Hi!
As a beginner on the topic and with about 1 month+ delivery to everything I order (yeah, don’t tell me…) things are starting to take shape. I’ve received a few and waiting for a few more for testing purpose mainly. So I have Xiaomi thermometers, Raspberry PI for now until I move everything to my NAS, some yeelights and I’m waiting for SONOFF basicR3, SONOFF T0 & T2 switches, some ESP-something as well… but I’ll need more and was wondering what you would recommend? I’m looking at cheap & reliable motion, temp, lights maybe: do you build them with ESP8266 and/or arduino board then add the sensor and 3D print a box, add a USB power adapter or have you found “already made” sensors which are just plug & play (&flash maybe?) and work the same?
Also side question: as I’m getting some SONOFF devices I see you need a cable to flash it but haven’t found the whole thing to order somewhere. So do I need to buy 2-3 items, put them together to have such a cable?
Thank you in advance for all your advices on the topic.
I am on the same path, just a couple of years ahead
Welcome and have fun
My personal opinion is that you will need a different type of thingy depending on the installation.
I’m guessing your house is already built and you like the most of us are working to implement stuff with the smallest intervention possible, It really depends on the case.
Generally, i use sonoff basics (or you could go for the new sonoff mini or some shellys) for the existing light fixtures where i want to turn them on/off and maybe add a pir sensor. It’s really hard to get a 5v power adaptor there and that’s the main advantage of the sonoff, it works off the power grid.
I use a sonoff 4ch to control my irrigation, as i needed 4 relays and liked the built in interlocking features. I never flashed a different software on that, just using the original ewelink with this HA addon which supports them unflashed.
An node-mcu hooked up with different stuff (relay, dht sensor, pir and a 2line LCD display) for my smart radiator thermostat.
I use an esp32 (which has more available gpios) with ~15 relays hooked on it hidden behind a wall where most of my wall switches are near, plus some pir + dht temperature sensors.
But if there’s a lightbulb in a corner of the house and im feeling rich, i’d just buy a good rgb-wifi bulb and get over with it, without planning and tinkering. Just make sure to check the brightness of the bulbs, for example the sonoff rgb bubls are crap, they have OK brightness on white but their rgb is rather crappy, but their price is lower.
I intend to use an ESP32CAM installed wher the natural gas meter is at my home, to read out the numbers using seven segments sensor of home assistant.
As for firmware, i have just started moving everything into esphome, it’s very nice, easy and stable. Im currently moving my ~20 tasmotas to esphome.
About this, for flashing the sonoffs and the esps that dont have a usb port (ie esp32CAM) in my experience you just need an adapter like this one. There are some fake out there that are supposed to not work but i bought one a while back and it’s working fine.
You just hook up a usb cable (not the micro usb, the older one we used on cameras a while back) on one side to connect it to the PC where you are flashing from and on the other side you need 4 dupont cables to connect it to the chip you are about to flash. Just make sure you set the jumper to 3v on sonoffs, or whatever your chips need (The tasmota wiki is pretty extensive on instructions there)
Those are my thoughts, as I said im still trying to figure things out, so any comments or suggestions are welcome.
Hope i didnt scare you
Have fun
oh and the links are from a quick amazon search, they are not the ones i bought
As far as motion goes… I bought some PIRs to hang off existing Pi Zeroes, but at the same time I also got a Xiaomi sensor (Zigbee version). The Xiaomi “just works” and given they need to be visible, it’s also tiny and looks good and runs off a battery. So I bought a few more and gave up on the DIY option. I also have a Hue motion which is double the cost and four times the size. It’s only advantage is temperature recording seems more accurate than the Xiaomi (which perhaps need calibration?). I had some other temperature devices, but disabled them because I don’t really need to know the temperature in every room of the house.
I’ve currently got a single ESPHome PIR sensor downstairs. It works well enough, but doesn’t blend terribly well with the room decor. I’ve ordered a couple of Xiaomi PIR sensors some weeks back, but they haven’t arrived yet.
Hey!
Thanks a lot to all of you. So yes I am really in that position where I am renting the house where I stay and everything is not very well suited . I’ve been here 5+ years and will probably continue to stay a few more years. It’s also a country where there is no standard as far as plugs or dimensions are concerned (it’s 220v though) so I was a bit hesitant regarding fitting SONOFF Minis and have opted to replace the switches when needed for now. The home is rather big so BT devices need some kind of extra devices to push the signal to the Wifi network to get the readings. I’ve ordered some MH-ET LIVE ESP32 for that.
So now back to PIR/temp/etc I’ve read since that DIY ones cost about $7 and found some nice 3D printed boxes off Thingiverse. It’s true that you still need to plug them while running off a battery is a lot more convenient. So far I’ve found the MijiaPIR at about $15 per piece, so that’s about twice the price. And I’ve been struggling to connect my Yeelight to Home Assistant so maybe DIY would be easier?
Either way I really need to get more familiar with connecting the devices, building them, flashing them etc… I guess that’s part of the process.
zigbee is alot faster than wifi on batteries, my wifi sensors taks about 6-10 seconds to change state, not suitable for most automations. zigbee is instantaneous.
I see. So as I am planning to turn on the light based on PIR responses I guess I shouldn’t use WiFi then. Would BT work faster, do you have any DIY modules to recommend?
Thank you.
if you want something cheap and quick there’s rf, but you don’t get the battery monitoring, link qulity and ease of use you get with zigbee. with rf you need to sniff the code and manually add it, alot of time it doesn’t work because of some weird protocols.
with zigbee2mqtt you just press the button and bam it’s on your HA.
i have some xiaomi pir and door sensors, and i really like them.
BLE and zigbee are very similar if you want to go with diy there are many tutorials like this:
I’ve ordered a couple of Xiaomi PIR sensors some weeks back, but they haven’t arrived yet. 
