I am moving from a homegrown Linux based solution using HEYU2 and approx 50 X10 products.
I have successfully moved all my switches to Lutron Caseta, and found home assistant by mistake, but it is wonderful! I am running on a raspberry pi4 and found the Synology plugin to pull in my cameras.
I plan to get an Ecobee Thermostat to replace my 20 year old RCS X10 based thermostat.
I am struggling with all the changes to find smart plugs to replace all my appliance and lamp modules though.
I have replaced a few of the lamp modules with the Caseta PD-3PCL-WH and it is working flawlessly.
But it looks like Switchbot and Sonoff have made changes recently that have relied on the cloud, and I am definitely headset against cloud dependancies.
I am desperately looking for a smart plug that does not require flashing (I need to replace at least 12 of them) and I can not stomach the the $80 for the 1 smart plug from Caseta. (I have one for my outdoor light transformer, and it works great, but I am not spending $80 a pop!).
Any recommendations, or how-tos are appreciated. I am very much a newbie. 5 days in, but am loving the dashboards I have created so far!
I’d highly recommended getting ZigBee setup on your HA/RPi. With ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT you have complete local control and a mesh network that is also not using your WiFi. I had started with WiFi but quickly moved to ZigBee after installing a $25 ZigBee HAT in my RPi. You can find a lot of decent ZigBee devices on the cheap on AliExpress, or the Aqara & Sengled devices on Amazon.
I guess I should mention I am US. My Pi4 might not be easily adapted to a HAT. I have it in a fan case that is pretty confined. I dedicated it to HA without even access to GPIO out of the case. I have looked at the HA Yellow solution, which is pretty appealing, since I lost my media connection and browsing capabilities on my big screen with the HA install I did. It is still very cool. I am very old school, and had a very complete X10 system with a custom web interface I wrote over the course of 15 years to incorporate all my X10 devices communicating with perl over Heyu. I am trying to learn YAML, and need to explore what HA is doing under the hood, but I am very impressed with the UI, and want to sell the house in the next 3-5 years, so I am trying to keep things as plug-n-play as possible. I know this is not the audience HA is designed for, but I am trying.
The audience that HA is designed for is whoever finds it useful
I would echo @timnolte on going with Zigbee or even Z-Wave. Get a combo stick or single protocol stick and plug it a USB port.
I’ve got both protocols in play around my place, along with some WiFi and Lutron Caseta devices (I’m just all over the place
These are working well for me on the Z-wave side of things. I got these mostly because I needed to extend the routing range of my Z-wave mesh to reach some Z-wave locks. Z-wave is definitely more pricey than Zigbee.
These are also working well for me on the Zigbee side of things. Also, these are more cost effective than the Z-wave plugs.
And yeah, as @tykeal mentioned you can go the USB dongle option as well. However, make sure that you use a USB 2.0 port and a long USB extension cable to avoid ZigBee interference. I’m using a HAT with and external antenna and it had been working OK so far.
Also, if you want to keep things on the simple side use ZHA(ZigBee Home Assistant) instead of Zigbee2MQTT as Z2M is much more complex to manage. I prefer Z2M but I’m a young techie with no intention of selling my home anytime soon.
Yeah, Shelly devices are definitely good in the local-only control department however, I feel like it’s not as comparable to x10 given that they require sharing your WiFi network. ZigBee & Z-Wave seem more comparable in terms of using their own dedicated protocol/network.
Thanks for the responses, finding the Switchbot and WeMo integration broken was discouraging after purchasing a dozen smart plugs, twice expecting a more seamless experience. Reflashing hardware is not user-friendly for most people and is not an option for this project. I will look at zigbee, and it may be a solution if I buy the HA Yellow. Unfortunately, an USB dongle or hat wont work for my application. I really would just like to find an HA compatible wifi drop-in replacement for the AM466 appliance modules.
The problem with a hat is that it defeats the CPU fan I am using. Where I have the Pi4 mounted the CPU temp is consistently at 140F with the fan. A hat would probably fry the cpu before I sell the house. I have 9 Pis at the moment and have retired 4 in the past, so I am familiar with the platforms capabilities (the ever increasing use cases are amazing to this old geek. ).
The issue I have with z-wave and most likely zigbee is the expense and learning curve. I need to provide a solution that does not require a new home owner to be into tech and I just need a few outlets to throw on an off/on timer. I personally have been in IT for over 40 years (after abandoning an Electrical Engineering degree for this new fangled thing called the Internet, ), so designing my own 433mhz relay network would not be that difficult (and I have actually had such fun with lightshowpi and my Christmas light display.). I just can’t expect a new owner to try and understand my efforts after I sell.
Selling this property with a “feature add” of some home-automation is the desire. I have a few more years though, so I need to keep it simple, but functional in the meanwhile. If I cant get some reasonable “smart” plugs (), I will probably just go with dumb timers or some ‘clapper’ plugs.
