Smart Home Hubs & Tech (Home Assistant, Homebridge etc.)

General Chat
1

Ok so we’ve got a bunch of different Home Assistant-related topics dotted about the Community (I’ll link them below because some of them are really useful) but no actual Home Assistant topic. Given quite a few of us use it and sink so much time (and money) into it, I’m starting one here for more general discussion.

Some existing topics where Home Assistant has come up:

So to start the discussion, personally I’ve been running Home Assistant at home for a little while now. One of the things I’ve wanted to do was bring our old light switches back into use. I really like the idea of having some more quirky and interesting light switches around the house, but out the box they aren’t compatible with smart light bulbs since flipping the light switch kills the power and makes the bulb unreachable.

I bought a few Sonoff MINIR4Ms with the hope of fixing that so I can later change the switches. Here’s what they look like, nice and small to fit in the existing switch back box.

IMG_1860
IMG_18602761×2761 911 KB

Wired them all up, hooked them up via Matter and got them to show up in Home Assistant.

IMG_1855
IMG_18553023×3023 2.09 MB

So these have a mode where the flipping of the physical light switch sends a signal/can trigger an event, but does not change the state of the relay.

What this means is you can keep power to the bulb 100% of the time and have the switch trigger an automation in Home Assistent to turn on or off the light.

Unfortunately as with all things Home Assistant it wasn’t that straightforward. Out the box you can only see the relay state, not the physical switch events in Home Assistant. After some digging I managed to find a community integration that shows the light switch events in Home Assistant. This works ok but runs over the web and not locally - I now have automations to trigger the light after the switch is flipped, but they’re not instant. I find from switching the light to the action happening can be anywhere between 0.5 and 2s. I’m hopeful Sonoff will eventually expose the switch event over Matter, but for now this is ok.

Next up and now I’ve proved it works, I’ve got a few more complex lighting circuits to tackle. I’d also like to bring control over our bathroom extractor fans into Home Assistant to work in tandem with our radiator thermostat humidity sensors.

I’ve also bought a Sonoff Zigbee dongle so that I can start to retire my old Ikea hub. Getting that set up is today’s job.

Anyway, enough about me, is anyone here working on anything exciting?

6 Likes
2

Good topic.

Sadly, I’ve no experience with Home Assistant but I do use Homebridge and Scrypted for integrating various IOT with HomeKit.

Currently running within a Proxmox container on a Minix Z100 fanless mini PC.

It works flawlessly.

Might spin up an instance later to give Home Assistant a try. It seems to be popular.

1 Like
4

Homebridge is brilliant. The reason I use Scrypted alongside is for cameras. It’s the closest to native HomeKit Secure Video you can get. The UniFi Protect plugin is rock solid.

Homebridge does also have a plugin but I found it less stable and slower to display the feeds than Scrypted.

1 Like
5

So I’m running on a Pi4 at the moment, but I’m very conscious that if I keep adding devices and integrations at the rate I am, I’m going to need something more substantial. That’s a problem for later though.

6

Maybe give it a few days to see if there is much engagement on Home Assistant specifically. But I wonder if it might be better to have a broader smart home topic.

On Home Assistant, I’ve been considering it. At the moment I don’t really have enough smart home gadgets to warrant bothering with a centralised hub/dashboard; only really have light bulbs and plugs from a single manufacturer so am just using their app. But am looking to add some smart outdoor lighting soon which will probably be from a different manufacturer so at that point a centralised hub/dashboard may be warranted. But I’ve also been wondering if there is some other options worth considering that are simpler than home assistant. We are a mixed OS household so can’t be anything Apple-specific. Have been thinking about Echo Hub.

What’s the benefit of this over something like this Tapo S210, which seems to me a simpler option for making a dumb switch smart? Is it so that you can continue to use smart bulbs?

1 Like
7

I did look at home bridge but I found it too basic for me and I am a natural programmer so HA was much more capable but its fine for a simpler setup and less hassle. HA has had its moments especially since they are slaved to the monthly releases, always wait for a .1 or .2 at least as a rule.

I have got my HA coded to control the UPS (with notifications and shutdown of devices), car charging, dishwasher, washing machine, electric blankets, lights, dehumidifier, TV’s, PC (on/off), cameras (Scrypted), heating, hot water, garage door and probably a few other things like monitoring the net. I even have it pulling Heating Oil prices and monitoring tank level using a usb SDR (software defined radio). Its all interfaced into Homekit (or the bits I want) as well.

The dishwasher is linked to Agile and when you hit the button on HA it automatically sets the cheapest 2 hour period to run and queues up the job and even has a nice count down timer.

