Ok i’m definitely sold and i’m ready to direct my attention in this lockdown madness to settings things up, and having a good base understanding of what I can do and what direction I should invest in.
So for HA hardware I have a spare laptop (Dell e7250) with a Conbee. I’m running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Hassi.io in a docker, with deConz and Node-RED addons. WIth regard to this what is everyones backup method here, since supervisor is in charge of the docker its a little different than i’m used to (and i already had watchtower update supervisor and take it offline). Is it still a case of exporting images and saving them for reimport at disaster time. I want my home automation project to be robust and easily restored when the worst happens.
I currently have collected 3 Tradfri bulbs, 2 Tradfri 5 button remotes, 1 Tradfri Smart Plug, 1 TS100 Wifi Plug and a nexus 9 tablet i’m using to control things for now, as a testing ground.
Right now i’m just testing the water in simple terms, but i’d like to buy some more sensors and expand, presumably i’ll stick with just zigbee (lose the ts100) hardware, as this probably makes most sense in my mind? Thoughts?
Is there any hardware i should particularly look at for sensors and things? I’m drawn to the Aquara sensor groups since they’re cheap and zigbee, and recommendations? Shopping list will include a few multi sensors for rooms, a light sensor, some door sensors, few power meter plugs and many more lights at least to begin. Also important to me right now are switches I guess, I have 2 Tradfri round 5 button switches, and theyre great, but i think i’ll want some things not just battery powered (is that sensible? surely the batteries are a pain to change all the time?) like more akin to a normal wall plate?
I’m looking for advice and best methods regarding HA, deConz and Node RED.
Do I add everything and add groups in deConz and then call these groups through Nod-RED, is that quicker/more efficient use of the zigbee network, is latency a thing? Or use HA to group things, or call all individually with Node-RED, or a mix whats best practice for different results?
How how do you name everything? I think i’ll need a decent naming convention or i fear i’ll fall down some trap later on, not really sure what scales best.
Where is best to see good examples of HA + node-RED setups, i feel like it has a ton of options and potential, which is amazing, but also means i’m likely to make things more complicated or make odd decisions because i don’t doubt there is 100 ways to do the same thing!
Whilst i’m happy to learn from my mistakes, and many mistakes I will make, it’s always nice to see good examples and use cases of working homes and projects before i dive right in.
So i’m full of #allthequestions right now, apologies, i’m browsing through the projects on here as we speak, making notes of what I want, or thoughts and avenues to research. But there is just so so so so much to take in, and so much flexibility i’m overwhelmed!