Hello there!
I just bought my first apartment and I would like to make as much as possible smart and connectable to Home Assistant. I have to redo the whole apartment (electricity, walls, etc) so drilling some extra holes is not a problem ;)
I just have a few questions where I can't really find a good answer to it. I hope you guys can help me :)
First of all, I have a few criteria:
- Everything should be local only (so no 3rd party cloud or accounts)
- Selfhosting is possible (I have a Proxmox server running Home Assistant in a VM)
- It doesn't have to be of the shelf hardware (DIY is fine, if it works as expected).
- I prefer FOSS over proprietary software/hardware (I know that FOSS hardware is difficult to find). If proprietary see point 1 & 2.
- Zigbee/Zwave > ethernet > wifi
- Available in Europe
What I'm struggling with:
- Lighting: What is the best solution for smart lighting? I already have a few Philips Hue bulbs and switches, now with the account restrictions they have I was thinking of buying a Sonoff Zigbee USB dongle off AliExpress instead of using the Hue Hub. Are there any better solutions like Shelly maybe or something else? For LED Strips I was thinking of using WLED on an ESP32
- Smart blinds, I already found some smart blinds (Like the one from Ikea) but they all work on batteries. As I have to redo the whole apartment I would like to have something that I don't have to charge every few months.
- Smart plugs: Maybe any in-wall/out-wall outlet that has the capability to see electricity usage that you recommend?
- Audio: I would like to have some multi-room audio as I really like to listen to music. I have 4 rooms that I want to control the music in. I was thinking to buy 4 old Sonos Connect AMPs Gen 1 from eBay, than I saw that they are not compatible with streaming music from my Navidrome (subsonic server) using HA. Is this true? Also I found a promising project called Snapcast, is it good?
Sorry for the long post, thank you so much for your time! If you have some tips and tricks you want to share that will be kind of you :)
Hola :)
I’m not sure how many boxes it ticks off for you, but I’ve been trying to get away from Tuya gear and a friend put me on to “Athom”. Most (all?) of their stuff seems to come pre-flashed with Tasmota and with what I’ve had, it integrates nicely with home assistant (mqtt + tasmota plugin, config the globe and you’re good to go).
I’ve just gotten two of their 15W led globes plus a WS2812 addressable LED controller a few weeks ago, and so far so good with all of the above.
From what I’ve seen I’m pretty sure they have plugs/sockets for a few different countries available, they have in-wall stuff, smart light switches, relays, and pretty sure they do some zigbee or similar as well.
I picked mine up from Ali Express but I’ve seen them on Amazon and they’re probably available on other places as well (eBay, etc).
Best of luck!
I also have a handful of athom smart plugs but I went the ESPHome firmware route directly from their shop. Just connected to WiFi and HA picked them up immediately.
In case it’s useful - athom on AliExpress:
athom global Store https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOtoqZ8
Be sure to click on the “All Items” tab - the home tab doesn’t show everything.
That looks really interesting, never heard of Tasmota. I'll look into it thank you so much!