The washing machine can be set to run at X time, LG’s own app does have delay start but its very limited so HA does it far better and just sends the start job at the correct time.

All of the cost and runtime of the washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer (not smart) are tracked and once a job completes it sends a push to my and the other halfs phones with the cost for the run as well as how much it would have been on the variable tarrif by comparison.

I use a lot of Hue and a few Wiz bulbs (not great tbh) as a lot of the lights here dont have neutral in the switch as it was before that became standard but the newer kitchen that was fitted by the previous people did have a neutral which I used a Sonoff to control the side lights ring and the second switch is bypassed and triggering it on the sonoff sends the on/off to the wiz bulbs (if the motion sensors dont pick you up) and turns off the lights after X minutes. Hell at night the kitchen lights come on a little dimmer than normal to prevent them being OTT.

There is probably a lot more I have done but its been a project over a while now just adding bits in and cleaning up the interface to make it easy for the other half to work and look slick (still a big work in progress)

I have used a mix of different kit but I do like Tasmota plugs to monitor power usage and control dumb things.

Right now I am adding tracking in for the cleaning cycles for the dishwasher and washing machine, the washing machine has it shown in the LG app but the dishwasher doesnt (Bosch)

2 Likes
8

Possibly. It depends on the type of devices. Your Pi4 will be able to handle hundreds of simple devices. Performance usually becomes a problem when you start dealing with media (cameras etc). Especially if any transcoding between video codecs needs to happen.

In my case, I have well over 100 devices (Hue, Tado, Eve, Nuki, UniFi, ThinQ etc) and my Minix Mini PC still has single figure CPU usage.

If you did fancy an upgrade, there are some reasonably priced Mini PCs out there from the likes of MinisForum or BeeLink.

1 Like
9

That’s not a bad shout actually. It’s likely to be where the discussion goes anyway. We can rename this one.

So both will allow you to use a smart bulb in tandem with the switch. Being able to ask Siri to set the light to 50% brightness regardless of the state of the physical switch for example is key. The only drawback of the Tapo one is the fact that you have to like the look of their switch.

I’ve been lusting over eventually buying something like this and you’d need the relay for that to work: https://www.dowsingandreynolds.com/shop/toggle-switch-black-single/

2 Likes
10

Just make sure you have the Google Drive plugin backing up your config each night, memory cards will fail and I have also had an SSD fail on my Pi4.
Also make sure you know what will happen if it fails and have workarounds.

My HA uses MariaDB.

I have a lot of things and am looking to possibly go Proxmox on a more powerful box to do a few other bits. I wouldnt bother with the Pi5 given its cost.

If anyone has another half and wants to simply things for them try the Browser Config plugin. Her account doesnt get full HA access and it automatically gives her the proper dashboard and removes the header (I dont use it) to give a clean easy to use interface.

2 Likes
11

1000021689
10000216891440×3446 154 KB

This is what my default home assistant dashboard is looking like at the moment.

In terms of current automations;

  • home battery exports any left over energy at the end of the day (down to min 20%)
  • all nights turn off and roombas start if the house is empty in the day
  • hallway and garage lights come on when exterior doors are opened
  • landing lights comes on slightly if there is motion at night
  • notifications if front door or garage doors are left open
  • notifications when dishwasher, washing machine or dryer cycles end (just using smart plugs)
  • I log loads of energy related stats to a Google sheet on the 29th and 59th minutes of every hour (I’m a data hoarder)
  • the kitchen under counter lighting is on dim by default but brightens when there is motion detected

Sort of related, I have two UPS units. One for my PC and one for my router plus raspberry pi running home assistant. My home battery doesn’t offer full home backup; so these two units keep the vital stuff from dying during brief blackouts.

In terms of devices/integrations in home assistant;

  • hue and Wiz for lighting
  • various hue buttons, dials and switches
  • hue indoor motion sensors for motion and temperature
  • myenergi for car charger, solar and home battery
  • kasa mini smart plugs
  • octopus API for energy usage and rates (plus octopus mini)
  • roomba for robot vacuum
  • nest for thermostat
7 Likes
14

Could you still use the Hue app, if you did that?

I’ve reached the limits of my Hue hub, it’s now crawling along and I sometimes have to press a switch twice for it to do anything. I think I’m at 52 devices at present (Hue bulbs and dimmers).

Hue keep promising a firmware/app update to allow true multi-hub support (without having to switch accounts) but it has yet to materialise.

If there is another solution, I’d be interested.

15

Is the notification triggered by simply looking for when power consumption through the plug drops to zero? Or is there more to it than that?

