I need some advice about adding smart plugs in Home Assistant.
Background:
My server is a QNAP NAS (TVS-h674) with 2 USB ports FULL. 1 for the UPC and the other a Bluetooth dongle for HA.
Home Assistant is installed in a VM through QNAP Virtualization Station 3.
MQTT is running in a QNAP docker container AND the integration is installed in HA.
We have Apple devices, but no HomePod or AppleTV 4K
Live in the US
Requirements:
Local, NOT cloud
Reasonably priced
Stay with Apple (for my non-technical family)
Allow for future products - Amazon, Alexa, Bose replacements, etc.
So, my husband just setup a grow light for our pepper and basil plants. I would like to add a smart plug for it and possibly other plugs while I am at it (automate old lights with TV/dusk). The goal is that I will create an automation to turn the light on at 6 AM and off at 2 PM every day during the fall/winter. I am not concerned about the automation as I already have other automations (TV, lights, etc.). BUT, I do not have any thread, matter, zigbee, or wave devices yet.
I have already looked through copious posts, HA guidelines, and read some information on the internet, including HA joining the Z-Wave Alliance board. My background is software, but I know my way around routers and some hardware.
So, it seems like to prepare for the future, thread is best for Apple products. I need a solution that does not require adding a USB dongle to my QNAP as it is already full.
I am looking for non-USB solutions. The internet and shopping sites have terms like bridge, hub, router, etc. I am not sure what will work. I understand that the plug would have to work with the device.
Apologies, but I think I was not clear in my 1st post. I am a newbie to the “Zigbee/ZWave/Matter/Thread” world. Although the smart-plug will need to work with new hardware, I need to know what the new non-USB hardware recommendations are before I research the smart-plugs.
The internet and shopping sites (Amazon, etc.) “say” hub, thread router, or bridge required and Home Assistant refers to only USB dongles. My NAS does not have any free USB ports.
If you want plugs with power monitoring, my recommendation is WiFi with Tasmota. WiFi works great as long as you avoid cloud requirements and use a good access point.
Frequent power monitoring reports can overwhelm a very-low-bandwidth Z-wave or Zigbee (or Thread) mesh, whereas even chatty plugs don’t come anywhere close to saturating WiFi 6 bandwidth. I have over 50 WiFi devices, including 10+ plugs, and my network runs great.
Matter just added power monitoring support a few months ago and I’m not aware of any devices that have recent enough firmware to support that feature, and it’s risky to expect a vendor to update an old product with new features.
Tasmota firmware is open source, fully local, highly configurable, and works great with HA over mqtt. I flashed my devices myself, but now you can get plugs pre-flashed with Tasmota from Martin Jerry, Cloudfree, and Athom. Shelly is not open source, but it is a good local option even if more expensive.
If you stay away from power monitoring, there are lots of Zigbee and a few Matter (over Thread) options. To get Zigbee without a usb port, you need either a bridging hub like Aqara, an encapsulated hub like Sonoff Bridge (with Tasmota), or a Zigbee2mqtt-compatible Ethernet option like SMlight or Zigstar. For Thread you just need an Apple HomePod mini or Apple TV 4K anywhere on your network.
Finally, you can set up Home Assistant’s HomeKit bridge integration to enable use of Apple Home app and Siri to control any of your HA devices.
You can always buy a usb hub. They are reasonably priced.
Whatever solution you choose it will be the best to stick with it.
Zigbee is a mesh network that consist out of coordinator, usb plugged, routers usually smart plugs, outlets, some presence sensor, some switches and end devices, usually sensors.
The worst solution will be to use a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Choose by your preferred network protocol.
At the end of the day there are, in my opinion, two options. Wifi or zigbee.
Bluetooth is way too messy, matter over thread needs a router that support it and there are not a lot of devices that support this, z-wave is similar to zigbee but much more expensive.
This is my 2 cents.
Thanks to everyone so far. These are all helpful tips and get me closer to a proposed solution. Agree, since I do not have any network protocols now, I am trying to figure out the best 1 to choose, which is why I am thinking thread, but do NOT want to purchase an Apple HomePod (we have many Bose Soundtouch devices, non-networked old Bose Wave and non-networked old Denon receiver right now). However, let me clarify my requirements, especially if someone else reads this post.
Requirements:
Local, NOT cloud
Reasonably priced
Stay with “Apple-ish” technology (for my non-technical family with Apple products) for mobile device
Allow for future products - Amazon, Alexa, and Bose replacements, etc.
NO WiFi and NO Bluetooth for the smart-plugs
NO purchase of HomePod or Apple TV 4K
NO Power Monitoring needed
Would like Siri control of the smart-plugs (husband loves his Siri)
If there are smart-plugs (NON WiFi) that do NOT require a hub or bridge, that would work too.
I already have the HomeKit Bridge and HomeKit Devices installed as integrations and use the HA iOS companion app. I do not know much about HomeKit, but one of the bridge entities is HASS Bridge:XXXXX. Perhaps it uses the Apple TV 4 (again - I do NOT want to buy an Apple TV 4k; this is rarely used in our basement).
As for buying a USB hub, that could be a possibility, BUT I think it is not “doable” (someone correct if I am wrong). The 2 USB items in my NAS are for the UPS and a HomeAssistant compatible Bluetooth dongle. Both are working WELL through my QNAP VM for HomeAssistant. I do not think the bluetooth could be passed through to the HomeAssistant VM.
Haha, that’s a lot more requirements! Certainly Thread has a better future path than Zigbee, since they use the same radios but only Thread is IP-based so doesn’t use a “hub,” just a router. But Thread is still experiencing some early-adopter struggles — product selection is limited, commissioning can be frustrating, vendors don’t automatically play well together, and troubleshooting IPv6 and mDNS is cumbersome until the tools improve.
If you want Thread, but not from Apple, then consider a border router like an Eero Pro or GL-iNet SL200. Expect to tinker a bit!
Looking at Amazon and this list, I only see Thread plugs from Eve, Onvis, and Wemo; the first two speak Matter and the latter is HomeKit-only (Belkin pulled out of Matter). They are substantially more expensive for having fewer features, but again it’s the early adopter price. You can search the forums to read experiences people have had getting them working in HA.
Once devices are in HA, use the HomeKit bridge to export entities to Apple Home. Your Apple TV HD acts as a hub which can be linked to HA so Macs’ and iPhones’ and iPads’ Home app (and Siri) can control the devices you choose to expose, without needing the HA companion app.
I have both Eve Energy and Onvis Smart Plugs.
Eve Energy is with power monitoring.
They are both Matter over Thread devices, so you need Thread Border router devices for them.
Thread Border Router Devices come in many forms, like many Google, Apple and Alexa devices are now capable of being Thread Border Router devices too, but you can also get ESP devices that can be made into Thread Border Router for little money and then there are USB solutions also, like the SkyConnect from NabuCasa.
Matter’s big benefit is that you can have multiple Thread Border Routers and they then make the Matter network more resilient against a single key device dropping out.
The current drawback of Matter is that it is a new protocol, so some devices do not exist yet, like TRVs are hard to find.
I have mentioned a Thread Border Router a few times in the above, which is the terminology of the Matter protocol. The Thread Border Router is the device that move data to/from Ethernet to Thread in Matter. There are also devices that repeater data, typically mains powered ones, but I am not sure what they are named in Matter actually. And finally there are end devices, typically battery powered ones.
In Zigbee terminology there are also a router device, but here it is the device that repeat data on the network. The device that move data to/from Ethernet to Zigbee is called a Coordinator, so read up on the protocols before you compare them and choose your future.
There should be some excellent guides for the different protocols in one of the forum categories.