I see there have been a few other threads with this topic in the distant past but I don’t see any resolution.
I’ve come pretty far with HA automating our house using a lot of wifi sonoff type outlets connected to SmartLife/Tuya and a lot of wireless tags from wirelesstag.net. The one big hole that I still have is that there are times it is convenient to have a physical button - for example at the top of the basement stairs, or for a doorbell, or for my son who hates talking to his lights (we use google home also) or using his phone.
There are $40 zwave buttons but I really would like to find something sub $20, preferably even cheaper than that. Seems like such a simple thing compared to the complex control in all of the existing platforms.
I do have an idea, there is now a SmartLife/Tuya link in HA and it works great but is missing the sensor category - I have a SmartLife magnetic door sensor and it does not show in HA when connecting to my SmartLife account. If this sensor category was included, I don’t think it’d be a big code change, then I could simply hack apart a few door sensors and wire a button in where the reed switch normally is.
I would love to be the one to go add the code, and I’m trying to get time to set up a dev environment, but unfortunately with everything else going on that’s gonna be a while.
Does anyone have any other cheap elegant solutions? I also have a smartthings hub that I intend to switch to an Aotec stick pretty soon so I could do z wave as well. I was able to get the Tuya door sensor to work via IFTT to HA but the delay is too high.
FYI I do not currently have my HA instance on a public facing URL, I just don’t have enough confidence in my Linux security skills to go that route - I’m a programmer but I’m 95% in the Windows world.
I think I came across those last time I was searching but it seems like the only place I can get them is via Ali Express and it’s just not clear enough to me what I’m ordering there. Where do you buy them from in the UK?
Hi Martin. This sounds exactly what I want to do as the Xiaomi kit is well priced. I’m slightly concerned about the range. If I put Xiaomi buttons at different sides/floors of the house I suspect I might have a problem with range. The quoted range is 15m but I live in a traditional UK brick house and i suspect they won’t reach. How have you found the range?
I figure I could get multiple hubs (overkill)
Or buy some smart sockets that act as repeaters (seems crazy to have to put chinese sockets around my house to extend the signal!)
Am i overthinking this?
I have one running many items such as dimmers & bulbs from both ikea and hue, sensors from xiaomi & Hue. Was the best thing that I have bought. Fairly simple setup.
Range wise, as the bulbs also act as extenders themselves, everything in my (UK, brick, 4 bed) house is picked up fine.
I just wanted to chime in and say that I wound up getting a Lutron Caseta advanced hub and a couple of pico remotes. Expensive solution for physical buttons but I did it at the recommendation of a friend, they are very very responsive and rock solid. If you do it though use the custom component interface.