17

Yep. After a bit of trial and error, I found that ‘when power drops below 10 watts for 1 minute’ seems to work well, like this:

image
image1076×585 14.6 KB

Mostly just legacy of having slowly grown my smart home devices gradually over time. Plus it lets my partner continue to use the hue app if necessary.

1 Like
19

Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while is put a small indicator light on the interior side of some of my doors and windows to indicate current armed/disarmed state of my alarm system. Idea being to make it less likely for anyone to inadvertently open the door/window first thing in the morning before disarming the system.

I’m assuming I could get home assistant to read the state of my Ring alarm system, but I’m not sure what I could use for small, cheap battery powered indicator lights. Obviously don’t need full led strips as I would only really need a single led on each door/window. Anyone have any suggestions?

21

Thanks, I assumed it would be possible to get HA to read the state of the alarm. But what I’m not sure about is what I could use as a small indicator to stick on doors/windows to indicate state of the alarm. I’m hoping to be able to find a small battery powered single-led device with all electronics housed in a small case no bigger than a small matchbox. But I can’t find anything like this. I can only find smart led strips with relatively bulky controllers.

I guess I could go for a full DIY job with small ESP32 microcontrollers connected to an LED and battery but would like to avoid if possible.

23

Thanks, that could be an option if I did end up going down the esp32 route, although it seems to have more functionality than I need (i.e. integrated button and an led matrix). What I’d probably do if I went with esp32 is get a £2-3 board from ebay/aliexpress, connect it to a single led and place in small housing myself.

1 Like
30

I use the Hue Bridge still over the SkyConnect I have, it makes firmware updates easier and it also gives me a fallback position if my Pi4 dies, those lights/switches still work regardless.
Its also a painful process to migrate them all by repairing.

If I had other Zigbee devices over just Hue then I would look to migrate over having 2 zigbee networks though but I am down the thread/matter route for now with a few EVE devices.
The EVE motion is very good over the Hue bridge when interfacing with HA as I found the Hue API had a delay relaying the luminance after a motion event is triggered which caused a delay turning on lights (although SkyConnect would sort that)

Watch out on your 2.4Ghz bands for wifi as Zigbee is on that range and if you have an AP broadcasting close (in proximity and freq) with a bit of traffic it can slow resposivness down.

Its in beta but Hue test for an elongated amount of time. I dont know if you could use a second bridge in Matter mode as a workaround but I know matter comes with limitations.

1 Like
31

At least it’s in beta and does exist. Hopefully it will arrive this year. I can hold out for a little longer. I wish the Hue Bridge would give some feedback as to what the problem is. It could at least give a warning that it has hit the device limit.

I’m just guessing that 52 devices is overloading it? To be precise - 27 Hue Colour Bulbs/Lightstrips and 25 Hue v2 Dimmer Switches (the version with the Hue logo on the 3rd button down).

It’s not a big house either, I just happen to have the bulbs in lots of lamps, and the dimmers next to the bedsides and on the walls/desk etc - the total soon adds up.

I’ve also tried to remove a bunch of scenes from each dimmer, leaving only the default on/off and a single relaxing scene for each room. This has made little difference, it’s still lagging massively.

I might try changing the Zigbee channel again…

Is there a list of actual exact frequencies for each of these Zigbee channels? So I can cross-reference to the WiFi frequency my UniFi APs are using?

IMG_0090.PNG
IMG_0090.PNG1206×2622 60 KB

32

They are processed on the hub so the traffic the switch sends is a simple button push/hold basically although complex transitions/animations do go over the zigbee to the lights.

Hue I think only has 3 frequencies it uses, stick to 25 and avoid using 2.4Ghz 11/13.

Remember though the neighbours wifi can affect it (not just how close they are to the hub, how close they are to the, say, outside light), I am close to the limit myself but I did notice when an ap was on 11 next to the bridge resposivness dropped.

Z-Wave avoids the wifi bands but its rare in the UK and costly. Thread is on 2.4Ghz as well (Matter I think can be on any transport protocol that supports it but thats mostly Thread right now, Hue matter does zigbee then the bridge translates to matter on ethernet).

The one perk with using the Zigbee stick is you can see the Zigbee network in much more detail but the thought of repairing all those devices and also the wonder if its causing issues has held me back.

1 Like
33

I regret choosing Hue to be honest. Once you have gone down that path and spent the money, it’s difficult to switch ecosystem, especially when your partner refuses to use anything other than the Hue app to control lights, despite having better options available.

I’m just going to have to run with it at this stage and hope the update sorts it.

Thanks.