Home Assistant Starter Setup — What to Buy First

You installed Home Assistant. Now what? This kit is the answer to the most common beginner question: what hardware actually works together, locally, without a cloud lock-in.

Start with a Thread border router — you have two paths. The self-host path uses the official Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 (a USB radio, no firmware flashing) and turns your HA box into the border router. The plug-and-play path uses an Apple HomePod mini, which is a border router out of the box and shares its Thread credentials with Home Assistant from the iOS or Android app. Pick one; you do not need both. (Avoid an Amazon Echo as your border router — its Thread network is closed and Home Assistant cannot use it.)

From there: a Matter bulb and an in-wall dimmer for lighting, a Matter smart plug for a lamp or appliance, a Matter-over-Thread door and window sensor for your first automation, and a Matter-over-Thread deadbolt — the device that makes the value of a border router obvious. Everything here is controlled locally through Home Assistant.