I’ve had Smartthings for a number of years. It’s been OK. I’ve decided that I want something that will actually work without “the cloud” and thought the Home Assistant community looked promising. I’m planning to run everything from a Raspberry Pi4 (8GB version). I looked around for an FAQ to answer this, but didn’t see anything. Feel free to point me there if I just didn’t find it.
My question: I want to start from scratch. I don’t mind punting all my existing Smartthings stuff and buying all new devices. I was looking for pointers on which brands of devices were known to be well supported. I have a 5000 sq/ft home. What I’m looking for:
door/window sensors
smoke/CO detectors
video camera support for my entrances
garage door support (available?)
power up/down detection
That last one is so that I can tell if I’m on grid power or my generator (I live in an area where we lose grid power from time to time…sometimes for days).
I don’t mind rolling up my sleeves and doing a bit of coding. I’m basically looking for a “known good” shopping list so I can get started and I’m looking forward to contributing to the project!
Depending on what you actually have in the way of sensors already you don’t necessarily have to ditch everything. Unless you have $ burning a hole in your wallet.
Virtually anything zwave or zigbee is going to be able to be reused (minus some proprietary zigbee stuff if you are trying to ditch secondary hubs).
First things first though. Get a good zwave stick. I personally use the latest zooz and it’s been great…many prefer the aeotec nuts on backorder.
Get your pi set up and start with a few devices you already have before ordering a ton of new stuff
Sounds like a plan. I’ve got a couple of Pi 4’s already (one is a Plex media server and the other is running pi.hole to blackhole ads (funny enough… much of the dropped traffic is also the very chatty outbound traffic from Samsung devices).
The existing stuff (other than the Smartthings hub) is just a bunch of door sensors and hooks into Alexa to control all the cheesy wifi plugs I’m about to throw out. I’ve also got Nest thermostats that I may or may not want to keep. It’s been a while since I looked to see what was out there.
Is this the type of Zooz stick you’re referring to?
I’m a former SmartThings user as well. I second the Zooz stick. Get the one with the 700 chip.
Zigbee coordinator I recommend is over Ethernet so you can locate it anywhere you want and can get an Ethernet cable to. I use one by Tube here in the forum. Just do some searching for that.
Decide what Zigbee setup you want so you can check compatibility. I use ZHA and all 40+ Zigbee devices I have are working as well or better than they did with SmartThings. If you have the SmartThings Button, they’re awesome with ZHA. So fast!
Here is my My Smartthings Divorce on my experience moving from Smartthings to HA. I am running using a mix of original Smartthings devices (ZigBee using ZHA): buttons, door and motion sensors and light bulbs as well as TP-Link switches and bulbs plus a few other devices. I am using a Pi4 with an SSD.
I have been very pleased with the setup, a few issues here and there: TP-Link KL130 bulbs randomly going offline, needed to add a debounce on my buttons, etc. Not yet 99.999% solid but getting there and far more reliable than the Smartthings cloud.
BTW, I use Node-Red for all my automations: lights operating based upon time of day, battery checks, door monitoring, etc. It has a learning curve but I find it easier than WebCore.
Cool. Looks like I found the right place. My Pi 4’s are using the Argon One case that supports an M.2 SSD and the case itself has a slug that contacts the cpu so that the aluminum case acts as a big passive heatsink. It makes a huge difference with performance.
Edit: Read the divorce papers. We have a LOT of gear in common. Also running google mesh (3 pucks), though all my rpi’s are connected to gigabit ethernet (which I’ve got running to most of the rooms in the house).
Sounds good and best of luck. Feel free to reach out if you need. I am far from an expert but might be able to help. I have had my fair share of brain farts along the way.
Checkout this thread too, some of us discussed our move.
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Smartthings recently announced Edge which sounds great and all, but their poor decisions over the past year or so and the way they shut down the classic app has pushed many developers away from the platform already. Without developers most legacy devices will just stop working as the old dths are no longer supported or updated.
Hi All
I’m new to Home Assistant and have been struggling to set up the Smartthings integration for the last few hours. (Many hours!) I’ve discovered that the url in the Home Assistant Cloud (Nabu Casa) does not match the url I’m presented with when I try to configure the Smartthings Integration in ‘Integrations’. Is this the issue and if so how do I correct it?
Many thanks.
Jonathan
My Pi 4’s are using the Argon One case that supports an M.2 SSD and the case itself has a slug that contacts the cpu so that the aluminum case acts as a big passive heatsink. It makes a huge difference with performance.