Read the statement by Michael Teeuw here.
Smart Homes and Smart Home Hardware
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This may not be the correct location for this post but is my best guess.
Over the length of time I have been tinkering with the Raspberry Pi and Magic Mirror combination I have seen a lot of folks using the combination as part of a smart home setup.
A good while back I set up a basic Philips Hue system that includes a Philips Hub, that was all the lights in my home. I live in a single bedroom apartment so I’m sort of restricted in what I can and can’t do. A device that plugs into a wall socket is okay, replacing the wall socket with a smart device, not okay. I wear cochlear implants and am entirely deaf without them. So I turn the lights on at full brightness in my bedroom so the Hue system is my alarm clock.
A few months ago, one of the Philips bulbs went dead on me and needed to be replaced. I took the opportunity to see what BRANDS were compatible and it appears that Philips Hue is a proprietary system so none of the other bulbs that are now in the marketplace are compatible. The Philips bulb was $50⁰⁰ which…NO!
This month a little balloon popped up asking me to sign in, which I ignored. Last week, Philips locked me out of the app entirely which was that final straw.
As a practical matter, since I do use decent security around my computer/internet connected hardware I have way more of a problem with my data being sold back and forth by legitimate businesses than hacking by crooks.What smart home hardware is least intrusive, most open source and most compatible with a wide range of brands. Fifty bucks for a lightbulb and capturing my data is unacceptable to me so would be interested in what brands and hardware would people recommend? Any thoughts on Home Assistant and their most recent Home Assistant Green device?
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@ankonaskiff17 if you go zigbee, you can reset the HUE bulbs and sensors to that , and use any maker zigbee devices…
you WILL need another piece of hardware to act as the interface to the zigbee network, (in place of the Hue hub) I have the Sonoff E and Sonoff MG24 (in thread mode) , the Sonoff MG21 is 1/2 the price of the MG24 ($18 vs $35, in the US)
I have done all that, removed my HUE hub, and app, I have some IKEA zigbee bulbs that also support color and dimming… I think they were <$10 at the time.
I use zigbee smart plugs. from a combination of vendors… many whos names I don’t know… they were inexpensive…
I now run HomeAssistant to allow me to control those with Voice and other automations.
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@sdetweil You are running Home Assistant on a Pi? Any benefit to using a pI 4 vs Pi 5? Pi’s I have on hand so no problem there. I took a glance at the setup and it makes reference to needing an SD card but can I use one of the M.2 hats I have to run off.
If I have the Pi already, my first purchase would be along the lines of one of the Sonoff devices like you have listed and also any end devices like a smart plug to turn a lamp on (for example). The Hue hub becoming a paperweight (which is fine)?
I just want make sure that the WILL need you are referring to are the Sonoff devices? The Sonoff E and MG24 are inexpensive. Any hardware things you would do over or differently in hindsight. While money does not grow on trees I could cover more than the cost of those devices you listed if it provided a tangible benefit to the system.
I had not ever heard of resetting of the Philips bulbs. Is there something out on the interwebs that describes that process? The ability to do a reset to my existing Philips Hue bulbs just made this project way more appealing.
This apartment is not big but I sometimes think there like 4’ x 8’ sheets of shielding in the walls because of the low wifi signal strength of devices thaat do not have a direct line of sight to my router so I need to deal with that in my choice of hardware.Everything I have ever built I always have some amount of "If I could do this over again, I would do X instead of Y when the project was completed. Any things you would do differently today if you were starting from scratch?
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@ankonaskiff17 pi will be fine, you can get the Haos onto the m2 hat 4 or 5, under you want to do camera streaming, then the 5
I have moved on to running HA in a vm on
My NAS now. But sameoh.I have been doing light automation for more than 20 years, Insteon x10, then wireline, then dual band, now zigbee.
Now I have lock, and outlets.
Hue reset
https://youtu.be/qvCS1BIM8EY?si=oaSg-3zbi399Or44Pretty easy
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@sdetweil Thanks a bunch, this project gets more and more appealing the more I read.
I really appreciate the link about resetting Hue bulbs. Is that persons channel a good source in general or that video is good but channel less so?I have not watched the entire video yet but in the beginning the guy makes a point about how he has the Sonoff device on an extension cord but it sounds like “Line of Sight” is something I need to be more conscious of with Zigbee compared to normal wi-fi?
Is that accurate? I pay attention to that already but that is something to be aware of with the Zigbee network?
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@ankonaskiff17 i don’t use the extension on my sonoff dongles… no problem yet
I do NOT have line of sight… my zigbee dongle is in my office space (spare bedroom) on one corner of the house, and everything is spread out across the house to the opposite corner…
I DID have to put an always on repeater in between due to the walls and distance, but this is part of the zigbee design of the mesh… had to do that in my garage too as the metal door causes enough loss of signal to make the GDO control flakey without it… but plugged in another zigbee outlet(not used for any switching), poof all good
