I’ve recently retrofitted a load of smart home hardware – mostly Zigbee – into our (new build) house in the UK and thought it might be helpful to share experiences with specific hardware. Feel free to ask questions if you’re considering using the same hardware.
For the most part I aimed to fit products that we could leave in situ if we move out, rather than going for more ‘DIY’ solutions, even if the next owners don’t use the smart capabilities of the hardware.
Home Assistant is running on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with a Sonoff ZBdongle-P (on a USB extension cable) as the Zigbee controller.
Lighting and bathroom fans
The main lights in most of our rooms are dumb bulbs connected to Zigbee smart switches (in bathrooms) or dimmers (in most other rooms). That way the lights would still work even if there were a problem with Home Assistant. This was a priority for me when choosing hardware. We have neutral wiring to switches as it’s a new build, so the smart switches/dimmers act as Zigbee routers.
We have Aqara H1 wall switches with neutral, mostly double (WS-EUK04). In the bathrooms we have the light on one rocker and the fan on the other rocker. Our electrician wired the permanent and switched live to the switched live so the fan’s timer doesn’t operate and we can control fan delay timing via Home Assistant. These have worked reliably although there was a problem with one binding to an IKEA Styrbar remote.
We also have Samotech SM323 v2 single/double dimmers, using the Samotech faceplates and white knobs. Where there are two-way circuits (i.e. one bulb originally controlled by two dumb switches), we’ve used one dimmer and one battery-powered Aqara H1 wireless remote switch with a HA automation. These have worked reliably.
I did have to configure some of the reporting settings in Zigbee2MQTT for either/both the Aqara and Samotech switches/dimmers so that the state of lights is updated in HA when using the physical controls.
When initially connecting to the coordinator, I found I had to use a 10m active USB cable to get the coordinator close to the installed switches/dimmers. (I think this was for the Samotech dimmers rather than Aqara switches but can’t quite remember.)
In the Kitchen Diner we have various IKEA Tradfri white spectrum dimmable smart bulbs (which we’ve been happy with) plus an Aqara T1 switch module controlled by a Sunricher SRZG9001T4CCTWH 4-group CCT Zigbee wall control. This is bound to the bulbs/relay so it would work even if HA were down, although we mostly use the four scene buttons which I use to trigger HA automations. You can use these to trigger Zigbee scenes but you have to select a specific bulb group before pressing the scene button, which can be annoying. I did need to bind the various endpoints of the Sunricher control to the Zigbee controller in Zigbee2MQTT in order to receive button presses from the scene buttons correctly in HA.
Much of the lighting is controlled using the Adaptive Lighting integration. I’ll keep this post about the hardware, but it’s worth noting that IKEA bulbs do require some specific settings and I’ve had a few issues with bulbs being switched on/off unexpectedly by Adaptive Lighting e.g. this one.
In addition to main lights connected to smart wall switches/dimmers, we have various IKEA white spectrum dimmable smart bulbs. Some are controlled by the Samotech dimmers via HA automations, others by IKEA remotes (see below).
Motorised blinds
We have Somfy motorised blinds on most windows: a mix of Sonesse roller blinds supplied by a blinds company and Tilt & Lift 25 RTS motors in powered headrails bought online for some Roman blinds that were bought as manual blinds. These are controlled by Somfy Smoove Origin wall switches and also an ESPSomfyRTS (see @rstrouse’s excellent instructions and integration).
These work reliably and last for several months without charging. The ESPSomfyRTS allows HA to keep track of the blinds’ state, which I think is better than Somfy’s own TaHoma hub and was certainly cheaper!
Heating
We have two Plugwise Anna 230V thermostats with Smile gateways to control two zone valves, and via these, the boiler. These were quite easy for our electrician to retrofit in place of the existing dumb thermostats using the existing wiring between valves and thermostats.
It would be nice to be able to alter the schedule within HA rather than in the Plugwise app but the control via HA works reliably and I appreciate the local rather than cloud-based control. Automation (e.g. home/away) is a tiny bit fiddly in terms of the interaction between Auto/Heat HVAC mode and the schedule. Perhaps at some point we’ll ditch the Plugwise schedule and just use HA to set the thermostat temperatures, which might be less fiddly.
Motion/luminance sensors
We have 11x IKEA Vallhorn motion/luminance sensors. Most are used to trigger HA automations to control lights (but not switching lights on if it’s already bright). A couple are used on windowsills to measure exterior luminance and trigger blinds opening/closing; although the luminance range quickly tops out in bright sunlight, they work for our purposes.
These sensors have worked pretty well, especially given the low cost. There is a slight delay but it’s not problematic. I did have to configure the reporting in Zigbee2MQTT.
Configuring the pirOToUDelay (PIROccupiedToUnoccupiedDelay) parameter using the Zigbee2MQTT developer console was handy for experimentation with positioning (with blue tack!). We’ve generally ended up with them above doorways in the corner between the wall and ceiling.
We only use them to sense whether someone has left a room (and therefore turn the lights off after some time) in very small rooms, or in the hall/landing we’ve used multiple sensors, because they don’t have a large range, but otherwise they just turn lights on automatically and we turn them off manually.
Other sensors and doorbell
We have 3x Aqara WSDCGQ11LM temperature/humidity sensors to let us know the conditions in our ensuite, our daughter’s room and the loft, as well as deciding when to switch off the ensuite fan based on humidity as well as time delay. These have worked reliably.
We have an IKEA Parasoll sensor on the door to our daughter’s room, which – based on the time of day – triggers an input helper to indicate when she’s asleep. This can then be used in other automations. It’s worked reliably and it’s good that it uses a rechargeable battery rather than coin cell.
We have a Reolink PoE doorbell that, in addition to video recording, triggers automations based on AI person detection and button presses to send us phone notifications with images. This has worked reliably, but I did have to use Nginx to provide SSL encryption rather than HA’s built-in SSL implementation, because the doorbell needed HTTP access over the LAN in order to reduce latency enough for notifications to be useful. See docs for more detail.
Other controls
We have 2x IKEA Somrig shortcut buttons that are used to trigger home/away/sleep automations. These allow various kinds of button press (single/double/hold), which is useful. We also have 1x IKEA Styrbar and 1x IKEA Rodret remote bound to IKEA smart bulbs. The arrow buttons on the Styrbar also trigger automations. These have all worked reliably, except for the issue with the Aqara switch binding to the Styrbar mentioned above.
Tumble dryer and TV
We have a Hisense tumble dryer which connects using the connectlife-ha custom integration. There is a slight delay in updates but it seems to work reliably.
We have an LG OLED C4 TV and use its status to trigger some HA lighting automations.