Because I am new to the community I am not sure I am posting in the correct category.
I’m also new to Home Automation, since I Will move into a new home starting from the 1st of may and would realy like to make it a smart one I started digging in to Home automation.
At the moment I have got some Sonoff s26 smart switches, Philips Hue lights (with hub and dimmer) and I’m planning to buy the Xiaomi Aqara Gateway including some sensors (door, movement, and so on).
I stumbled on HASS because I want these products to communicate with eachother and as far I know I would always need a program like HASS to achieve this. So my first question is this correct?
Second can I connect the sonoff s26 switches without anything like a bridge directly with HASS?
I hope you can help me since I have not had any luck finding these anwsers on the internet.
I would not buy the xiaomi hub, but zigbee2mqtt stick. Like that you do not need the philips hub nor other hub as you’ll integrate through zigbee2mqtt:
I’m not sure how sonoff integration works, but I’m sure it can be done. Just browse on the forum. Many have it.
If I were starting over, I would select a protocol and stick with it as much as possible. HomeAssistant generally makes mixed protocols (z-Wave, Xbee, WiFi, etc) seamless to the end user, but selecting a main protocol means less configuration details to remember.
Here’s my experience, your mileage may vary. (In my opinion, if you ask 100 Home Assistant users to describe their installations, you will get 100 different opinions).
I found 433 MHz RF units to be remarkably unreliable with a range of at best, ten feet. My most reliable are the Z-Wave switches followed closely by WiFi.
Thanks for the tip to use the same protocol. At the moment I am discovering the posiblitities Home Automation has to offer. I have the following that i would like to set up.
A smart dimmable kitchen LED light.
The bulbs are actually part of the design so I cant switch them for smart LED lights.
Because of the design placing a smart LED light connector is also not a posibilitiy.
The plan I have at the moment is placing a klikaanklikuit (KAKU) LED dimmer in the wall box behind my regular wall switch which uses 433,92 MHz. In that way the design will be the same, and as far as I know it fulfills the above condition. If I am correct i can connect a RF reciever to my Raspberry Pi to let it recieve the signals.
Set HASS to turn on my kitchen light as well as some other lights (for example Philips Hue and a lamp connected to my sonoff S26).
For this I wanted to use the Aqara sensors and connect it with the rest of the lights through HASS
Does this seem like a good plan? Or is there an easier way to achieve the above?
Personally- I would avoid the 433 MHz stuff. I’ve never gotten it to work reliably.
Next, I only have one set of smart lights and probably won’t buy them again. They are Ikea Tradfri lights and work over Zigbee. I have settled on Z-Wave, mostly Inovelli switches**, only one is a dimmer but I’ll probably add another soon. I have a lot of ESP8266 nodes around the house (over WiFi). Mostly Sonoff Basics and one Sonoff Switch. I also have Sonoff 4CH modules controlling my lawn sprinklers. In addition I have a few temperature nodes made from the ESP8266-01 and DS18B20 sensors. This summer I plan to add a solar-powered node with a capacitive moisture sensor to control the watering of my tomato plants.
In other words, there is a lot that you can do with IOT in the home. There simply is no one solution.
I mentioned that I only have one set of smart lights. I bought them because I wanted some experience with the Zigbee protocol. I am not excited to add any more ZigBee devices. (But that’s just me). I trained as an electrician (last Century) and I am not the least bit hesitant to rewire my switch boxes, so I have no need for a smart light. Besides, when my LED lights quit (and they do fail eventually), I am only out the $5- to $10 to replace the bulb. As opposed to replacing a smart light for $20 or more. I have yet to see the benefit of changing the lights’ color or using a dimmer in most locations- but that’s probably just me.
On your 433 MHz switch- unless it’s real close to the 433MHz receiver, you will not be happy. Another reason to avoid 433MHz stuff is because there is no feedback to Home Assistant. This is necessary if you turn on the light with the wall switch. Z-Wave and WiFi devices will send their state back to Home Assistant, but 433MHz devices won’t. This means, the dashboard won’t show if the light is on or off.
** I have mostly Inovelli Z-Wave switches and a dimmer, plus one GE switch. I like the Inovelli switches because I can use existing wall switches (I.E., cheap) for three-way and four-way circuits. With GE you have to use their satellite switch in 3- and 4-way circuits. At $20 each this was a no-brainer.
Since it appears that you are early in your quest for knowledge on this, you might want to look to YouTube for some example of others’ integrations into their homes. DrZzs and TheHookUp are two popular channels that come to mind. They both show examples, both easy and difficult, that can give you some ideas from what they have done. There are many other sites out there too.
I started from where you are from what seems like just a few months ago. I made some dead-end choices for products. But honestly, that is the advantage of a program like Home Assistant, these “errors” are still in use alongside my other more favorable choices. Hue, Smartthings, Sonoff/Tasmota, Blink, Foscam, and DIY among many other brands all play nice together under one big umbrella.