homeassistant

12132 readers

5 users here now

Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Sourcing Local Network Only, HA Friendly Devices (dubvee.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/homeassistant

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What kind/brand of devices do you recommend and where do your source them? Things like smart outlets, bulbs, sensors, etc.

I have a hard time sourcing gear because it's all either locked to Amazon/Google or requires the manufacturer's cloud services and their dedicated app.

I'm looking for devices that can work completely offline and only communicate with my HA/MQTT or at least a local base station that can bridge to HA.

For the last few years, I've been buying bulbs/outlets from AliExpress with Tasmota pre-flashed. Before that, I was ordering them from Amazon and re-flashing them, but that was always a crapshoot as not all of them were compatible with tuya-convert. They're also ridiculously difficult to disassemble to flash manually.

Anybody willing to share some tips to source some new devices?

Edit: I've also built a few custom sensors with ESP8266 and ESP-Home but they're not particularly pretty.

Edit 2: Thanks everyone! I think I'm going to look into some Zigbee devices and bridges. That sounds like the most "open" way to expand my smart home gear.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cloudfree is great, and the owner is really nice.

There's also: https://www.athom.tech/

[–] keyez 3 points 1 year ago

I also recommend athom they're the only plugs (ESPHome) I've found that immediately import upon WiFi connection and still work for on/off and simple metrics in HA when blocked to the outside internet. Only downside is they can't seem to connect to hidden SSIDs but I haven't seen them pinging or reaching out to anywhere else.