When HN users recommended it
2 HN users recommended this between 2017 and 2018, in 3 comments.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
2 HN users recommended this between 2017 and 2018, in 3 comments.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
Look into a protocol like z-wave - you can already get switches, outlets, heating controllers etc and it can be done without an internet connection. You can get a USB Z-Wave dongle[0] and then use Home Assistant [1] on a Pi to control everything.
[0] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/AEON-AEOEZW090-C-Z-Stick-Gen5/dp/B0... [1] - https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant
Does Home Assistant let you make all IOT devices safer? Yes, for a given value of yes!
For starters, you need to ditch all those hubs and apps and that means you need to look into Z Wave and Zigbee. Briefly and in my experience and testing, Z Wave devices are more expensive but more compatible with each other. Z Wave has a longer range without any relays. Both are very well supported but I think Z Wave is better supported. Philips Hue is Zigbee as is Tradfri (Ikea). I've got both USB dongles plugged into a VMWare esxi in a VMware cluster at work and both survive vMotion and are very stable. I'm using this for Z Wave: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00YETCNOE/ref=oh_aui_de... (£43) and people on the forums offer to make up Zigbee USB devices with ready flashed firmware for about £20 or you can buy your own bits from Alibaba and DIY for a bit more for one but a lot less for more than say five.
You should also investigate the MQTT protocol and consider say Mosquitto and proper SSL for it for external stuff like Owntracks. Internal only access can be satisfied by using the built in MQTT broker in Home Assistant.
Also, consider ESP8266 (or ESP32) devices. You can get two for £8 on Amazon with pins etc already to slap in a small breadboard. Note that you can power them using PoE and a PoE to USB converter to get them up to 100m away. You can fit these things inside the sort of wall mount box you might have for a light switch or ethernet ports.
When I've finished testing at work (!) I'll be looking to control my underfloor heating, lights (note that you need three wires (live, neutral, switched neutral) for switch box controls or something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fibaro-FGS-213-Single-Switch-Black/... that can go in the light fitting itself. I'm in the UK BTW. Also I'll be putting in window and door open/shut detectors and a fair few of something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0141FQDJQ/ref=oh_aui_de... to see what is going on in a room. I aim to defang my Sonos speakers eventually. The TVs already go through Squid with quite a lot of monitoring and a lot of pfSense keeping an eye on things.
ZoneMinder is well supported for cameras.
Proper home automation is not cheap but is very cool if done right. Do your research very carefully. If you have a SO, then be very, very careful and test, test, test otherwise you will be kicked into touch very quickly. I'm aiming to have manual overrides (switches etc) for nearly everything and will be putting in a lot more wifi and UPS, RAID etc along with proper backups. If you are going to do more than a toy lighting system than do it right.
I don't fear my IoT stuff because they live on VLANs with names like THINGS and SEWER (for the really scary ones) but I'm not your average home owner (IT-wise) and am extremely pissed off at the vendors of these things for the frankly cynical approach taken to security and your privacy.
My experience has been a bit different to yours but has included a fair bit of headbanging 8)
Zwave support seems to be really good to me. This: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00YETCNOE/ref=oh_aui_de... works passed through to a VM after a vMotion to another host! All Zwave devices I've tried seem to simply work but to be fair I have not done anything like an exhaustive set of tests.
The support on the forums is awesome - one of the best communities about. I'm not quite there yet to really give decent advice but I'm close.
Home Assistant is being developed at a breakneck pace. That means that you must be careful and treat your project with respect. Backups and backout plans and testing must be taken seriously. You have to read everything you can get your eyes on - the forums and docs are very, very, very good. If you do all that then you will be richly rewarded.