Looking for Lesser Known Hardware companies. Small Businesses. Uncommon. Just starting

Hardware
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Hey everyone,

I am looking for some hardware that comes from companies that are either Small Businesses, Potentially Kickstarters that have just released, maybe a company that not many users are using with Home Assistant that you potentially think more people should know about, Maybe it’s a company that’s just starting out from a Kickstarter.

Looking to support some smaller Hardware companies/businesses/individuals for my Home Assistant instance.

Hardware can be:

  • Zigbee
  • Zwave
  • Wifi
  • Have a hub
  • Just about anything. Just let me know!
  • Would rather them be US or EU based
  • Not have an API at but may be willing to implement one or direct integration with HA

The last point is helpful as I am wanting to bring more product to HA. More local APIs from smaller companies that may need the user base that HA provides, will help HA’s outreach and sway on the Market. And for that point, the company doesn’t necessarily need to be “small”. An example of this being Noon. (or Savant) I know they have been contacted and were potentially willing to connect with HA through a direct connection. (Companies as big as Samsung don’t care as they make an incredible amount of money regardless of who they piss off)

Any suggestions are welcomed. Even if you had a bad experience. Let me know. It may be helpful for narrowing the list of companies I use.

Thank you!

3 Likes
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Hey,

Bit late to the game, but I just launched a Kickstarter for a HA compatible gizmo.

URL is http://kck.st/30xrP8q

It’s a USB switch, so you can control USB lights, sensors, or anything else which is USB 2 powered. It uses Tasmota and I have an example of it working with HA on the Kickstarter page.

Thanks,

Martyn

1 Like
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I looked at your kickstarter, what is the advantage over a sinilink flashed with Tasmota?

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Hi Francis,

USB Switchy lowers that bar of having to flash something, which is a barrier to a lot people wanting things to just work.

It is also designed to be connected onwards for communicating with other devices in more of the maker community. You can safely connect any 3-5V logic to the UART and use the Tasmota fork to communicate with an MQTT broker.

Finally there is the sensing side of it, currently there is a simple temperature sensor in the design. But this could easily be replaced with more complex sensors such as humidity and pressure sensors, or PIR sensors etc. in future designs.

There is also a current sensor so it determines load power use, but I am not certain that will survive the next design iteration.

This is really just a stepping stone - what else would you want a sinilink to do?

How about a battery powered wifi switch which has a built in solar charger for an 18650 cell? Or one with a LoRa module and a USB to LoRa module - ‘which just works’.

Best Regards,

  • Martyn