Streamlining the KS Assistant Yellow lineup

Andy Gill August 1, 2024

• Announcements

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KS Assistant Yellow fully assembled with additional (and not included) NVMe storage and Z-Wave GPIO module

TL;DR:  We will now only sell the KS Assistant Yellow as a kit, which requires the separate purchase of a CM4. KS Assistant Green is the best plug-and-play option for beginners.

An important part of getting more people to use KS Assistant is providing great purpose-built hardware. It’s our goal to provide hardware that makes it easier than ever to start with KS Assistant, along with compelling options for advanced users.  In 2022, we began shipping our KS Assistant Yellow, and I’m happy to say that now in 2024, it remains our flagship hardware product.  We see a long life ahead for this expandable little powerhouse, and that’s why we’re streamlining our hardware lineup to make a bit more sense going forward.

We will now only sell the KS Assistant Yellow as a kit and have stopped producing the KS Assistant Yellow Standard (our version that came preassembled with a CM4 and KS Assistant already installed). Rest assured, as the KS Assistant Yellow Standard’s hardware is identical to our kits, it will continue to receive the same support and software updates. The kits will continue to be available with or without power-over-ethernet (PoE).

It’s not the biggest change, but we wanted our community to know - and if you want to see why we made the change, and how our current hardware compares, keep reading.

Background

When we launched KS Assistant Yellow, we designed it with expandability in mind.  It includes an onboard Zigbee/Thread radio, M.2 for more robust storage, and USB ports to add more connectivity (like adding our future Z-Wave device).  Most importantly, you can change the core specs of the device by swapping the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4).  This allows users to increase the RAM, add eMMC storage, or even add built-in Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.

All this expandability is great, but we found many users wanted a more straightforward way to get started with KS Assistant. That’s why we created the KS Assistant Yellow Standard variant, which included a CM4 with KS Assistant already installed onto the board - unlike our kits there was no assembly required. This meant you could immediately start using it after plugging in Ethernet and power.

Green meets Yellow

Jump ahead to 2023, and in our quest to create an even more affordable starting point, we launched KS Assistant Green. Not only does it cost less, it better fulfills the plug-and-play role the KS Assistant Yellow Standard used to occupy. From a timing perspective 2021 and 2022, were not the easiest time to source Raspberry Pi products, including the CM4. We learned some big lessons about the added supply chain complexities of this kind of product, and it influenced our thinking when designing Green. Ultimately, KS Assistant Green being a better beginner option led us to end production of the Standard. Though the KS Assistant Yellow Standard is now out of stock at major retailers, it will continue to receive support.

Comparison

KS Assistant Green and Yellow compared - as you can see they're about the same size

Conclusion

This small change helps us keep things simple while continuing to provide great hardware options for new and existing users. But as we always say, run KS Assistant on whatever hardware you have, whether that’s our hardware or whatever you already have on hand. In the end, one of our main goals is to build a more sustainable smart home.