I think I used the wrong terminology, what I mean is when I started I read “smart” as smart singular. Not smart with various different versions.
So for instance stuff based on Tuya versus Zigbee versus all the other things. So I think I need to be fairly consistent in my approach or I might struggle.
So now I need to decide what brand of bulbs to continue with, I mean I’ll use multiple brands as long as they’re based on the same software concept I guess
Agree, I have a mix of stuff, but am pretty consistent in each category. All the same bulbs, all the same switches now. I was somewhat lucky in acquiring my bulbs and switches. Costco had / has some reasonably priced colour smart bulbs and switches and well many people buy them and can’t figure out how to use them so they return them. Costco sells these off to outlet stores and one in my area ends up with hundreds of them. I ended up paying $2.50/ bulb and $5 for two and three way switches which all (at the time) converted to TASMOTA easily over the air. For sensors I have agara motion, temp, water, vibration from Aliexpress using the Dresden zigbee. I abandoned my sengled bulbs and a few odds and ends from various other vendors. I am all done with the lighting in the house, and am now moving on to creating some of my own sensors and controls with esp8266 parts… The winter adventure continues… BTW, mixing zigbee and wifi can have its challenges. Pay attention to what channels you set your wifi and zigbee to use otherwise you can end up with flaky zigbee element.s
@Abigail_Kaye. Using a larger SD will not significantly improve performance or lifespan in itself. What you want to do is limit the number of writes/rewrites happening to the card. This can be accomplished by keeping logging to the minimum amount you need.
For example. I want to keep track of the weather, I have some really elegant graphs setup. However, I really do not care to log when or how specific motion sensors are triggered.
The integration you are looking to leverage is called Recorder
My recommendation is to get a better quality SD card and you should be fine to start with. If your installation grows by adding a significant number of devices then looking at an SSD may be something you may want to consider. Switching your installation to an SSD is not a difficult process, and you do not have to lose all the hard work you put in, it is however not a trivial task. Once again there are YouTube videos that can help walk you through the process.
My suggestion regarding an SSD upgrade is… if you are at that point you should not be using an rPi at all, upgrade to an Intel NUC or something with more power.
I am using my old storage server, which was hilariously overpowered for its original use, even now it is only around 1/3 of the cpu, and that is because I am also running motion detection for connected cameras, along with multiple applications and virtual machines to support my HA ecosystem.
What will happen with an rPi3 is that as soon as you find some cool feature you want, you find it does not have nearly enough computational power to do the job. A good metric is if you think you need an SSD upgrade, just upgrade everything
You must check out the Alexa integration
Getting Alexa to say “Bum” still make me laugh and i’m almost retired 
Here’s one way to reduce wear and tear on a microSD card (or SSD or ‘spinning rust’) but it assumes you don’t care if you lose History every time you reboot the RPi.
The important point here is you instruct Home Assistant to maintain its History log in memory and not on the SD card.
db_url: 'sqlite:///:memory:'
I have more than one instance of Home Assistant running and the one that resides on an RPi3 uses this technique. In addition, you can also specify what you do and don’t want to be recorded. In the following example I have excluded entire domains, some entities (more than what is shown here) and several types of events.
recorder:
db_url: 'sqlite:///:memory:'
exclude:
domains:
- group
- script
- automation
- updater
entities:
- sun.sun
- sensor.time
- sensor.date
- sensor.date_time
event_types:
- service_removed
- service_executed
- service_registered
- component_loaded
- call_service
If you definitely want to maintain a History log after a restart, then don’t use db_url: 'sqlite:///:memory: and simply constrain what you want to have recorded.
One other thing about bulbs…
they are an easy introduction just to get things moving but you likely won’t want them long term unless they are the only option (i.e. you are renting).
Smart bulbs need the switch that powers them to stay on all the time or else they get really dumb really quick. That means you can’t operate the lights just by walking up and flipping a switch like you always have before. You are forced to either use voice control, pull out a phone or get really good at creating an automation system that is almost at AI level so you never have to touch a switch because it just knows you want the light to come on.
My point is unless you have to use bulbs only then it will be a waste of money to buy all bulbs if you will get sick of them because they aren’t natural. I bought 6 smart bulbs when I first started and I only use 5 of them because I can’t find a use for the last one in a place that I never need to operate them manually on a regular basis.
@finity I am using a Shelly i3 scene controller behind light switches, in combination with wall mounted Lutron Pico remotes to give full switch control over the wireless lighting system comprised of dimmers, wall plugs, and bulbs
I mean, I don’t mind wifi bulbs - I quite like the philips wiz ones, the apps pretty functional! I hated the Calex/Tuya ones and took them all back.
The only reason I was going to go down the zigbee route was based on the wifi load of my router, although I could presumably just reserve the 2.4ghz for bulbs and devices but where is the fun in that!
Tasmota, I read that Tuya is blocking it possibly?
I’ve moved across to a 128gb 3.0 Usb stick I had. Not a permanent solution, I mean the write speed of a flash drive doesn’t match a SSD in the slightest, but it’s functioning for now! SSD, just need a sata to usb cable then I’m good to go after taking out the SSD from my sons pc…
Oh god, you had to suggest something a 9 year old would love didn’t you!!!
If you need any help let me know
my config is on github https://github.com/lonebaggie/Home_Assistant-Config/blob/master/README.md
That will work as well.
I will check that out thank you
Well, its taken me 3 days but finally zigbee is working. No idea what I had done wrong the first time round but I started over and it’s working! So now I think I’m at the basic level.
The Child wants to get the Philips Wiz and Calex Bulbs working with HA but not sure if we can get that going. We’d need to flash the Calex bulb but I think its recent firmware so I think we’d have to do that manually as opposed to OTA.
At least we can get zigbee bulbs now!
Not sure where you are located, but just in case you weren’t aware, IKEA has Zigbee bulbs, switches, etc: tradfri - Search - IKEA. I don’t use them myself (I have Hue), but many do and it’s another option. Not sure which Zigbee hub you are using, but they seem to work with most from what I’ve read.
I think this is a great project to do with your 9 year old! Lucky kid!
To get the Wiz bulbs working, you need 2 things:
their ip addresses, and a custom integration (until it moves to native integration anyway)
I recommend giving the wiz bulbs on the network a static ip address outside the DHCP range first, then verify in the Wiz app after a power cycle that it has the new address. If you cannot set a static ip on your router, you may be able to do a reserved DHCP address, which also works.
This is the custom integration:
Even though the instructions say to use git clone, you can just download the zip file if your OS does not have the git tools installed
We flashed a zigbee dongle which is now working alongside the pi, haven’t looked at zwave yet.
I’m trying to decide whether to use tuya based gu10s or zigbee ones. I just have no idea whether it matters!
I can get 2 (Tuya) x colour gu10s for £13 at the moment from tesco
I may consider getting rid of them to be honest, there is one in the lamp in the child’s room, I’ve got a led strip light in mine and then we have two gu10s downstairs. I’d put the strip light in his room, and maybe use the bulb in one of the lamps lying around the house. But I don’t think I’m going to continue with the Wiz system. In fact I might even return the wiz led strip as it was a lot of money
As another option as stated you can also use Tradfri Ikea g10 bulbs as another alternative, and they work great and cheap.
I’m a sucker for colour bulbs, we like to disco round the house. I mean its not required in the kitchen…I guess