Hands-On Review: Testing the UGREEN HomeAgent HA100 Local AI Server
Following up on our initial First Look article, Mark recently put a pre-release test unit of the UGREEN HomeAgent HA100 through its paces for a full hands-on video review.
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains links that may earn us a commission from the UGREEN and Kickbooster Affiliate Programs. UGREEN provided the HomeAgent HA100 and two cameras for our review. Opinions and conclusions are our own.
So far, the HomeAgent has been living up to our expectations: a local-first home server that can control our home. With its included file storage, surveillance control, smart home and on-board AI processing, it’s doing a good job managing cameras as well as controlling more of our smart home than we expected.
Here is a summary of our findings, key feature tests, some quirks, and overall verdict from our hands-on testing so far.
Hardware & System Architecture
The UGREEN HomeAgent HA100 we are testing is their entry-level model, but it is still packed with features.
- Storage: Pop open the top cover, and you’ll find dedicated drive bays. Our test configuration includes a two bay NAS (Network Attached Storage), plus a third dedicated Surveillance bay dedicated strictly for the camera feeds. While they provided 2TB drives for our sample system, they have tested many other drive configurations up to 32TB so far.
- Local AI Processing: Powered by an onboard AI Accelerator Card delivering 26 TOPS of compute power to handle local AI processing without cloud dependency in a fourth bay.
- UGOS: The system uses the UGOS which supports containerized Docker instances behind the scenes to handle smart home routines for Matter and Home Assistant.
- Network: has a 2.5 Gb/s interface to our router and four PoE ports for cameras.
- Display: a front panel touch screen for control and messaging plus a mic and speaker so you can chat with the AI.
- Camera Integration: We tested it out of the box with the supplied UGREEN’s SynCare ID500 Pro indoor camera, ID600 Pro outdoor dual-cam, and third-party RTSP camera feeds.
Want to try the HomeAgent for yourself?
Visit UGREEN to reserve yours now.
What Works Today: The Power of Local AI
For an early pre-release beta build, the core AI features powered by UGREEN’s local assistant, Uliya, have been working really well.
- Face Recognition Automations: The HA100 scans camera feeds for recognized faces locally. In our test, recognizing Mark’s face instantly triggered a custom scene turning on the office lights seamlessly and locally.
- Voice-Activated Scenes: Uliya supports voice commands for complex scenes using partial phrase names, with the local speech recognition executing room scenes effectively.
- Sensor Integration: SwitchBot Motion and Presence sensors paired directly to the HA100, consistently executing basic “Motion Detected” and “No Motion” triggers.
- Plain-English Event Logging: Instead of generic motion alerts, the onboard AI analyzes camera feeds and generates descriptive plain-text notifications.
Some areas for improvement
The HA100 user interface is hard to read with small fonts and needs improved organization compared to other smart home hubs we’ve used. Currently it only works on our iPhone and iPad, with no web interface yet.
Talking to “Uliya” is a little awkward, “Hi Uliya” just feels a little funny to say compared to the other assistants we are used to chatting with now. She definitely sounds like a computer and doesn’t retain context from conversation to conversation. One thing we do hear a lot is “I’m still learning.” But she is still executing commands and I’m sure will continue to get better as the software progresses.
Smart Home Ecosystem & Multi-Hub Integration
The HA100 natively supports Matter-over-Wi-Fi out of the box. Matter over Thread and Zigbee native support are currently on the roadmap but not enabled yet on the system we are testing. As for Z-wave we haven’t heard of any planned support. They also support their own devices like cameras, picture frames and a remote speaker.
However, Mark was able to connect many Matter, Z-wave, Zigbee and Wi-Fi devices that we had already had on our Homey Pro network through the Homey Matter Bridge app, and we are able to control them as well as use them as triggers and in scenes.
We currently have 116 smart home devices connected, with 83 of them having been bridged over Matter from the Homey Pro.
Ironically, after years of resisting the urge to try the open source platform Home Assistant, we now have UGREEN’s version of it running, inside a Docker container in our HA100.
Conclusion & Kickstarter Outlook
We are really enjoying testing the UGREEN HomeAgent HA100 and if you consider yourself an advanced smart home user we think you will too.
You can reserve your HomeAgent today at the UGREEN website starting at $50 with some bonus perks ahead of their upcoming Kickstarter launch.
Its elegant hardware design and local, privacy-first AI make it a great choice to store your personal data and manage your smart home automations.
We look forward to continuing to test the HomeAgent and provide further updates as the products progress.