Newbie here. I have installed Home Assistant and I am learning of the marvelous world of automation it offers, and so far I am loving it!
The reason I am writing is that I am in need of measuring (and thus controlling) the temperature in 3 different rooms.
What sensors work well with HA that do not require a hub?
I am using 2 different sensors. Awair Element and Shelly DW2.
The Element is a multi sensor device and includes temp, and is expensive. The DW2 is a door/window sensor that also has a light level and temp sensor inside.
Both are wifi 2.4GHz and can be accessed locally, no cloud
speaking about shelly for temperature measurement I would chose H&T sensor. Measuring close to window might be affected by ext temp, sun rays etc. But DW2 might be useful when controlling heating
The one major drawback with the DW2 is the frequency of updates, which is very slow since it is on battery. It is good for lower floor doors if using for temp management since it is more accurate (no roof radiation), though can be used as an indicator on external windows if the sun is hitting that side of the house.
The DW2 updates when the device is woken up by an open event, or when the temp changes by more than a preset amount, so it may be half a day in some cases before you get a temp update.
I think it is the way of working of all battery powered devices: to report temperature when it changes by some threshold. it’s to save battery obviously.
DW and H&T are defaulted to 1 degree of C and 5% for humidity. But it can be changed for example to fraction of degree for a cost of more battery drain.
In addition H&T can be externally powered (special addon needed). then it can report data with fixed frequency.