Add How-To Geek on Google Add as Preferred Source Follow on Google Discover By Adam Davidson Published Nov 12, 2026, 6:30 PM EST Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint. As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack. Sign in to your How-To Geek account Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Home Assistant really is incredible software. It's come a long way from its origins as a few lines of code that could turn on a smart bulb. There's very little that Home Assistant can't do these days, but there are still one or two things that even Home Assistant can't manage alone.
Close I'm an enormous fan of smart home automation rather than merely smart home control. With true automation, your smart home reacts to you going about your everyday life, rather than needing you to manually push buttons or swipe dashboards. When you walk into a room, the lights come on if it's dark enough to require it, and when you leave, they turn off again.
The problem with setting up an automated smart home is that if Home Assistant stops working, so does your home. It's not always immediately obvious when Home Assistant has gone down, so you may not realize it for some time. This isn't ideal if you have smart home devices such as water leak sensors set up that can't alert you unless Home Assistant is up and running.
can't inform you when it's stopped running because, well, it's stopped running. Even Home Assistant can't perform magic. It means you need an alternative way to find out when your smart home has gone down.
Uptime Kuma is a popular option. It's a lightweight application that can monitor self-hosted services and alert you when they become unreachable. I've been using Uptime Kuma for years; every time Home Assistant goes down, I get an alert via Telegram.
You can run Uptime Kuma on a different device from your Home Assistant server, such as a Raspberry Pi, or even in a different container on the same device. This is more of a risk, however, since Uptime Kuma won't work if the host machine goes down.
Have you tried turning AWS off and back on again? AWS' recent outage highlights the need for local control.
Another thing that Home Assistant can't do is work without power. Eventually, I'm sure an integration will be added that uses nuclear fusion to power your smart home in perpetuity, but until then, you need to have your smart home server plugged in.
