I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

> There is a chance you could do here what powerline adapters do, and use the ground wire to communicate. But they are notoriously inconsistent and there's any number of reasons it wouldn't work

This is exactly how Insteon works in conjunction with a wireless mesh. I'm extremely happy with my Insteon setup -- it's just a matter of replacing light switches and outlets with a bit of re-wiring on 3-wire switches (no new wires to run, just bypassing one of the switches so only one controls the light). The Insteon-branded hub is fine for a few light switches, but if you're doing a whole house and need something that can handle more complex configuration I would go for an ISY994 controller (don't know if anything newer exists but it's been rock solid for the last 5 years).

All that said, it was expensive and probably not worth it. I spent $4k on a somewhat large house and I was able to justify it as a learning experience for in-home IoT device use cases -- but I'm not sure there's much benefit to doing a whole house with it over just a couple rooms.

For me, it's simply grouping lights.

Example: in the winter months if I'm waking up to take out my dogs, it's pitch black on the main floor, so a command like "Alexa, good morning" will turn on the lights for the path that I need to get to the back door and tell me what the outside temperature is so I can wear the appropriate coat.

The second most important use case for us (pre-pandemic era) was to have lighting routines that made it look like we were home while away on vacation.

I started with some wifi devices (WeMo) but eventually migrated to Z-wave, and found them to be much easier to setup and maintain (and generally more reliable) than wifi (ymmv, of course).

My Z-wave hub is basically a USB Z-wave stick connected to an old NUC that's running OpenHAB in a Docker container. I rarely log into it or do any maintenance on it other than when I add new devices, which is almost never. I chose OpenHAB over HomeAssistant (YMMV) because I found it to be easier to write a couple of basic scripts to handle state notifications for my smart locks. I had been on SmartThings which was fine prior to getting smart locks and then turned into a major pain afterwards (one firmware update basically broke all my integrations, forcing me to do everything all over again).

Keep in mind, I didn't really go so far as automating everything "just because I can". 100+ nodes (as in the article) in a home situation just seems bonkers to me.

I have a similar set up using AeoTech Z-Stick on a Raspberry Pi running HomeAssistant with Jasco light switches. I'm ready to toss the whole setup, too.

First off, HomeAssistant is not as easy as people claim. They love to release breaking changes. You have to read the release notes or else a routine pip update will foobar your whole system. In the four years, I've run it, they have 1) Introduced and then retired a recommended install method. 2) Completely redone the web architecture. 3) Completely redone the Z-Wave architecture. 4) Routinely release UI features that are just placeholders and useless. It's completely maddening.

The problems are exasperated by the Z-Wave devices themselves. The light switches may be branded GE or Honeywell, but they are all made by Jasco. The first generation has been complete garbage. I've had a 40% failure rate over these five years for them. They will randomly die, or fry during a power failure. Knock on wood, so far no failures with the 2nd Gen so far.

HomeAssistant has tried to be more end-user friendly and have the UI be able to handle all aspects, but this is limited by the cooperation of the devices themselves. It's like herding cats. "Heal Network" never actually does anything. Try actually deleting a dead node through the UI. You can't. It never actually works. You have to ssh into the box, delete the entry from a JSON file, systemctl restart.

How a non-linux user can manage a HomeAssistant setup is beyond me.

Sounds like you have a similar setup to me. I'm running HA with mostly Jasco switches. It's been okay, but there have been hiccups. Z-Wave devices can be annoying -- ESPECIALLY door locks. I've gotten them all working, but the setup was finicky, mostly due to the security requirements. The only way I deal with HA breaking changes is that I don't update often. About once every couple years I've gone in, dedicated a couple hours on a Saturday to doing a major update. And I keep everything in git so I can roll back if something goes pear shaped.

I'm probably sticking with HA, but my latest batch of light switches have been TP-Link Kasa WiFi switches and I really like them. Very fast to respond. Easier to setup than Z-Wave.

>especially when you take into account the privacy issues.

HomeAssistant seems to be the most popular open source "smart devices" manager.