Hello there!
I just bought my first apartment and I would like to make as much as possible smart and connectable to Home Assistant. I have to redo the whole apartment (electricity, walls, etc) so drilling some extra holes is not a problem ;)
I just have a few questions where I can’t really find a good answer to it. I hope you guys can help me :)
First of all, I have a few criteria:
- Everything should be local only (so no 3rd party cloud or accounts)
- Selfhosting is possible (I have a Proxmox server running Home Assistant in a VM)
- It doesn’t have to be of the shelf hardware (DIY is fine, if it works as expected).
- I prefer FOSS over proprietary software/hardware (I know that FOSS hardware is difficult to find). If proprietary see point 1 & 2.
- Zigbee/Zwave > ethernet > wifi
- Available in Europe
What I’m struggling with:
- Lighting: What is the best solution for smart lighting? I already have a few Philips Hue bulbs and switches, now with the account restrictions they have I was thinking of buying a Sonoff Zigbee USB dongle off AliExpress instead of using the Hue Hub. Are there any better solutions like Shelly maybe or something else? For LED Strips I was thinking of using WLED on an ESP32
- Smart blinds, I already found some smart blinds (Like the one from Ikea) but they all work on batteries. As I have to redo the whole apartment I would like to have something that I don’t have to charge every few months.
- Smart plugs: Maybe any in-wall/out-wall outlet that has the capability to see electricity usage that you recommend?
- Audio: I would like to have some multi-room audio as I really like to listen to music. I have 4 rooms that I want to control the music in. I was thinking to buy 4 old Sonos Connect AMPs Gen 1 from eBay, than I saw that they are not compatible with streaming music from my Navidrome (subsonic server) using HA. Is this true? Also I found a promising project called Snapcast, is it good?
Sorry for the long post, thank you so much for your time! If you have some tips and tricks you want to share that will be kind of you :)
For lighting, I would personally avoid smart bulbs, especially if you are redoing the apartment anyway.
All they lead to from my experience are annoyances when guests/partners inevitably flick a switch and turn off the smart bulb.
I live in Australia so the spec may be different from where you are, but I have found ZigBee to work amazingly.
So using for example a Shelly relay would be more ideal? I was thinking of using smart lighting because you can for example have more warm light in the evening and more white light in the morning for example.
Smart bulbs are fine and the only solution if you want more than just dimming. Just make sure to also use a smart switch or relay that can be set to control the smart functions without actually cutting the power to the bulbs. The main problem with smart bulbs is when someone uses the physical switch and shuts off the power to the bulbs themselves.
Yeah if I choose for smart lighting I’ll just install in-wall smart switches. You have any experience of the longevity of smart bubs?
I stick with hue. Every other brand I tried dies. Recently I’ve had one sengled zigbee bulb start flashing between color temperatures and another start blinking on and off. Haven’t had a hue bulb die in the 5 years I’ve been using them.
I hear good things about ikea but haven’t tried them. I’m disappointed my sengled bulb went because they’re the brightest zigbee bulbs I’ve found.
I had some crappy Tuya bulbs and they all started doing the flashing between color temperatures thing too. I use the adaptive lighting integration and I think that somehow causes it but it’s the bulb itself actually doing the flashing now.