Smart Homes

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For the discussion of smart homes, home automation and the like. Because of the instance it will tend to have a more UK flavour but everyone is welcome.

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What's your smart home set-up? (feddit.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As we're trending, I thought I'd lean into it and see what everyone is using.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally, it's all a bit vanilla:

Xiaomi/Aqara - motion detectors, door sensor (well currently half of one), buttons/cube, robot vac, smart TRVs, blind motors, bedside lamp, temp/humidity sensors, leak detector, Mi band and I suppose my phone.
IKEA - bulbs (white and colour), and plugs
Google - a bit on the front end
Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant

However, I've moved house and am setting everything back up again (not helped by 10% of.my stuff remaining elusive), plus this community has already inspired me to think a bit more ambitiously for any new additions. I am, for example, wondering about a temperature sensor in my fridge and freezer - apparently you can lob the Xiaomi one into the fridge but it's unhappy below 0C. However, that might be a topic for a new thread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are you using as your zigbee gateway?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Xiaomi gateway

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Xiaomi gateway

Any good? I am really liking ZHA it's so baked in Home-Assistant. I was using zigbee2mqtt but that was basically my only MQTT service so went with ZHA to simplify.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does the job although you do have to set it to China, so sometimes in set-up (or randomly) I get shouted at in Chinese.

If I remember correctly (I'm not at home to check) you can pair IKEA bulbs directly with it and use it for quick and simple automation but I've largely done it through Home Assistant.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

come join the ZHA side, and dump that device from china that speaks to the internet :p

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I think that's my next step. It was fine when I was bodging everything together many moons ago but I've been out of the game for a bit - 2 years without a home to ensmarten and a year fixing this new place up. As I'm now getting back up to speed and pretty much starting afresh, I might as well try and do it a bit better this time around. I have just got a long range Bluetooth adapter for the Raspberry Pi so it can talk directly to the temp/humidity sensors and getting rid of the hub would be handy although I may possibly still need it for the robot vac.