Glossary

The glossary covers terms which are used around Home Assistant.

• Automation:

  Capability to call a service based on a simple or complex trigger. Automation allows a condition such as sunset to cause an event, such as a light turning on.

• Component:

  The components provide the core logic for the functionality in Home Assistant. Like notify provides sending notifications.

• Cookbook:

  Home Assistant configuration examples of the community

• Customizing:

  Customization allows overwriting default parameter of the devices in the configuration.

• Device:

  Usually this is a physical unit which can do or observe something.

• Discovery:

  The automatic setup of zeroconf/mDNS and uPnP devices after they are discovered.

• Entity:

  An entity is the representation of a single device, unit or web service.

• Event:

  When somethings happen.

• Groups:

  Groups are a way to organize your entities into a single unit.

• HADashboard:

  HADashboard is a modular, skinnable dashboard for Home Assistant that is intended to be wall mounted, and is optimized for distance viewing.

• Hass.io:

  Hass.io is an operating system that will take care of installing and updating Home Assistant, is managed from the Home Assistant UI, allows creating/restoring snapshots of your configuration and can easily be extended

• Packages:

  Packages allow to bundle different component configuations together.

• Platform:

  A platform makes the connection to a specific software or hardware platform. The pushbullet platform works with the service from pushbullet.com.

• Scene:

  You can create scenes that capture the states you want certain entities to be. For example a scene can specify that light A should be turned on and light B should be bright red.

• Script:

  A component that allows users to specify a sequence of actions to be executed by Home Assistant when turned on

• Service:

  Services are called to perform actions.

• Template:

  An automation definition can include variables for the service or data from the trigger values. This allows automations to generate dynamic actions.

• Trigger:

  Values or conditions of a platform that are defined to cause an automation to run.

• Zones:

  Area used for presence detection.

• hass:

  Often used abbreviation for Home Assistant.

• hassio:

  An operating system to manage Home Assistant easily using various HASS.io add-ons