I'd avoid Z-wave these days unless you have immediate need. AFAIK the aim of Thread/Matter is going to be deprecating it and everyone will move over to that. It'll take a bit of time of course, for existing/future products to be migrated over, but I feel Z-wave and Zigbee are the past, and shortly to become relatively completely deprecated for new devices.
Smart Home Automation
- Thread starter ChaoticUnreal
- Start date
Yeah I do appreciate there's more than some purchasing bias when I made the statement about zigbee2mqtt. Just as a point of philosophy I want to self-host but am also keen not to leak anything more to our cloud overlords not least because they don't need to know any more about my life than they do but also the track record of sunsetting services. I'm also not all that ambitious about my automation (well not yet anyway). Hence the gushing about z2m rather than the glue that HA/OHAB/the rest have in addition or on top; granted zigbee isn't exactly linux device drivers but the openness and speed of adoption of new devices is great to see.
Nah, if they take off it’ll integrate in to the controller and you can switch devices as they fail. Nice thing about the major HA controllers is they don’t care what protocols they are talking, it is just another plugin.
Fully agree here, other than HomeKit (which is really a minor part of my setup), it's all hosted on a local server with no data in cloud.
How do people feel about Leviton smart switches? I don't want Alexa/homekit etc, I just want basic timers (Turn porch light on ~10 minutes before my usual arrival time home, christmas lights on an indoor permanently installed timed switch etc), and wireless connections between some switches. I've been happy with their equipment quality on things like GFCI/AFCI being smart enough to not trip from inverter noise and similar, but I've never used their apps or wifi stuff.
Leviton is pretty proprietary, isn't it? I'd say avoid it if so. Unless they have Matter/Thread stuff, those should be compatible with various other brands stuff.
They look to be. They have Zigbee and Z-wave certified options, and work with Homekit and IFTTT, as well as Smartthings and schlage. But as I have no intention of interacting with it other than with wired devices and pre-set timers, and don't care if it plays nice with others, I'm open to a mostly closed platform as long as it works (given Leviton is a large enough company that they are unlikely to go anywhere, and if all I need are switches talking to each other, I may be OK even if they EoL my crap, unless it's cloud mediated bullshit, which is why I'm asking)
Have you got a suggestion for an alternative switch vendor? I don't really want fancy, I want reliable basic functions with only a little bit of smarts. TBH, if I were building this from the ground up, I'd probably just do it all with PLC hardware because it's what I know and am comfortable with. But the house already exists.
EDIT: Leviton's brochure doesn't mention Matter. Their amazon listing does. IDK? The amazon listing implies that their Matter functionality is early access.
I think I've installed a few of their things. Mostly I look for standard compliance. Even if you want dumb-ish levels of smart (program and forget) the mesh networks they make between themselves can be useful when you want to adjust a device because you don't have to wander all over the house every time daylight savings happens. You can adjust any as long as you can reach one.*
*Caveats on protocol types, levels of compliance, and whether that protocol needs a hub for a mesh network.
*Caveats on protocol types, levels of compliance, and whether that protocol needs a hub for a mesh network.
I have multiple Leviton Z-wave devices (or maybe Insteon). Regardless - they’ve all been rock solid.
Most of my non-niche purchases are GE/Leviton.
Niche z-wave stuff gets a little more off brand (as there are fewer manufacturers)
Most of my non-niche purchases are GE/Leviton.
Niche z-wave stuff gets a little more off brand (as there are fewer manufacturers)
What are you trying to solve?
As a basic switch, they are fine. If you want to do smarts, you need a hub of some kind, which could be a piece of software and a dongle running on a computer. Search for zwave, or zigbee hubs.
If you don't want (smart) switches, you could look at something like these: https://www.getzooz.com/smart-relays/
Most of my house is Zwave, and most of my devices are Zooz.
If you wanted to go "simpler", maybe look at TP-Link Kasa, their devices are wifi.
I got their wifi connected Decora smart Gen 2 switches, which apparently do now support Matter with a firmware update, and don't need a hub if you have a neutral, so I think I'm OK.
