never really allowed. I knew right away I was done with OpenHAB.
Then someone on Reddit mentioned the Home Assistant MCP server. That changed how I work with the system. I can open an AI like Claude or Grok and say “make an automation that does this” or “make a dashboard with these devices.” A few seconds later the change is live. That is the part that sold me for good.
Not everything is in yet. I still can’t get my WiFi Midea dehumidifier connected, though I don’t think that’s a Home Assistant problem.
If you’ve been on OpenHAB for years and you’re starting over, it’s worth another look. The product is a lot further along than it was the last time I checked, and the MCP connection makes day-to-day changes much faster.
