Porch Spotlights

immy

immy

immy

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Joined
28 Nov 2002
Posts
465
Looking to get some spot lights fitting on our outside porch which will light up the front door area.

Whsts the best way to get these "spotlights" smart enabled so they can be controlled from a ios app or put on some sort of smart timer (which adjusts for differing day light hours)?
 
Thekwango said:
Smart bulbs, Philips Hue being probably the most widely known. Avoid Amazon resellers with cheap Chinese tat.
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I'm slowly switching from the over priced Hue (have around 40 of them) with Tapo bulbs that can be set for dusk till dawn that if they're life span is the same or similar to Hue, then it will not be such a big hit on the wallet.

They are really user friendly and do not require a hub.
 
The issue with many of the cheaper smart bulbs is that they don't use a hub and are connected only by WiFi individually to your router. Start adding a number of bulbs or smart plugs and quite quickly the cheap routers supplied by ISP's begin to start hitting their limits for the number of devices connected.
I prefer ones that only use either their own hub or, if you've already got one, the hue hub and also Alexa, smartthings apps etc.
 
Ive got a pi with home assistant set up on it with a conbee zigbee attachment....started setting it up years ago but never ended up doing it.

Life took over, and my mini project got left at bottom of a cupboard. Time to ressurect it.

Is hue bulbs compatible with HA? I dont want to buy a seperate hub.
Are Tapo bulbs HA compatible?
 
Reuben klang said:
I prefer a plug and play type set up with a fully featured app. One that just works and you can add to any home smart system you require.
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Apple user then and completely failed to answer where the messing about bit was ;)

Try Tapo and then come back and honestly tell me what was hard about that :cry:
 
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How come you're switching over from hue avdub? I'm adding more proper hue fittings and still over the moon.
 
immy said:
Looking to get some spot lights fitting on our outside porch which will light up the front door area.

Whsts the best way to get these "spotlights" smart enabled so they can be controlled from a ios app or put on some sort of smart timer (which adjusts for differing day light hours)?
Click to expand...

I use a Shelly 1PM (bit overkill). Out of box has daylight feature, used to have sonoff using tasmota doing drive lights for years but replaced last year with the Shelly.
 
Actually have a shelly unit somewhere in one of my cupboards...sitting gathering dust with my HA....was meant to make my media wall unit lights smart light compartible,....never got round to it. :(
 
I did it with bog standard lights and smart switches. The lights are wired into mains plugs plugged into a smart switches essentially. You can then swap out the lights or switches separately if one breaks.

As an extra I further tied it together by using Hue outdoor motion sensors and Home Assistant. When the sensor detects motion I have an automation to turn the switches on for a few minutes. I went with the Hue ones because they're wireless which simplified installing them a lot, and I can have them trigger as many of the switches as I like without having to interconnect them all with wires which is really useful. E.g., if the sensor at the side of the house seens motion flip the ones on at the front and back too.
 
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aVdub said:
Apple user then and completely failed to answer where the messing about bit was ;)

Try Tapo and then come back and honestly tell me what was hard about that :cry:
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Yes I am, my brother started with some other type no idea what they are call off hand but the switches didn’t work every time. There was delays, the app was rubbish. He uses google nest stuff.

I do use apple home kit and just prefer the ease of use.
 
If you’re less bothered about app control and only need the lights to come on at night I’d look at the Steinel dawn to disk sensors which auto compensate for the time of year, they’re inexpensive and work well.
 
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I might get shot down in flames for this suggestion, but here goes.

Is it spotlights from activation, or dusk to dawn lighting you're after?

For activation lighting, I use a Reolink Duo 4k PoE camera. It includes dual spotlights (they also do a wifi model, however, I don't have any experience with this version). You can put a storage card in to record activations if you don't run a server and the ios and Android app works well.

Just a thought.
 
immy said:
Is hue bulbs compatible with HA? I dont want to buy a seperate hub.
Are Tapo bulbs HA compatible?
Click to expand...

Hue use zigbee and can be used in a HA setup with a zigbee dongle.

Not sure about Tapo bulbs but most big name smart devices are supported by HA especially if they use WiFi. Having said that, Zigbee is the way to go as it’s a more efficient system and can be expanded with a smart plug or two which act as mini routers. It’s also best to keep smart devices off your WiFi as they can be noisy and interfere with general WiFi usage
 
The Hue bridge integrates fine into Home Assistant too which means you don't need to buy a zigbee dongle etc unless you really need it. That's what I use.
 
went with dumb spotlights wired into a switch with a sonoff zbmini-l2 switch (£13 ebay) behind...allowing me to control on/off using HA. Just got it set up with set times at the moment but will get the automation configured to utilise dusk timing for auto switch on.
Future plans, add a motion sensor (probably hue outdoor motion sensor) to turn on light (if its off and its dark) on detection of motion.

HA setup is Raspberry Pi 4 with sonoff zigbee dongle(£20). Got rid of the conbee zigbee dongle(sold on ebay for £24).
 
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