51–60 of 104 posts
Has anyone done this that can compare it to the Hue app? I've had a few apps/light combinations, and the Hue app is by far the best I've used. It's compelling enough to suffer the beginnings of enshitification, but looking for a parachute when it gets to be too much. I like Hue's rooms where all bulbs in the room are updated at the same time (seems like a basic thing), while others apps don't quite do this right. App…
If you're going down the HomeAssistant route I'd recommend ditching any proprietary hubs and getting a Zigbee dongle instead, I've been using the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and even though it's connected to the server, in a rack, in the garage (so thick breezeblock walls between it and the rest of the house) there are enough always on mesh nodes in the lights themselves that the network is steady. Granted, the Dongle itsel…
Zigbee is good, but for lights or anything else you really want to always work, I'd recommend going with something that also works independently of HomeAssistant and Internet access even if you then need a proprietary hub to integrate with HomeAssistant. Lutron's Caseta system is what I went with. I've found HomeAssistant with Zigbee to be extremely reliable, but the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM…
I'm using zigbee relays placed behind my regular light switches. They work perfectly fine should the home assistant setup ever go down, with the added benefit that i can control them remotely too and react to them being turned on or off in other automations.
I feel like the point of buying Philips Hue products and paying 4x the normal price is that everything is mostly set up out of the box and the app is very intuitive. All the non technical people I know use them and have no problems. If you want to go the Home Assistant route, you may as well go all the way and get a Zigbee/Matter hub and off-brand bulbs. That way you keep full control of the ecosystem and pay a fract…
Going down this route still requires the Hue hub and managing it through its ecosystem. This means if DNS is not working perfectly or the hub decides to do a mandatory update, you're stuck for a bit until the update finishes or you fix DNS. The DNS part is partially my fault but also because I was blocking all of its calls home to Phillips' servers using pihole. Finally I bought a zigbee dongle and put in the zigbee2…
I don't have any other Hue products anymore, but the hub still runs for those 4 switches.
Has anyone done this that can compare it to the Hue app? I've had a few apps/light combinations, and the Hue app is by far the best I've used. It's compelling enough to suffer the beginnings of enshitification, but looking for a parachute when it gets to be too much. I like Hue's rooms where all bulbs in the room are updated at the same time (seems like a basic thing), while others apps don't quite do this right. App…
You can group lights like this in Home Assistant.
If you're going down the HomeAssistant route I'd recommend ditching any proprietary hubs and getting a Zigbee dongle instead, I've been using the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and even though it's connected to the server, in a rack, in the garage (so thick breezeblock walls between it and the rest of the house) there are enough always on mesh nodes in the lights themselves that the network is steady. Granted, the Dongle itsel…
If you're going down the HomeAssistant route I'd recommend ditching any proprietary hubs and getting a Zigbee dongle instead, I've been using the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and even though it's connected to the server, in a rack, in the garage (so thick breezeblock walls between it and the rest of the house) there are enough always on mesh nodes in the lights themselves that the network is steady. Granted, the Dongle itsel…
You can use IKEA trådfri with Philips Hue. It’s a bit annoying to pair but once that’s done it just works, at least it has for me.
Less options for automation, but it's 100% local only by default. You need to specifically enable remote operation.
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Have you found a better alternative? I'm trying to center around MQTT, myself, but looking for a way to use many of the wonderful integrations created by the Home Assistant community. I'm also trying to find a good solution to "react to state changes".
I've replaced all of HA with just some Python interacting with an MQTT server. I just script all the automation and don't have to care about the other 90% of what HomeAssistant brings to the table. Not for everyone obviously but it's simple and works well.
They let you use HA's massive library of supported devices, but you don't need to bother with their YAML "programming" horrorshow.
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I replaced motion sensors with human presence sensors which solved the shower timeout issue.
Which presence sensor are you using? One of the mmWave devices? I've had an Aqara FP2 for a while but haven't really found a killer use for it. Maybe the bathroom is that case.
Toilets, hallways, entrances etc. work just fine with IR motion sensors. See motion -> turn light on for X minutes. Optionally reset timer to X every time you see motion.
But for places like offices where you might be sitting relatively still for 30+ minutes, mmWave is better. It knows you're there and won't turn off the lights even if you don't wave your arms around :)
The price difference isn't that big though. You can get a HA compatible mmWave device in a nice case for ~50€. The official Philips Hue motion sensors (IR) are around 40-ish €, the really cheap ones like Shelly you can get for around 20€.