Hi everyone,
I’ve been searching the forums and read about 6 million topics so far and my head hurts… Every time I find something that looks like it might be promising, it leads me down a rabbit hole of needing to learn a whole new thing.
I’m happy to learn all about a certain topic, I kind of would like to know whether it’s something that will be of interest to me before I go down the rabbit hole.
What I’m looking for is a smart plug, that will not require the internet to function, that will function with my Home Assistant, and is available to buy in Ireland (so, a UK style plug).
Seems simple enough and yet… The only one that I can actually see readily available to buy, doesn’t require internet and works with Home Assistant is the TP-Link ones, however the integration has been pulled by TP-Link and, based on what I’ve read, you kind of might get it to work, might not, and they might completely block it as well with the next firmware update.
Neither Amazon (UK), nor Curry’s (I have one right next to me) have a large selection. The TP-Link’s are available, but as I mentioned above it seems uncertain to me.
One of the options I see is possibly buying one of the plugs and flashing Tasmota (how do I know they’re compatible, what do I need to flash, does that actually allow me to have a no-internet-required, HA compatible plug?)?
I see also Zigbee might be an option, don’t know anything about it, presumably I buy a hub and then… Connect a plug to that Zigbee hub and connect the hub to my HA and that all just works and all I need to do is search for Zigbee plugs?
I see Tuya mentioned as well, but can’t really figure out how that works either and seems like it might still need internet.
I really can’t figure this out on my own
I have no problem with software, I’m a developer, I’ve even programmed my own Ambilight system with an Arduino controlling an RGB LED strip, but these plugs are doing my head in.
Can anyone help me figure out which plug(s) I can buy with those requirements? I was initially hoping to get one with energy monitoring as well as a nice bonus, but reaaaaally don’t care about that anymore…
Also saw there are custom integrations, that want you to use that HACS thing… I am on HA Core, in the virtual Python environment. Not sure if that’s supported there (presumably it just drops some files into the correct locations from GitHub, possibly runs some pip installations or something, I can do that manually).