How are you programming them?
Edit: digging, they must have a microcontroller on each switch. Sounds good for your needs.
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Random stats:
Current device count in home assistant: 141
Current entity count in home assistant: 1136
Current device count in home assistant: 141
Current entity count in home assistant: 1136
Looks like I need to up my device game. 49 devices but have 1558 entities. I'm guessing my oversized entity to device ratio is because I have a bunch of sensors. Just one of the Zooz temp/humidity sensors has 15 visible entities plus another 41 hidden ones. Multiply that by the 8 I'm using and the number of entities adds up fast. I'm sure I could trim that number down since I don't care about a lot of the entities there, but am lazy.
This
I have a lot of Aeon Multisensor 6s - which is 6 entities per device and my Davis Weather station is integrated via XML and virtual devices
Finished do you really believe you will ever be finished?
And I’m impressed. My documentation of my home is a mess.
Never finished, but right now it is very MVP class, HA wouldn’t come back after power failure, automations are scattershot, bunch of uglies. There are even switches that don’t work (need to build virtual 3 ways), etc.
Documentation is for, well, you’ll see.
I really wish I could get back to having a smart home. Between moving to a 100yr old house with no neutrals so switches are a no-go to lack of funds for sensors and other things I've really been slacking recently.
My entire zwave setup stopped working late morning today (fixed by resetting this evening)...I know pretty much the exact time, now to see how miserable hunting HAs logs are...
Guys - Total home-automation newb reporting in. I'm sucking on my security blankie and need someone to hold my hand, so please don't beat me up.*
Want to start with the very basics, which is automating front/back yard lights to turn on/off dusk/dawn and with switched overrides. Switches need to be 3-way. Everything has neutrals. Small wrinkle is that I have 2 houses to manage (mine and my parent's). I have site-to-site VPN between them, and both have PoE switches so, in theory, I should be able to manage everything from a single local instance of HA.
Looks like Matter/Thread is the "future", but I'm seeing some alarming articles, some still recent, that compatibility and support is still terrible. Is that still really true?
Am I right in thinking that:
Should I go with Zigbee instead?
Am I totally wrong with how this all works?
*In real life, I am a lightweight network engineer, am comfortable working with electric circuits, and decent experience with virtualization and servers, just no, zilch, nada experience with any home automation.
Want to start with the very basics, which is automating front/back yard lights to turn on/off dusk/dawn and with switched overrides. Switches need to be 3-way. Everything has neutrals. Small wrinkle is that I have 2 houses to manage (mine and my parent's). I have site-to-site VPN between them, and both have PoE switches so, in theory, I should be able to manage everything from a single local instance of HA.
Looks like Matter/Thread is the "future", but I'm seeing some alarming articles, some still recent, that compatibility and support is still terrible. Is that still really true?
Am I right in thinking that:
- I can set up HA in a VM or container
- ... have multiple "coordinators" (are these the equivalent of a Wi-Fi AP?) in each site. I looking at these:
https://cloudfree.shop/product/smlight-zigbee-ethernet-adapter/... which, in theory, support Matter
AM I right? Wrong? Recommend other hardware? - Get some of these:
https://leviton.com/products/d215s-1bw... and they will can commanded by HA to turn on/off/ etc according to a schedule set within HA?
Should I go with Zigbee instead?
Am I totally wrong with how this all works?
*In real life, I am a lightweight network engineer, am comfortable working with electric circuits, and decent experience with virtualization and servers, just no, zilch, nada experience with any home automation.
Thread/Matter support on the EFR32MG21 is still experimental; I would not rely on that yet.
In Zigbee mode there can only be one Coordinator per Zigbee Network. Dongles can be flashed with a different firmware to act as Zigbee Routers to extend the mesh network but note that most wired devices already act as routers. At home I placed some €7 Ikea TRETAKT plugs and they are doing a good job as routers. The Tradfri bulbs I bought are also acting as routers.
