this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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I'm very familiar with homeassistant, been using it for ~5-6 years. First primarily z-wave but now primarily zigbee with a tiny bit of wifi-backed matter mixed in.
That's a lot of work to replace the sensors that are built into the fridge. 2 temp sensors for the fridge and freezer separately (I'm still not convinced I wouldn't have issues with the connection being unreliable), a power clamp (you probably don't want to use a plug since the relays fail open), 2 door sensors, and a fair bit of automation to get notified, not to mention you've now added a maintenance task for all those batteries. Especially when the alternative is to connect it to the internet and you're done. I do connect my homeassistant install to their cloud service so I can get long term tracking and whatnot but the part I need is done with just the internet connection.
That's just it, with either client isolation or a dedicated and isolated IoT SSID (nearly all modern home routers have one of these) they're not actually on your network and can't communicate with any of your other devices, only the internet. I've been building enterprise networks for ~20 years now and this is how it's handled at that level and should be more than enough for a home network.
I do 100% agree for cameras though, that's all local or not at all.
Depends on the fridge, in my opinion. I don't need any door sensors because my fridge will beep at me if I leave a door open for 12 microseconds, and the freezer is pretty reliable, it's just the fridge that needs adjusting from time to time.
I just use a ThirdReality smart plug with energy monitoring primarily so I can see power consumption, but I still contend that this combined with the temp sensor is enough to let me know if there's a problem when I'm not home.
Also a 20 year IT person, but on the Linux server side. I do have an isolated network for IoT things that don't have local alternatives (pfsense hardware firewall, 24 port managed switch in the rack and ruckus APs), but I hate (hate) the enshittification of perfectly good hardware with software that exists solely to harvest my data so a corporation can have an additional revenue stream for the shareholders, and I will go pretty far out of my way to avoid giving money to companies that do this. Dreading the day my beloved dumb LG plasma TV dies.
What hardware are you running your HA instance on? Mine runs in an HAOS Proxmox VM with the USB port for the zwave dongle (for the locks) passed through. ZigBee coordinator is ethernet, so it's just plugged into a switch in the living room.