Smart Homes

Not mine, but this looks amazing.

I'm considering Inovelli Blue 2-1 switches for a new (to me) house. I'm pretty sure the electrical wiring in that place predates the American Civil War, so no neutral wires, and no plans to rip out the walls to rectify that. Would I be able to use the light switches for basic on/off/dimmer functions and have them in Home Assistant via the SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 Plus-E dongle?

I have HA up and running in my current place, but have way too many cloud enabled hubs (TP-Link Kasa, IKEA Tradfre, Lutron Caseta, just to name a few) that I want to replace with a fully self-hosted solution. Already bought and configured the Sonoff ZigBee dongle in anticipation. The only other hitch is that the gangboxes may be too small to fit larger switches and I may need to hire an electrician to replace around 20 of them.

Also it seems that Inovelli Aux switches for the multi-way setups are sold out everywhere. From what I understand, those are simply dumb switches with some extra bells and whistles. What alternatives are there for those?

Aqara just added a "Beta Version Update" toggle in their app's firmware settings. When enabled, it allows your device to receive beta firmware updates. Spotted in the "Firmware Upgrade” -> “More Settings" menu.

My home is mostly using smart switch or relays for lights, but we now have a specific need for some RGB light bulbs. Has anyone got any recommendations for good colour smart bulbs readily available in the UK?

I'd prefer Zigbee but am open to Wifi options if necessary. Currently leaning towards the innr bulbs as they seem a quality option but a fair bit cheaper than the likes of Hue.

Wifey wants to be able to see who's at the door before answering.

It seems difficult to match up the capabilities of the various options to what we actually want, so I'm looking for suggestions or recommendations.

Don't want any cloud privacy nightmare nonsense. Don't really even want local storage. Just a live video stream from doorbell to iPhone and/or Android, triggered by the doorbell button.

I don't have HA or any other smart home stuff set up currently, but might like to add it in future.

Required features:

• answer the door via iPhone, or Android, whoever picks it up first.
• see who's at the door without letting them know we're looking. Like if I have to "answer" the doorbell before the video comes up, that'd be bad.
• no cloud / subscription.
• works without any storage.

Nice to have:

• Option to add recording/storage later if I change my mind.
• option for Home Assistant integration later if I ever get around to it.
• totally wireless / rechargeable.
• motion detection I guess.

Is there anything suitable out there?

Edit: also nice to have i.e. not required * internet connection so I can see who's at the door even when I'm outside of my wifi range.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7616207

"Starting 11 March 2024, the price of Ring Protect Basic will change from £34.99/year to £49.99/year per device. If you would like to keep your current plan, no further action is required. Your plan will renew at the new price, unless you cancel your subscription before your next renewal on or after 11 March 2024."

Arse clowns.

Ikea launched the Ormanäs, its first smart RGB LED light strip, in the Netherlands. The news comes by way of Dutch tech site Tweakers, which notes that the Ormanäs is a four-meter, or roughly 13-foot, dimmable Zigbee affair for €29.99 (about $32) that works with the company’s Dirigera smart hub. The light strip is only available in the Netherlands for now, but Ikea typically starts its rollouts there before bringing products to the US and beyond.

The strip is simple and, judging from the images on Ikea’s site, won’t have individually addressable LEDs like some of the fancier strips on the market — which means the whole strip will show only a single color at a time. Still, it supports multiple control methods like the Ikea Home app and the Ikea Styrbar remote as well as Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa smart home platforms (through the Dirigera hub). It also supports Google Home and Amazon Alexa. And being a fairly standard LED strip, you can cut it to length in designated places.

The Ormanäs has a nice balance of features — it’s affordable, long, dimmable, and with Zigbee control, is likely to be very responsive. It’s rare to see a smart LED strip that ticks all of those boxes and also supports HomeKit and out-of-home control via the maker’s app — something the Dirigera hub improves on over Ikea’s now-defunct Trådfri Gateway.

My partner and I are getting a cat and consider getting a robot vacuum cleaner for our apartment to help keep it clean. Up until now, I've been against getting one due to privacy concerns and negative reports about certain manufacturers (e.g., iRobot/Roomba). Now I'm reevaluating, because my partner is sensitive to dust, and regular vacuuming will be a must.

Does anyone have any experience or recommendations about manufacturers or models with a light privacy footprint or good reputation on that front?

I am aware that most robots that actually work will also gather data, and newer models even incorporate photo/video to improve pattern recognition performance. Still, I would be more comfortable with one that does that within reason (e.g., collects as little data as possible, transfers as little as possible to remote servers, encrypts data for transfer and storage).

I was thinking about getting a presence sensor for the living room (so I don't wake up in the dark because I fell asleep in there) and I stumbled across Smart Home Scenes articles covering a few of them, so I thought I might as well bundle them together.

In November last year, they did a comparison of three, then current, examples - Aqara's FP1 and Tuya's ZY-M100 and PS-HPS. It's a lengthy breakdown but they conclude:

As far as pricing goes, nothing can beat the ZY-M100 and the features it offers for half the price of the Aqara FP1. Considering the PS-HPS is around the same price, I would not regard it as a viable alternative as it falls short in so many categories.

Since then, Aqara have released the FP2 which they reviewed in April this year:

When it comes to price, naturally the Aqara FP1 is cheaper than it’s successor. The real question is, is the FP2 worth it’s price tag of $82.99? Obviously, that’s up to you to decide.

• Is multi-person detection something you need or want?
• Is native HomeKit and Matter support important for your setup?
• Is cloud dependency okay with you, perhaps until the FP2 is completely jailbroken?

I feel like the Aqara FP1 is still a capable mmWave presence sensor, if implemented correctly. Better yet, the Tuya ZY-M100 is an incredible alternative at a really low price. I may be biased, because I love local communication (Zigbee) and don’t really like to depend on Wi-Fi for these types of devices. The choice is yours.

They also compared the Everything Presence One to the FP2:

In comparing the EP1 to Aqara’s FP2, I could not decide for certain which one is the more capable static human presence sensor. In each test, they clocked in at the same second, making them almost identical as far as presence detection speed goes. The FP2 was faster by around 30 seconds in clearing presence though, so it might be able to save you a few bucks by turning the lights off earlier.

Regarding static human presence in a room, they both performed similarly with no clear winner. I suffered false positive triggers on both devices from my curtains, until I turned them to face the other direction. This is something that you will need to optimize yourself, as it’s largely dependent on your installation area/room.

It came up in the discussion about smart home set-ups but is important enough to flag up in its own post as this can be the key ingredient in your smart home network.

Before deep diving into the list, it’s important to differentiate between the types of Zigbee dongles available.

...

The easiest of the lot are USB Zigbee sticks, you simply plug them in your server and you are good to go. LAN/PoE coordinator allow for a more versatile installation, you can attach the dongle anywhere on your network. Hybrids are a combination of the two with interchangeable operation/power modes.

The second important difference between current Zigbee dongles is the type of chip they carry. The EFR32MG21 [Datasheet] is newer, more powerful but is still labelled as experimental in many Zigbee applications, such as Zigbee2MQTT. The CC2652P [Datasheet] is a bit older, although still relevant and powerful enough to form a sizeable Zigbee network. It’s supported in all Zigbee applications.

The top 5 dongles;

1. Home Assistant SkyConnect
2. Sonoff ZBDongle-E
3. Sonoff ZBDongle-P
4. SMLIGHT SLZB-02 Coordinator
5. ZigStar Stick v4

There's a lot more information over on the Smart Home Scene page (where I was looking something else up when I stumbled on this).