Overwhelmed by choices even before getting HA

Hardware
,
1

So I’ve been searching around and planning to start my home automation journey for the past few days, I have a raspberry pi and fell in love with HA just from the research I’ve done so I’m going with that route.

My issue begins at choosing where to start, I’ve decided that’ll go with simple light automation first, in two different ways:

1-in wall switches
2-light bulbs

The confusion comes from the amount of possible options to choose from?

For in wall I could go with a shelly 1 as a relay and keep current switches, or I could replace the wall switches themselves, but which is better? More reliable? Asthetics aside why would I use one over the other?

For the light bulbs which would be best for HA? I don’t plan on diving into zwave or zigbee yet and since I have great wifi coverage using unifi I believe wifi will be best.

2

Too much choice…, all I can do is tell you what I have setup over the last couple of years…

Hue Lights, I have 54 hue lights in my house, mostly GU10 downlighters, 3 outdoor floodlights, and a smattering of single bulbs. These have been totally reliable over a 2 year period an d work with HA, Google Home and Alexa.

Govee LED Strips, couple of these outside in the garden, again, not issues and works with everything.

Switches…, I have 4 Sonoff wall switches, 1, 2 and 3 gang versions which work great and look the part. However, you need to have a neutral wire available in your light switch so these can be powered. In the UK most ‘Modern’ homes have this, but older ones do not.

I also have 10 Sonoff Basic in-line switches which also work very reliably.

There are so many products out there now its hard to know where to start. I went with Hue because they get great reviews and Philips are in there 130th year of trading, and it looks like they will be sticking around for a while…, you have to ask yourself the question “How long is this company going to be around”, because if you plan on using these lights for say 10 years, you would hope the company will still be around as well.

Sonoff is an interesting example of this… I have no idea if Itead will be around next month or next year…, but they make a wide range of IoT devices, and are always bringing out new products, so fingers crossed they stick around. There is also an active community of developers writing custom firmware for ESP8266 based devices (Tasmota), so support should be no problem even if they do disappear.

Next I’ll be answering the age old question “How long is a piece of string”…

3

These questions will always be answers anecdotaly… but one thing leads to the other. I starte out with Nexa/Tellstick solutions and have since expanded with Ikea Trådfri for most of my home lights. I removed the switch rockers on the walls, put a lid on and added Ikea’s remotes in their places. Works pretty well. There’s something in the Ikea lights that glitch up every once in a while making them no longer respond to the commands from the gateway. Because of this, I installed Nexa on/off remotes in the wall so that I can cut the whole circuit and reboot the lamps if needed. So there’s a little piece on reliability… Still think Ikeas stuff is decent, and easy to work with, and works nicely with HA too.

4

If you’re considering the ZWave path at all, I have all Innovelli Red Series switches and dimmers and have been very happy with them. Highly configurable, very reliable, look great. Love the LED notifications. Neutral not required for dimmers. A little pricey, but worth it in my opinion and they have bulk pricing now. Their RGB bulbs are decent also. The owner of Inovelli used to be fairly active in the forums here.

Welcome and have fun with your never ending home automation journey.

5

Thank you all for the amazing replies, it seems that this journey is going to have a lot of available options from me to pick from and it comes with a steep learning curve, for now I will start simple and go with integrating WLED and ESP8266 to a normal LED, next will probable be a shelly 1 with an existing light switch, lastly I might try either z-wave related products or zigbee.

6

Start with a solid foundation, keep the variation i of devices to a minimum, and think about how much time you want to and can invest is the best advice I can give.

I have found that I have spent more time trying to get my zwave and zigbee devices working with Home Assistant than any other type of device. As an example my Yale Lock and GE fan switch are not fully implemented in the new ZwaveJS. They worked better in SmartThings. I have the Lutron switches and those have been plug and play so those cost me no time at all. ESP devices with ESPHOME is great but does require tinkering so prepare to invest some time.

Home Assistant itself takes a little to get your head around and can be allot when you get into the weeds, this is why I suggest picking devices that just work.

7

That is a great advice.
My intention were the same even before starting to work with HA and seeing how much of a learning curve there is to this, but it is extremely fun. I plan on staying away from both Zigbee and Zwave at least until I’ve wrapped my head around HA and covered all the basics.