I am somewhat new to HA and one of my struggles is to research deals on IoTs and ensure that it is compatible with HA. There are multiple layers of complexities and here is my summary of newbie experience!
Works like a charm out of the box (like Amcrest camera!!)
Works with little bit of tweaking (like Sonoff switch with MQTT)
Works with HACS (like Kuna lights)
Works but no thanks (like Ring doorbell, not interested in port forwarding)
Outright disappointments (like Roomba)
Also understand that there are legal sensitivities towards publishing a compatible hardware list so political correctness probably outweighs factors like refreshing cadence and candor.
But can we start a crowdsourcing feature where HA community forum members can simply add hardware (make, model, firmware etc) and rest of the crew can just vote on it using a simple UI?
It will create a crowd-sourced database of HA friendly hardware and there NO are legal implications as individual members are simply expressing their opinions. It may also change behavior of OEMs as lack of documentation and or customer support can come back to bite them.
HA has a dedicated community where I read a post and act on it like a religion w/o thinking twice
When this idea was purposed last time I was positive about it, and still is.
I believe it would be awesome with a database of devices and how people find them responding with HA.
Bit I also understand that it is a lot of work to set up.
It could be tag based, like “tuya”, “smart plug”, “<rating score>”.
That way it would be easy to filter out what you want to find.
Thanks @francisp, I did use the Tasmota database and it was very useful.
But I was suggesting a forum or database where users can share experiences as it is a sensitive subject for HA or any other company to take a stand on friendliness or compatibility of any IoT.
Tuya is a great example where I have no problem letting other users know that Tuya absolutely rushes to plug any hacks that may allow end users to swap Tuya’s firmware with Tasmota. But Sonoff on the other hand does not care and in fact goes extra length and make their hardware accessible so that end users can get to motherboard and be able to flash firmware.
