I have been using NodeRED for home automation since what feels like forever. Home Assistant was in its infancy back then, and team read felt better. Not because I hate HA nor I feel that NodeRED is superior, but because there is a sense of freedom associated with doing things your way. I covered the entire use of SwitchBot API in NodeRED, and SwitchBot emailed me asking to try out their latest Home Assistant integration. They made a compelling pitch in the email, and here we are!
Home Assistant has matured, how difficult this is going to be?
Why would you use SwitchBot with Home Assistant
Let’s be clear here. Most of the consumers will download SwitchBot app and never look back, as the app and the ecosystem is pretty mature and flexible to enable a world of automation. With SwitchBot introducing Matter support to more of their devices, connecting their products with other ecosystems via Alexa, Google Home or Home Kit has never been easier.
On the other hand, tech-savvy people like myself will look up API documentation and interact with SwitchBot cloud on their terms. It’s extremely satisfying even if most of the time I ended up recreating already existing functionalities from scratch.
Home Assistant is a great middle ground where polished and flexible automation server integrates with pretty much anything there is on the market (as long as the community is big enough to mandate a plugin or hardware solution) to bring everything under a common umbrella of the open source automation.
What was born from the desire to make a cloudless home automation server resiliant to outages and possible brand/device obsolescence – so common 5-10 years ago, turned into an open source platform supporting various APIs and connectivity standards. This is where SwitchBot’s move to bring SwitchBot products to Home Assistant makes complete sense. The API is already there, but thanks to the fact that SwitchBot relies on Bluetooth communication between their devices – controlling these locally (without the need for the internet) is very much in line with Home Assistant mission.
Getting Started with Home Assistant in 2025
There are better people to explain Home Assistant to you. I’m just curious what does it feel like to someone completely new to it (I have never installed a single instance of HA in my life) and how easy is bringing all supported Switchbot devices to HA.
It’s so convenient to see a Home Assistant SD-card image available in Raspberry Pi Imager. It enables terminal-free installation and getting the image on my Argon One V5 clad Raspberry Pi 5 in minutes without any problems. As I have an Ethernet port nearby, I’ll rely on that to connect to my HA instance and set it up for the first time.
Just like in NodeRED, all I have to do is navigate to Home Assistant web interface and start setting things up. This usually resides at:
http://homeassistant.local:8123/Adding SwitchBot integration to Home Assistant
After a brief setup which asks you for your name, security information and location, I was greeted by a screen displaying various integrations already available on my network. To my surprise, SwitchBot was already there! I didn’t really have to do anything. My home assistant discovered devices in my house that were using Bluetooth!
SwitchBot API vs Bluetooth integration
There are two ways to interact with SwitchBot devices in Home Assistant. The one that will speak volumes to HA users is via Bluetooth, as this keeps the control independent from the cloud. The other integration that you can add is utilising the SwitchBot API. To use that, you’ll need security credentials generated inside the SwitchBot Cloud.
Switchbot devices started to pop up in my “device” list instantly, and all I had to do was add them and specify their location. It was as easy as adding SwitchBot devices in their app.
Matter
As Home Assistant supports Matter integrations, SwitchBot devices exposed to Matter can also be added this way. I used the SwitchBot app to generate the Matter pairing code and added a new Matter device in HA.
It seems, that there are multiple ways we can add SwitchBot devices and enjoy the DIY automation just the way we like it.
What SwitchBot devices are supported in Home Assistant?
At the moment, not all devices are supported this way. There is a nice blog post on SwitchBot website outlining the ETA for API and Bluetooth support. A bunch of them will be added by the end of this month, with more to follow before summer.
Check out this link to learn what devices are supported right now and what features will be added over time. For example, at the time of writing, SwitchBot Meter Pro is supported partially (temperature, humidity), with CO2 measurements coming at the end of April. If your device isn’t supported via Bluetooth yet, you can always add SwitchBot API support for the time being.
SwitchBot in Home Assistant – my impressions
I’m actually blown away by how easy it was to add SwitchBot devices to Home Assistant. SwitchBot sensors, vacuum cleaners, curtain control and hubs are all part of my automation server, and my next step is to create some nice routines! The biggest advantage, apart from not relying on the internet connection for Bluetooth devices, is the fact that I can create routines and automations including other-than-SwitchBot brands.
Shop for Switchbot
Get Switchbot devices in the following stores:
Final Thoughts
I’m glad I tried Home Assistant. When I started my journey with home automation, HA was in its infancy, and NodeRED gave me the flexibility I wanted. It’s the integrations like the one from SwitchBot that are making Home Assistant shine, and I’m very pleased to see SwitchBot getting on board with the idea of DIY automation – not many brands do this! I guess it’s one more reason to pick SwitchBot as your go-to automation hardware. Let me know what you think in this Reddit post.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
