I’m going around in circles trying to find the right products for my Smart home.
I a newbie and live in the UK, I’ve started with light switches and wall mounted plug sockets but cannot find the right products.
I like the idea of Tasmota and have a couple of Sonoff devices working in the garage fine. I cannot find a Wall-mounted plug socket that can be configured with Tasmota or a 1,2 or 3 gang light switch that doesn’t require an additional neutral wire.
I then done some reading on zeebee and Z-wave and was going to invest in some Z-wave products but again struggle to find light switches or wall-mounted plug sockets. I do like the idea of a separate Z-wave network.
I have seen these that support tuya, can these be configured with Tasmota?
I do like the idea of these
but I don’t like that these need to talk home to work.
I wanted to keep all my data to myself… is it possible to put these in a Vlan that doesn’t talk to the internet?
What is everybody else using and how they got it configured?
I went through the same process as you for lighting at the beginning of the year.
There are two ways to control lights: using bulbs with integrated control (eg zigbee, zwave or wifi) that’s turns on or off the light or using standard bulbs where your automation controls the mains voltage, either with a relay or dimmer.
The achilles heel of smart bulbs is that if someone powers them off with the mains, they’re no longer smart. And the same goes for smart switches, as the wiring in old houses doesn’t insist on a neutral wire.
Both options can be used together with great success - using smart switches and wiring them to use the ‘switched live’ as the neutral. This way the switch doesn’t cut the power to the bulb or itself. Instead, you use it to logically control the light via HA. The relay in the switch becomes redundant (if its a single switch/bulb) but using an off the shelf product like the sonoff t3 is simple, it just needs wiring in & flashing. It also has the benefit of having 3 buttons to configure however you like (multiple bulbs, scenes whatever) from a point you would otherwise only have a single switch. This for me is better than the zigbee switches as it prevents powering off bulbs in error, but in the cases where multiple lighting circuits run from a single switch, the relays for all but 1 circuit can be left operational if desired.
I opted to use smart bulbs (ikea tradfri with a conbee ii stick) that are permanently powered on. I was lucky to have been renovating my house at the time so have removed all the physical switches to prevent lights being powered off. I would have installed as I’ve described above but the switches didn’t suit my house.
As for isolating the sockets. Using a vlan won’t give you what you want, they’ll probably need another firmware to stop them calling home but keep them smart. I’ve got no idea if there is anything like esphome or tasmota that can be flashed onto it though.
You may be interested in the SOnoff T4EU1C - which is a wall mounted smart light switch that does not need a neutral wire.
It may require you to connect a box between the terminals of the bulb, depending on the bulb you are using, but should be a LOT easier to wire than trying to get neutral in a non neutral switchplate.
Using powered z-wave devices is great for creating a strong mesh network with low latency. I use these multisensors to get motion, temp, humidity and light level. I then use the motion and light level for my automations (turn on a light if there is motion, but only if the light level in the room is below my setpoint) These sensors can run on batteries however they will then go to sleep and responce time is affected, plus you have to replace batteries.
I use wireless zigbee buttons for convenient locations where there is no wiring or so items can be moved around. These are great because you can code for 3 press types: single click, double click, long press, which gives you good automation flexibility.