Greetings. I need some pointers on where to start.
I started out with a Lowes Iris years ago then migrated to SystronicsRF when Lowes bailed. SystronicsRF disappeared about a year ago. Now I have recently changed residence and only have a couple of Raspberry Pi’s and a few smart plugs. I want to automate a lot of lights, door locks, thermostats, etc. I did go ahead and be a myQ garage door controller.
I loaded OpenHab on an RPi but it seems atrocious to use and understand for a new user so I’m now looking at Home Assistant. I cannot find a list of devices that are supported. Specifically, I want to get some smart door deadbolts and smart thermostats soon but don’t know how to tell which would be compatible with HA. Integrations page doesn’t tell me about specific brands or devices. How do I tell what is compatible with HA?
I’ve been looking at the docs but not finding info to make a decision. I am a retired programmer so can handle installation, etc but I am not versed in home automation.
Any pointers on where to start and how to select compatible devices would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Eddie
Is this the integrations page you looked at?
Yes, I looked at that page and searched some. But I can’t tell if, for instance, a particular Schlage z-wave, zigbee or wifi lock is supported or a particular thermostat is supported. Am I just not understanding something fundamental?
Eddie
If that’s your assessment of OH3, I don’t believe a new user will find Home Assistant much easier to understand.
I have used both and, honestly, both require a significant investment of one’s time and effort to master.
That’s explained in the Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) integration: Knowing which devices are supported
There is no official compatibility list of supported devices for the simple reason that practically all devices Zigbee Home Automation that are fully compliant with the standards and specifications as set by the Zigbee Alliance should technically be compatible with this ZHA integration.
… while there is no official list of supported devices, some ZHA users take comfort that blakadder maintains an unofficial Zigbee Device Compatibility Repository which anyone can submit compatibility reports to
That may be true. I’ll find out soon enough. I’ll start loading Home Assist tonight. I’m not afraid of putting in the time. From my experience documentation is written with a good bit of knowledge assumed. In this case for me it is familiarity with how Home Automation works and it’s language/terminology. Moving into a new are and not knowing the language is hard and it seemed to me that OpenHab has a lot of excess stuff to get straight. And I haven’t been through any Home Assist tutorials yet to know.
But I’m still interested in how to select compatible devices (if that is really an issue) so I don’t spend money on something I can’t readily integrate. And I still don’t know how to do that.
Eddie
Did you look at the Zigbee Device Compatibility Repository link I posted above?
Yes, thank you. That does help for zigbee but not for z-wave and wifi. Maybe this is just not the big issue I’m making it. I understand that a comprehensive list would be virtually impossible. Maybe the answer is to jump in and start kicking hard and see where I go. Let me go try that.
Eddie
Z-Wave is a fairly tightly controlled specification so if the indicates it supports Z-Wave then that’s all the assurance needed.
Wi-Fi is not designed exclusively for use with home automation devices. That means if a device from one manufacturer communicates via Wi-Fi it’s unlikely it will communicate with another manufacturer’s Wi-Fi device unless the two support some other common standard (like Homekit, Tuya, etc).
Oh. So zwave should be good. And for wifi I need to be looking for one of the “integrations” it supports. That is the kind of concepts I think are missing. It’s just something you know if you have worked in the field enough. Thanks, that helps a,lot.
Eddie
Be aware that a lot of (most…?) wifi stuff is going to need cloud access to function correctly.
But there are devices that are more easily converted to be used as local only control. Sonoff, Shelly are a couple that can usually be flashed with third party firmware for local control.
And they (Shelly at least but not sure about Sonoff) have recently made it more easy to switch to local control via the installed firmware so depending on the device you may not even need to flash them.
Tuya based devices used be a go-to solution but from the stuff I’ve seen on here recently I would avoid them if at all possible.
So try to stay away from cloud based devices unless they can be converted/flashed unless you don’t mind the manufacturer being able to arbitrarily shut off your devices functionality or requiring a subscription to keep using it at some point in the future.
I have zero cloud based devices in my system and I use zwave, zigbee and wifi devices depending on the functionality I need, availability in a particular protocol and cost.
This would also be something I wish I knew when I started.
Classifying the Internet of Things - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Whatever protocol or brand or system you are looking for, try to stay with local pushing or local polling. (Not always possible / feasible, I know, but try.)
Other than that, ask away.
(… and provide enough info / context while doing so).
You might want to look at this thread, too:
Start by installing HA and some basic functionality like a light.
It’s inevitable that you have to select a way of connecting devices to your system and Wi-Fi is most likely already available. (I started that way)
But… when I started, you could buy Wi-Fi devices of which you were able to flash with other software so you could integrate them directly to HA. I don’t know if you still can such kind of devices.
That leaves you with:
- wired
- zigbee (wireless)
- z-wave (wireless)
- bluetooth low energy
Look around, read some and check what kind of devices you want to start with.
From there do a search here in the forum to see what the experiences are with these devices.
Here are a few links to topics about the different technologies: