Hello, I just installed HA on a RPI4 and now I would like to automate my house.
My main projects are controlling the lights, the heat and water heater.
So I’m looking for light bulbs and connected switches (for my electric heaters).
I see a lot of Zwave products but they are all expensive, on the other hand there are also ESPHome devices but they seem more complicated to use.
So what should I choose ?
Do you have so home hardware configurations to share ?
Thanks
With a good wifi set up (e.g. a couple of Ubiquiti Lite APs) I have found wifi devices more reliable and much lower latency than zwave. I have no experience with zigbee.
Esphome has a very short and shallow learning curve. If you can add an integration to home assistant using yaml you can add a sensor to an ESPhome board. It’s like electronics Lego.
There are many wifi switches available. Sonoff, Shelly and the many brands that use the Tuya platform are popular, reliable and have a large user base to help you.
You get what you pay for with wifi lights. There are some cheap Tuya lights but (generally) their light output and/or CRI (colour rendition index) is not as good as brands like Lifx.
The biggest drawback with wifi is running battery powered sensors. They use much more energy than zwave or zigbee.