The first turnkey local AI-powered smart home hub is here and I'm excited

Published Sep 3, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT Patrick Campanale has been in the tech space for well over a decade, specializing in PC/gaming news and reviews, as well as maker-focused products to build small businesses. With a start in technology back in 2010 surrounding the Palm/webOS ecosystem, Patrick spent his formative years developing mobile applications as well as blogging for various publications, eventually leading to starting his own website in 2014. After running a technology blog for a few years, he stepped out of that role and into the world of high-end custom PC manufacturing and building, with a focus on YouTube video production and overclocking. Then, six years ago, Patrick joined the 9to5Toys team as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published there there, ranging from deals and roundups to in-depth reviews on the latest technology, video games, 3D printers, and more. In his free time, Patrick loves to create projects from wood using various robots and methods, including leveraging the technologies of CNCs and lasers. If Patrick isn't working on a computer or playing video games, he's likely in his 2-car garage workshop creating something unique. In addition to all this, Patrick is also a youth pastor at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it. Cloud-based smart homes have been the norm for over a decade now. There are inherent problems with cloud-based smart devices though, with privacy being at the forefront of those issues. UGREEN just surprised everyone and announced the first turnkey local smart home hub that actually matters. UGREEN's HomeAgent combines local AI with a NAS, smart home hub and NVR A jack-of-all-trades I just spent the day previewing UGREEN's most unique product yet. Back in 2020, the company stepped out of the charger and mobile accessory market and entered an entirely new realm with the introduction of its NAS line. Since then, UGREEN has focused on expanding its NAS lineup with newer and more powerful models. In fact, UGREEN has become my go-to NAS brand, dethroning my love for Synology that has lasted for well over a decade. This week, though, UGREEN introduced something entirely new in its HomeAgent platform. Instead of just functioning as a NAS, HomeAgent is designed to be the central component of your local smart home. The entire HomeAgent platform is designed to be a local-first smart home system, featuring local video recording capabilities, local AI functionality, and local smart home control. You won't be locked into a single ecosystem Matter support extends functionality, but it's unclear just how far Alongside the HomeAgent platform, UGREEN is also introducing an ecosystem of smart home products compatible with its new system. There's an indoor camera, two outdoor cameras, a smart speaker, and a color E-Ink photo frame. These products are all made by UGREEN and are directly and natively supported within the HomeAgent ecosystem. For example, you can use your UGREEN smart speaker to trigger taking a picture with one of your cameras, and then have it displayed on the photo frame. While there are only four accessories in the ecosystem now, UGREEN does have Matter support within the HomeAgent platform and has commented that some form of Home Assistant support should be available before launch. Local control is more than about offline access Keeping your data secure is the most important part of the pitch UGREEN's HomeAgent platform is designed to be local first. Local AI, local video recordings, local everything. While many companies tout local AI, UGREEN is actually putting its money (or, really, your money) where its mouth is. There are three versions of the HomeAgent system—the HA100, HA100 Pro, and Master Agent. Each model has a different amount of power it can offer, with the HA100 capable of running 4B parameter local AI models, the HA100 Pro running 32B parameter models, and the Master Agent capable of 122B parameter models. The problem is, the most expensive model, the Master Agent, which has 2,070 FP4 TFLOPS of computing power and 128GB of RAM, has a retail price of $19,999 (and a pre-order price of $9,999). It's prohibitively expensive, but it does offer insanely powerful local AI capabilities. The HA100 and HA100 Pro will retail for $1,799 and $5,999 respectively, with pre-order pricing starting at $899 and $2,999. Really though, the majority of people will be fine with the HA100 or HA100 Pro for their smart home setup. UGREEN's HomeAgent platform goes on pre-order starting today with the Kickstarter beginning in October. The only question that has not been answered yet—and won't be able to be answered until the system starts shipping—is: does anything actually leave the HomeAgent platform or does it stay 100% local? UGREEN claims that this is a local-first platform, but we won't know for sure until actual hands-on testing happens. Local-first smart homes are a necessity of the future In a world where an internet outage can make your smart bed stop working, a local-first smart home is definitely something that needs to be considered and worked on. Home Assistant does this, but it also can be a fairly complicated system that the average person isn't very likely to dive into. I'm very happy that UGREEN is pioneering this stage of smart homes, and I am very intrigued by what the HomeAgent platform brings to the table. Truly locally run AI and locally controlled smart homes are the future, and UGREEN just might be the company to take us there.