i’ve decided to start integrating some of my household devices.
after doing some weeks of research i bought 2x ZBDongle-E ( i believe i will have to have one as a Coordinator and one as a router, for extra range)
i will be also getting 5x or 10x zbmini-l2’s.
now, this is where your experience will come in handy. I’ve looked online and found that MOES is quite popular. i’ve added some items into my shopping cart (from this store) , but i really don’t know if these are old or new tech, if they had issues or still have , so i kinda need your help.
is anyone able to tell if my shopping bag will be trouble free? anyone has any ongoing issues with any of them?
Are you aware that you have selected WiFi devices as well?
One of them has a Tuya stamp and those are cloud controlled devices.
There is a way to integrate them locally but…
If you do a search on the forum you will see a lot of topics about these devices and many pro’s and contra’s.
I had some but ditched them.
Regarding zigbee: there are 2 different integrations (ZHA & zigbee2mqtt) to integrate them into HA.
If you take a look at Zigbee2MQTT you get an idea about what works with the z2m integration.
hi
thanks a lot for your input. my thought here was that
if it has extra wifi , i can use it or not. it’s like an extra available option.
can’t that be turned ON/OFF or if it’s there, it has to be used too?
I agree with Nick4’s recommendation to start slowly. I am on my fourth generation of smart home activities, having started about 6 years ago with a Raspberry Pi/node red/. Then, I went to some Alexa stuff, then Arduino cloud, and now Home Assistant. Home Assistant is great, but it takes some maintenance and quite a bit of study.
When you start up, I strongly suggest you get a stable Home Assistant server set up and pick one or two things you would like to automate—maybe one outlet, one light, or a temperature sensor—and play with it for a couple of weeks, then slowly add additional features. I can almost guarantee you will not end up with the list of control devices you picked in the beginning.
One more thing; if you use any mains-powered Zigbee devices, they almost all work as routers, so you really only need the one coordinator. If you find you need more coverage to some area, just stick a Zigbee smart plug somewhere in between. Even if you don’t need it as a smart plug, it’ll act as a router and they’re pretty cheap. Just don’t rely on any Zigbee routing devices which can be turned off from a physical switch, like light bulbs.
Be very, very careful with any WiFi devices. They almost all want to force you into their ecosystem, using their apps and their back-end servers. Beyond the obvious privacy issues, these also leave you at the mercy of the vendor. They can push firmware updates which break the HA integration, start charging for the use of their servers, or go out of business and shut down their servers. Protocols like Zigbee and Z-Wave won’t have these risks.
Another aspect is that, the more different integrations you install, the more things you have to maintain. Major HA releases come out monthly. This is a very dynamic environment and things change a lot. Some of these changes require you do take some action to keep some integration or another working. Sometimes they actually break an integration or two. The more integrations you have, the more exposed you are to these issues.
If I were starting out today, I’d try to stick with one protocol, either Zigbee or Z-Wave, for almost everything. I’d make an exception for ESPHome, which works totally local and allows me to build devices that I can’t easily source off the shelf.
the worry i have atm, my house is about 3-4 stories high.full concrete/bricks. boiler is right at the bottom, 1 bedroom on the next floor, 4 bedrooms on the 3rd floor and on the 4th floor right now is an empty loft. that’s why i wanted 2 usb 3.0 zigbee’s plus ( i know, i can use power sockets and light switches as indoor repeaters, just don’t know the actual ranges to use them as a guide for my projects)
on top of that, my property gate is about 30 meters away from the house (no power at all) and i just wanted to reach out that far too somehow with a second usb, to connect the future outdoor pir, sockets, lights, etc .
i’ve seen powerless switches and i wanted to connect one of those for the doorbell somehow.
we have a deep well with a pump and i wanted to connect that and link it with an outdoor smart switch/socket to automate night/day time irrigation based on weather of course. i think i will need a weather station maybe, haven’t researched that far yet
having all this in mind, what kind of PC storage should i be using. how much space you guys use?
thanks again, this level of help is gold for my development
