I have a Yolink Hub which is cloud based and that silly design has been no end of my WAF falling through the floor into an abyss. Reason being, this online hub must have 1,000% connectivity at all times, and even a very small gap of time without it temporarily causes the below kind of issues.
I have gone to endless efforts to make it as reliable as possible but have had the nightmarish issue of Yolink motion sensors not telling Home Assistant there was motion - causing lights to not go on - or worse yet - go off while someone is in the room. My workaround of the cheap motion sensors was to have a timer for the lights that is (re)started when motion is detected, and the lights only going off when the timer is finished. Also the same with smart plugs that rely on the same motion detection - so table lamps turn off that cannot be turned on at the switch on the lamp but that is a separate issue -
The timer therefore finishes while someone is in the room⌠A wife with mobility issues, especially at night⌠So I have been setting the timers to several hours durationâŚ
I moved the Yolink Hub and all of my sensors into their own VLAN so they are disrupted as little as possible and that has helped - but still do not get 100% 24/7 every minute of every day internet connectivity with the Yolink Hub.
The only reason why I stick with Yolink is the Virtualarm service which calls me and then the authorities if I do not respond for any sensor I choose. I cannot find another integration that has this service. I have even gotten the Virtualarm people to reach out to Shelly to see if they can work on a collaboration (unfortunately no results yet).
So - as an empty nester with a spouse with mobility issues - she does wear an ADT pendant with one-button press to get live help when I am not home - but this is related to lighting
What other addon or integration or what have you offers any kind of 24/7 monitoring service?
At this point is there any alternative other than slowly replacing the critical motion sensors with more expensive 100% reliable, local only and non-battery powered solutions?
Iâm not familiar with Yolink, but I might be able to answer your specific questionsâŚ
Any kind of integration that offers 24/7 monitoring is also going to require 24/7 cloud services, which implies a requirement for reliable 24/7 internet connectivity. There might be some alternatives that work over phone or âcellâ service, but theyâll still require some type of connectivity.
When it comes to the health and well-being of your spouse, is there any cost too great? If it were mine, anything I could afford would be worthwhile.
By the way, donât discount battery powered. In fact, in my house, when I lose mains power, I have an oversized UPS that keeps my cable modem, router, an access point, and HA machine up for few hours. When that happens, itâs the battery operated devices throughout my house that can still report status.
I donât agree that #2 has to be 100% not battery nor expensive m
You have a significant other acceptance issue which would be good enough to get me to drop them like a bad habit (Iâd already be moving)
But you also have a life safety issue. And I donât see how anything that depends on cloud connectivity (noe for context, âdepends onâ is not âbeing monitored byâ - big difference one can be done by internet with cellular backup easily) being UP 99.999% of the time can ever satisfy that (hint large organizations spend millions of dollars trying to get â5-9sâ reliability and they rarely even attempt to make network availability part of it because thereâs so many factors outside thier control.). Chaos theory applies - assume the network will fail.
Separate life safety and security from lighting and comfort. Makensure both are satisfied to the extent you need.
First make sure your life safety issue issues are covered by a competent firm that offers reliable notice coverage with an underlying contract⌠And then demand whatever system they recommend works with your own HA install and bring everything in house. Thatâs how I plan my install. And like Gary said in the case of life safety no expense is too great. Iâm sorry you guys are dealing with that and I hope you find a system that meets your needs.