Still looking for the home-assistant solution that is as simple as Lutron Caseta. It has to be out there?
There’s a few threads about selling homes. Most recent that I’ve seen is this one.
Lutron Caseta may be your best route given what you’ve stated. That will work entirely locally with Home Assistant, but it’s easy to hand off to a new home owner. I know this because I got one handed off to me with my most recent house purchase and it integrates very well with Home Assistant!
Well, so to me the need for a WiFi network actually makes it harder to just hand off to a new home owner, whereas Zigbee has it’s own network and the cost of devices can be pretty cheap and easy to integrate. With all WiFi devices does that mean you are leaving your WiFi network/equipment behind as well, if not then the new home owner is going to have to reconfigure all of the devices for their new WiFi in order to get things working again.
That being said the Lutron Caseta setup is more geared to a more general non-techie audience but there is a pretty huge expense difference for those devices.
Thanks for the Selling home link… I should have thought to search for that, but for some reason I thought my situation was unique. I am definitely going to be doing some further searches.
Lutron Caseta was an easy install, and recommended by a real estate agent I know. It also led me to Home-Assistant and gave me the itch to explore it. The Caseta Pico remotes as actual remotes are a little annoying though?! I much prefer the 16 device remotes for X10, but with recent changes in my neighborhood and the addition of LED lights made my X10 setup unstable. Frustrating because I had it all dialed in before they put in a new sub station and all my lights started to turn on randomly once they hooked us into the new station.
Caseta works great with the LEDs and it took me just a few hours to get all my switches changed and get some scenes setup. The price was not terribly bad for a bulk set of switches, but the outdoor appliance smart plugs are ridiculously expensive for a simple on off button. I have some older cameras that I have plugged into appliance modules so they can be reset remotely when they go offline. It does not happen often, but the few times I needed to reboot them, it was a lot easier from an x10 remote then climbing up in the attic where I have them plugged in. I bought a couple Caseta outdoor plugs for the malibu lights, but I wish there was some cheaper models. The lamp modules do not handle the transformer loads, and I am not sure how the transformers would handle the gradual dim-off feature anyway. I am sure I will get something figured out.
Zigbee is looking promising. I am pretty much decided I will be installing an HA Yellow when I have some more time to replicate my initial effort, so I have some reading to do on Zigbee. And I will use my existing setup to break things and learn from before I get to a permanent solution. And yes, Wifi router will be staying in my Telecommunication closet along with the switches used by the CAT6 in all the rooms. I am having a house built, so everything will be new when we move. Then I can start over.
I see the Integration plug-in in HA! I am a little annoyed it is not available on Amazon and wants payment thru PayPal. However, It looks like a plug and play option. I have a 3 radio Wave 6 WiFi network, so I do not anticipate network issues (I already have 30+ devices on my network and from network utilization graphs I am barely at 20% most of the time. No issues streaming 10 cameras and 2-3 devices simultaneously.). Still exploring, but wondered if anyone uses these plugs from Shelly with the core Shelly Integration.
So I decided to Try Sonoff S31 smart plugs after seeing this video:
I had to hunt and fiddle a bit, but I think I have HACS and the SONOFF - LAN Integration installed. I will post an update if it works. It is far from plug-n-play, but at least for now it will save me from hours of zigbee research and hopefully get rid of a dozen more x10 appliance modules.
Back to figuring out how to get my PWS customized.
Absolutely Fantastic! Pairing with eWeLink is a bit of a pain, but now that that is over, everything is local, and no network issues! Super happy. It looks like it only reaches out to the cloud when you restart HA? Sonoff S31s were a winner!
I have to research Shelly now, and get my garage door setup migrated. Getting very close to completely eliminating the x10. Have a custom house email account now to pass to the new owners. Things are looking pretty cool!
My pi4 is working for everything so far and is still responding within milliseconds. I haven’t looked at the compute module in the HA Yellow, but I recall seeing that it has a Wi-Fi chip built into the box? if not I’ll probably get an alpha Wi-Fi dongle.
I need to spend some time researching Zigbee, because I did see some devices that I think I would like to incorporate. I like that the HA yellow has a chipset built in for that too! so much researching to do, and no time.
), so designing my own 433mhz relay network would not be that difficult (and I have actually had such fun with lightshowpi and my Christmas light display.). I just can’t expect a new owner to try and understand my efforts after I sell.
), I will probably just go with dumb timers or some ‘clapper’ plugs. 
I am definitely going to be doing some further searches.
I bought a couple Caseta outdoor plugs for the malibu lights, but I wish there was some cheaper models. The lamp modules do not handle the transformer loads, and I am not sure how the transformers would handle the gradual dim-off feature anyway. I am sure I will get something figured out.
