I visited a house this week that used Clipsal Smart Home devices
It was pretty impressive
This device controlled the lights, fans
Has anyone used this in HA or hand nay experience with it?
That’s the now ancient C-Bus system. Very expensive for what you get, which isn’t that great by today’s standards.
Hi @sparkydave
So what would a Sparky suggest if asked by a customer?
I enjoy the challenges that HA provide but I am a retired IT guy.
HA has lots of flexibility but it’s still a work in progress.
Things like depreciated ZWave, while necessary mean work and skill.
HA Yellow is some time away for supply reasons.
Interested in how the customer who wanted a smart house would be advised?
That all comes down to the customer. Most don’t wan to tinker so an off-the-shelf option like a Fibraro hub or similar would be best. Those however don’t have the same level of wide compatibility as HA does, which is why we are here.
This just means you move to the fast superior Z-Wave JS (or Z-Wave JS2MQTT). It’s by no means a show stopper. It is actually an very good upgrade.
It also isn’t much of a powerhouse unit either. HA Yellow is simply a way to provide a device which works and doesn’t require an additional Zigbee radio.
I run an Intel NUC (but any small form factor PC will work, mainly for the low power consumption) with both a USB Z-Wave stick (Aeotec Gen 5, but you can now get a Gen 7) and a USB Zigbee stick (Conbee 2) which has worked flawlessly for a long time now. Just looking at my HA uptime, it’s been 11 days since the last restart, which was simply to update to a new version (I haven’t updated to the latest yet as I’m away and want to be home just in case).
There really aren’t many challenges if you get the right hardware and have some decent level of sense (I say that in the nicest way, but seriously some people on this forum are beyond help!). I started with a Raspberry Pi 3B which was fine for 18 months until I wanted to upgrade. Once I went to the NUC I found that not only was it light years faster, it ran super stable. The RPi would need hard power resets every so often by the NUC never does.
Also, now that you can do most things within the GUI, the old days of new starters struggling with YAML are almost over.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Very informative.
I too started with a RPi 3B with ZWave Gen 5 and then moved to a NUCi3 with 8 GB RAM and a 256GB SSD.
I too found the NUC i3 with the 8GB RAM very much more stable. RAM is always king when stabilising a system! I run UBUNTU as a OS with HA in Docker and moved the ZWAVE Gen 5 stick over from the Pi.
I have the NUC mounted on the back of an older Acer 22" LCD as a console.
I updated to the latest HA 2021.12.9 this morning.
As you say, most don’t want to fiddle but a few that have asked me for my advice on what to install to do a Smart Home have hinted that they want more than the “Off the shelf” Fibraro/Vera or similar.
I am reluctant to suggest any particular hardware and/or software as that raises the question of support as I am 70 and retired and “out of the loop” on what the industry is doing and hence why I am tinkering / playing with HA in my house. That being said I am hoping I could give them some knowledgeable guidance.
I have my wife using HA to control our Lights, A/C’s and FANS and she find it simple to use on her laptop.
I use Aeotec, Sensibo, Broadlink and Sonoff for Lighting, A/C’s and iFan03 for ceiling fans.
I have one RF 433MHZ ceiling fan.
I have integrated Google hubs and an Alexa DOT and use voice control/commands to do things but this is still “a work in progress”.
I have a additional “challenge” as my house was wired in 1983 when neutrals were not at light switches
However I just spent a few days away at Mission Beach with my grandkids and family and HA was great. I have my security cameras loaded in HA and it was able to tell me that the Mower Man had come and would require payment. Sorted!
As you say it all depends on the customer/client…
I haven’t had any experience with Fibaro but I did have a Vera years ago. I literally threw the Vera in the bin because it was bad (after about a year or so of trying to get it stable)
I use a C-Bus system and I’m delighted with it. Rock solid, if I moved I would probably install another. I have had limited success with wireless based systems hence the wired preference. Neither Z-Wave or ZigBee are resilient enough for me.
C-Bus integrates with everything I use currently, HA, OpenHAB, Loxone, Hubitat, MQTT etc and works totally independently if needed. This is important that key functional areas of your automation setup continue even if the controller fails. So all switches still control all lights. Keeps the family onside.
Yes it was costly but judicious eBay purchasing paid off. The switches are particularly expensive new, and their touchscreens outlandish new but I use web based control.
If you’re in the US then Lutron’s product range work really well
