Soldato
Cheers, i need to do lots of youtube watching i think!
how smart has your home gone?
- Thread starter utajoker
- Start date
Cheers, i need to do lots of youtube watching i think!
You can do best of both - I can control independently through Hue Hub or HA. It integrates so seamlessly it is childs play (and useful to have both options available IMHO).
Associate
Getting fairly excited to start on this. We move into a new rental on the 3rd and so can dig out my old Hue bulbs and start to slowly get things configured. Is a raspberry pi still the preferred route? I saw this which seemed recommended
Home Assistant Yellow
Home Assistant Yellow is your Matter-ready, upgradeable, and extendable smart home hub. You won't need anything else.www.home-assistant.io
Or is it worth getting an Intel NUC type device?
Benefit of the Pi is that i've already got one running Volumio for music and so i figured i could buy a double case to keep things neater.
I'd only go for a HA Yellow if you need the m.2 storage if offers and depending on which model you buy you could have supply your own PI CM4 (Raspberry PI Compute Module).
If you want an extremely easy install then buy a HA Green with a Sky Connect usb dongle for Zigbee/Matter
https://shop.everythingsmart.io/products/home-assistant-green
https://shop.everythingsmart.io/products/home-assistant-skyconnect
Lewis who runs EverythingSmartHome is a really good bloke, sells his own design presence sendor, does Youtube videos and has a Discord channel if you want advice.
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Soldato
Cheers, been watching some of his videos, really useful and doesn't seem annoying either.
Currently trying to weigh up whether it's worth trying to start this now in the new rental, or if it makes more sense just waiting till our house is built.
Arguments for starting now
-It's fun
-Great practice/learning experience whilst only have a few devices
-Get some basic automation in the rental for ~10 months
-Gets devices on the network i'll be carrying over and in theory room choice should be similar (lounge will still be lounge for example)
Arguments against
-Up front spend on stuff i probably don't need to be spending money on
-Might be a ballache trying to unpick things when we move
The last against is probably the main one. However i guess i could always just start from scratch and i wouldn't be in any worse position.
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It depends what devices you’re using. A lot of things are wireless so it’s not as if you’re having to rip things out to take with you. eg a motion sensor is a motion sensor that can be used anywhere.
And ten months of fun and learning will go far when you’ve moved into your new place!
And ten months of fun and learning will go far when you’ve moved into your new place!
Soldato
Yeah, think i'm definitely leaning to starting now. My main concern is the black hole of "things" i then start to buy 
Associate
I would start now and have a play.
Things like smart plugs, smart bulbs, motion sensors can be moved to your new house when you move, you could even use contact sensors if you think they could be removed without damage.
The main reason to start now is to make all the mistakes now.
e.g. If you use Zigbee then you have the choice of using Z2M or ZHA, Z2M supports more devices (and often functions/data of a device), ZHA has easier integration with HA.
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Associate
It's not a black hole, it's a "bottomless pit of opportunity"Yeah, think i'm definitely leaning to starting now. My main concern is the black hole of "things" i then start to buy
can you re-deploy an old laptop to learn about HA ..
when octopus eventually give me the smart mini, to provide HA access to live electricity consumption that is my plan;
I see HA killer apps as managing solar/battery setup , and heating system boilers(retun temp/modulation), but otherwise, a hub can take care of automation, as dlockers said.
HA is far better for automation than a proprietary hub. HA allows automation locally with devices from any manufacturer across a variety of protocols. It’s extremely flexible and it is not difficult to set up basic or even advanced automations to suit your needs. From a personal perspective, it’s also easier to set up automations using a browser on a PC than try to do so on a mobile app.
Agree except Hue has really nailed basic automation which is all most folk need anyway.
But only if you use the Hue ecosystem which is expensive and limited
Yeah but it's great and works, and it is fully compatible with HA
Why bother with HA if you do everything within Hue?
This isn't possible by Hue:
But equally I want my basic quality of life to be super robust and not affected by HA being tinkered with -- motion sensor turns on kitchen, hall, WC, outdoor lights etc.
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Soldato
- Joined
- 24 Sep 2015
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Getting fairly excited to start on this. We move into a new rental on the 3rd and so can dig out my old Hue bulbs and start to slowly get things configured. Is a raspberry pi still the preferred route? I saw this which seemed recommended
Home Assistant Yellow
Home Assistant Yellow is your Matter-ready, upgradeable, and extendable smart home hub. You won't need anything else.
Or is it worth getting an Intel NUC type device?
Benefit of the Pi is that i've already got one running Volumio for music and so i figured i could buy a double case to keep things neater.
I've been using a Home Assistant Yellow since October having moved my installation over from a Pi4. The main advantage of the Yellow is the m.2 SSD, I've had a couple of micro SD cards fail and didn't want to hassle of recovering from a dead Home Assistant installation.
I went for the PoE version so just a single cable goes to the Yellow.
Soldato
- Joined
- 24 Sep 2015
- Posts
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Another option to extend Bluetooth coverage in Home Assistant is use an ESP32 as a Bluetooth proxy.
Recently I bought some Bluetooth LE sensors to keep track on temperatures in both the fridge freezers. Bluetooth signal was very iffy for one set and non existent for the other but that's all sorted with a couple of ESP32's.
Total cost for 2 ESP32's and 2 3D printed cases was < £20.
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