The Zigbee2MQTT site has a nice intro to Zigbee networks:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/advanced/zigbee/01_zigbee_network.html
In Zigbee mode there can only be one Coordinator per Zigbee Network. Dongles can be flashed with a different firmware to act as Zigbee Routers to extend the mesh network but note that most wired devices already act as routers. At home I placed some €7 Ikea TRETAKT plugs and they are doing a good job as routers. The Tradfri bulbs I bought are also acting as routers.
The Zigbee2MQTT site has a nice intro to Zigbee networks:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/advanced/zigbee/01_zigbee_network.html
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unless they are next to each other (and maybe even then) I'd run a separate HA instance at each one. Use this if you want to be able to control the second house from the first (through if you are just doing dawn/dusk automations I'm not sure you'd need it
https://github.com/custom-components/remote_homeassistant
1. Yes you can run HA in a container or a VM (I run mine in a docker container) you will lose out on all the "add-ons" which are just docker containers anyways so it will require slightly more setup but the fact you are on this forum makes me think you'd be able to manage it.
2. Those look fine for zigbee controllers, as noted you can only have 1 zigbee controller per zigbee network.
3. You can currently control those switches without matter (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/decora_wifi/) and you can use this intergration for wifi matter control (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/matter/ ) so you wouldn't need those zigbee controllers
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Make sure you double check if a wired zigbee device will act as a router I have some zigbee bulbs that aren't repeaters and had to get some of the ikea plugs for the same reason.
Went to the Big Orange, now I have more questions.
What's the difference between Lutron Caseta and their version 2 Smart Decora switches?
Lutron has a Caseta hub, and a couple of Wi-Fi "bridge" models.
Now I'm more confused than ever.
What's the difference between Lutron Caseta and their version 2 Smart Decora switches?
Lutron has a Caseta hub, and a couple of Wi-Fi "bridge" models.
Now I'm more confused than ever.
Caseta seems to be their DIY 433Mhz product line and Decora their Wi-Fi line, now with support for Matter over Wi-Fi
FWIW I run my HA in a Proxmox VM so I can run 'HA OS' and benefit from the addons. MariaDB, Influx/Grafana and Mosquitto are the ones that I find the most useful. Yes I could set these things up separately myself, but the Addons are "one-click, fill out a couple fields and you're done" easy.
Oh, and being a VM makes it easy to restore state if something weird and unfixable happens, which has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions.
Lutron makes Caseta, Leviton makes Decora. Two different companies.
Caseta is a closed ecosystem on the switching side, with a patent encumbered wireless protocol. Caseta needs a hub, and is tied to Lutron forever.
Decora smart is primarily a wifi (They do have other protocols, if you don't have neutral wires) based system with Matter support being opt in ecosystem. Decora only needs a hub for the no-neutral switches, and is more or less fungible between Matter devices, if you use matter.
Contrary opinion - if you want to do something that simple, buy a couple of Lutron Caseta switches and a hub, and you can do everything you want with just that. No screwing around with HA or any of the complicated stuff.
That's not a bad idea.
My HA is the docker version and I have a bunch of other containers, as you say, like Mosquitto, ESPHome, PostgreSQL, Zigbee2MQTT, etc. Tied together with Portainer (also in a containrer, just for lulz).
Similar but, as you say, I don't get the Addons. They are installable manually, but I sometimes wish for HACS.
you can use HACS with a docker I have it set up right now.
That is just a normal integration so doesn't require anything special
https://hacs.xyz/docs/user
It doesn't depend on a cloud service for the stated requirements.
Finally making some progress with documenting my house setup. Would a person or two who is familiar with HA be willing to review and suggest improvements to the docs? Would like to have it followable before sharing publicly.
Sure thing, I'll be happy to take a glance. I'm not a super expert, but I have some experience trying to do some weird bits.
Getting ready to send my first issue to HA for a an integration. New device (hvac controller) uses an old version of an api and exposes fields that it doesn’t use, and those fields are what the integration chooses over the in use field. I expect they’ll need to add specific device detection to their code. If this is the issue, once fixed my hvac will be properly plugged in to HA. Hopefully they’ll do it!
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Yippee!
Are you handy with code? If so, you probably could do it and contribute a PR to fix it
