Hello. I do not yet have any home automation. I am pondering what is possible and what hardware to commit to. I am focused more towards home security.
Is there a list somewhere of recommended or supported hardware? If I need sensors (door, motion, vibration, temperature) how do I best choose? How should the new Matter standard impact my purchase choices?
I will try out Home Assistant on a Windows PC. It may stay there if I go with Blue Iris or otherwise for cameras. How do I choose a Zigbee stick?
For a given piece of hardware, how do I know what sensors and actions it supports? For example, for this camera, how would I know if it can be hooked into Home Assistant as a motion sensor, or could I control the lights or zoom or speaker as an action?
Can I send an audio message to a speaker as an action? How do I know what speakers may support this?
The flexibility of Home Assistant is very appealing, but I have no idea how to begin. After I buy hardware, I can experiment, but I fear spending my limited resources on hardware that doesn’t achieve my goals. Where can I read more to answer my shopping questions?
Hi koopa, your questions are typical for a new user: a lot of us have been there where we don’t know what kind of hardware to use to install HA (Home Assistant) on.
After that you have to know if you go for wired or wireless devices.
You could start with wifi devices since you probably have a wifi access point but if you start adding a lot of wifi devices to your network, this might (probably will) have an effect on your wifi performance.
So as a test you might start there since devices are cheap and you get familiar with HA.
The hardware platform for HA and installation method might give you another challenge; with your Windows pc you have to start with virtualization.
I could give you more specific advice but that would be from my perspective (see my signature) and others will say different things so the best thing is to read a little more in the existing topics in this forum.
HA has a steep learning curve, you have to invest some time in it to get the hang of it but - in my experience - it’s worth the effort, so don’t give up with the first struggles.
You need to look at your requirements, and your budget, then whether it’ll work with Home Assistant and whether it’s actually any good. Ask the community for some advice about your choices and you’ll get feedback.
For instance, WiFi devices tend to go through batteries faster than Zigbee ones, and are in general less likely to work with HA. However, some WiFi devices are better than others, and some Zigbee devices are terrible.
IMO Xiaomi devices are generally a good choice (though they have their quirks) and Tuya and Sonoff can be a very mixed bag.
It shouldn’t until it’s a thing with a wide range of products and support in HA - so maybe 2023 or later.
First decide if you’re going to use Zigbee2MQTT (which is external to HA) or ZHA (which is built into HA). Then you can pick your stick. Both have good support for CC2652 based sticks though.
Start by checking to see if there’s either a built in integration or a custom component for that brand that provides a motion sensor and provides that control. You’d normally do motion detection in external software (like Blue Iris), and HA has very limited support for camera speakers.
The history here and on Reddit are a good starting point, as is the history on Discord. You can (and should) also use those to ask about specific things - just ask good questions.
What’s a good camera is a terrible question since the answer is subjective. I’m in the USA, with a budget of $80, looking for a wired network camera supported by Blue Iris and Home Assistant is a better question.