Hey Folks - I was recently introduced to HA and have been tinkering with it in our current home. I’ve been very excited with all the possibilities that HA can bring for making our lives easier. We have a few devices (lights, lock, garage door opener, alarm.com security system, sonos, AppleTvs, ring cameras etc) in our current home that I have added to HA.
So far it has been working ok. There are some issues with the Schlage lock, and couple of other integrations but overall it works fairly well.
However, we are building a brand new home and have the ability to pick hardware that is reliable and consistently works with HA.
We need to make decisions on light switches, door locks, and cameras rather quickly as the low and high voltage wiring is going in now.
Are there brands we should consider that have native integration and work reliably? For example Lutron for lighting.
Here are the type of devices we need to make decisions on:
Light Switches and dimmers (Lutron or TPLink or other brands?
External Cameras (Ring or ReoLink?
Door Locks (many options)
Audio System (Sonos or Control4)
Should I consider building a system that relies on zwave or zigbee and avoid wifi?
My biggest concern is reliability and simplification so that my kids and wife can use it easily.
Some questions to help get the conversation going.
Do you have any intentions to use smart bulbs?
I’d opt for PoE over WiFi any day. A lot more options to include better cameras for less money.
What are you looking for out of the locks? Physical buttons or touch screen? Biometrics? HomeKey support? Bluetooth?
Which one (including WiFi) do you feel like you understand better? What about a mix?
Not to be coy, but much of that will depend on you. You can make a simple device complex to use pretty quickly. You could also be living with a bunch of Mensa candidates that would have no issues picking it up.
Some additional questions.
What are you looking at for network gear? Your selections for wireless coverage may impact things.
What’s the general footprint of the house? This plays into the question above along with recommendations for repeating devices for the Z networks if need be.
What country are you in? Will impact device selection.
What are you working with budget wise? More in a high level sense. The difference of $10 between switch recommendations adds up when you’re talking about a whole home.
The general footprint of the house is around 7000 sqft (3 floors including basement).
Network Gear - Debating between a Ubiquity setup or Aruba AP’s with some router and POE switches to power external cameras, doorbell etc. We are planning to drop 1-2 cat 6 at each TV location and a few others spread through out the house.
The home is in the US
The budget is somewhat subjective. I want to start with the most reliable options and, depending on the price, work our way down to lower-priced switches and dimmers. I’d be ok with a 10-20 difference per switch.
Smart bulbs use will be limited to to table lamps. Most of the lights in the house is already pre-wired for down lights (can lights)
Definitely planning on getting PoE cameras. Trying to determine which has the best integration with HA.
We currently have a keypad-based Bluetooth lock (Schlage brand) connected to a wifi hub and seems to work well by itself. Though not so much with HA. Physical buttons or biometrics are nice to have and not required. I’m not familiar HomeKey support and will have to read up on it. The main requirement would be able to operate remotely via our phones.
I’m mostly familiar with wifi. Do not know much about Zwave or zigbee products.
Recently esphome got support for a whole lot of more chips (realtek and beken) often found in cheap tuya wifi stuff.
We have very much settled on esphome nodes only and it’s amazing how little it needs to just run rock solid.
The first esphome capable device (Sonoff S20) is already more than 5 years old and still going strong. So do all other devices which are completely local and allow to be easily extended
Avoid anything that requires the cloud if you can. All you need to do is look into the current hue fiasco and countless others before them to help make your mind up in this.
Thanks @orange-assistant! Do you think there will be over-saturation of bandwidth if we stick with all wifi devices? My wife and I both work from home, and stable wifi is super important to us as we are on video calls nearly all day.
It depends on the use case I suppose. Battery powered sensors are simpler to setup than trying to do the same thing with ESPhome (e.g. motion, water leak, contact). They can be simpler to manage, but often at the cost of giving up functionality.
Like most here, I have all three. WiFi is the cheapest, but Zigbee is the least reliable as the lowest power of the three it is more susceptible to interference.
My advice-
NO SMART BULBS. Unless you just must have color control, there is nothing a smart bulb can do that a smart switch can’t. Plus the dumb LED bulbs are cheaper.
NO CLOUD DEVICES. The device won’t work without the Internet and there are more than one way for Internet to fail when you need it.
Home Assistant is not a “system” that you buy. It is a DIY project. Emphasis on project. No matter what you start with, it will grow. I get satisfaction of flashing ESPHome to a device and make it work my way. If you want a plug-it-in and walk away system, Home Assistant isn’t there yet.
For new build, I’d be looking at higher end stuff like Lutron RA2/3. I’m sure there are other similar options from other vendors, but the Lutron integrations are very good for HA.
Otherwise you may be testing a lot of switched to find devices of appropriate fit and finish quality for a $7K sqft home. Esphome. zwwave, zigbee - too much of the stuff out there just feels cheap.
Could use just whatever type of (personal appealing) wall switches (push/rocker types) and wire them back to a central cabinet on each floor (depending on the size/runs obviously). Than use a central unit for everything. That allows easy backwards compatibility to a “dumb” setup while at the same time allows for central “smart” units like stuff from kincony or rocketcontroller for example
Thanks @orange-assistant! It might be too late to do any sort of wiring changes and add a controller now. I may just have to go with Lutron products for simplicity use.
I’m kind of in the same situation, although earlier in the process. I am currently thinking about switches. My current home uses Z-wave for all of my wall switches and Zigbee for most battery powered devices. Mixed generations since I gradually automated over the last decade. Whatever I get I want to be UL listed or the equivalent and have them installed by the electrician during construction.
I have had almost no problems with Z-wave, but I feel like it has an uncertain future. I’m still considering it — I like my Inovelli switches, but they seem to have issues keeping things in stock so I don’t know if I can get a whole houseful of switches when I need them, Probably my first choice if I can get the devices when I need them.
I’ve read good things about Lutron Caseta, but it’s yet another protocol and expensive. Still under consideration and it seems likely the electrician would be familiar with it. Probably choice #2.
Probably not Zigbee, it’s been the least reliable for me.
WiFi is an option, but I need to do some research. I know there are some ESP32 based devices out there, but the few I looked at weren’t UL listed.
Maybe Matter/Thread, but I wonder if it will have the same issues as Zigbee with dropoffs? And there aren’t many devices yet.
Anyway, I’ll be watching this thread to see what other suggestions you get.
I’ll always recommend Zooz products. All my on/off/dimming switches are Zooz starting with the 2X series up to the 7X series. I had one failure very early on that turned out to be related to a bathroom exhaust fan not playing nice with the 2X series. It was quickly replaced by support. I know people stand by Lutron as being bullet proof, but the price difference doesn’t justify it for me.
I have GE Enbrighten switches for ceiling fan control (all AC fans) and haven’t had a single one give me grief.
.