moseschrute

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22399282

Wemo Stage is one of those devices that has a horrible rating if you check Amazon. However, it fills a device category that up until now has essentially had no competition and is honestly not terrible for a first of its kinds device. The category I’m referring to is battery-powered thread light switches. As someone that rents, I can’t install light switches in the wall, so this has saved my smart home by allowing me to install renter-friendly physical controls for Apple Home.

But there are a few differences:

Wemo Stage

• HomeKit over thread
• Mediocre battery life
• Responsiveness is okay most of the time, but it really depends on the stability of Apple Home and can lag
• 3 programmable buttons, each supporting single, double, and triple tap for 9 programmable shortcuts

Nanoleaf Sense+

• Not actually tied to HomeKit in any way
• Uses Lightwave (Nanoleaf proprietary protocol) over thread
• Bypasses Apple Home (thread border router) altogether
• Near instantaneous response time, and doesn’t seem to lag ever
• On, off, and dimming controls. Two extra programmable buttons that will eventually support Matter (coming soon supposedly)
• Includes motion sensor that can control lights via Lightwave protocol

The Sense+ is very new. I’ve only had mine for a few days after pre-ordering the switch. I was really hoping the Sense+ would be better all around, but despite its instantaneous response time, it has a few major drawbacks:

• lack of support for non-Nanoleaf lights
• built-in button programming is very limited; you can’t program a button to set both brightness and hue. Seriously, Nanoleaf?

I wish they could have the switch support direct control of any Nanoleaf light, but fall back to Matter control for anything else. Though I suppose mixing protocols could get messy. But Lightwave is really solid as long as you live within Nanoleaf’s walled garden. But as soon as you throw anything else into the mix, the illusion shatters.

I’m sure the Sense+ will mature with software updates. I’m excited to see how Nanoleaf improves the product!

I may mess around with more wireless Thread switches. ONVIS makes one that is more of a button form factor than a switch. But for now I find myself having to choose between Sense+ which is more responsive, or Wemo Stage which can control more devices.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22399282

Wemo Stage is one of those devices that has a horrible rating if you check Amazon. However, it fills a device category that up until now has essentially had no competition and is honestly not terrible for a first of its kinds device. The category I’m referring to is battery-powered thread light switches. As someone that rents, I can’t install light switches in the wall, so this has saved my smart home by allowing me to install renter-friendly physical controls for Apple Home.

But there are a few differences:

Wemo Stage

• HomeKit over thread
• Mediocre battery life
• Responsiveness is okay most of the time, but it really depends on the stability of Apple Home and can lag
• 3 programmable buttons, each supporting single, double, and triple tap for 9 programmable shortcuts

Nanoleaf Sense+

• Not actually tied to HomeKit in any way
• Uses Lightwave (Nanoleaf proprietary protocol) over thread
• Bypasses Apple Home (thread border router) altogether
• Near instantaneous response time, and doesn’t seem to lag ever
• On, off, and dimming controls. Two extra programmable buttons that will eventually support Matter (coming soon supposedly)
• Includes motion sensor that can control lights via Lightwave protocol

The Sense+ is very new. I’ve only had mine for a few days after pre-ordering the switch. I was really hoping the Sense+ would be better all around, but despite its instantaneous response time, it has a few major drawbacks:

• lack of support for non-Nanoleaf lights
• built-in button programming is very limited; you can’t program a button to set both brightness and hue. Seriously, Nanoleaf?

I wish they could have the switch support direct control of any Nanoleaf light, but fall back to Matter control for anything else. Though I suppose mixing protocols could get messy. But Lightwave is really solid as long as you live within Nanoleaf’s walled garden. But as soon as you throw anything else into the mix, the illusion shatters.

I’m sure the Sense+ will mature with software updates. I’m excited to see how Nanoleaf improves the product!

I may mess around with more wireless Thread switches. ONVIS makes one that is more of a button form factor than a switch. But for now I find myself having to choose between Sense+ which is more responsive, or Wemo Stage which can control more devices.

Wemo Stage is one of those devices that has a horrible rating if you check Amazon. However, it fills a device category that up until now has essentially had no competition and is honestly not terrible for a first of its kinds device. The category I’m referring to is battery-powered thread light switches. As someone that rents, I can’t install light switches in the wall, so this has saved my smart home by allowing me to install renter-friendly physical controls for Apple Home.

But there are a few differences:

Wemo Stage

• HomeKit over thread
• Mediocre battery life
• Responsiveness is okay most of the time, but it really depends on the stability of Apple Home and can lag
• 3 programmable buttons, each supporting single, double, and triple tap for 9 programmable shortcuts

Nanoleaf Sense+

• Not actually tied to HomeKit in any way
• Uses Lightwave (Nanoleaf proprietary protocol) over thread
• Bypasses Apple Home (thread border router) altogether
• Near instantaneous response time, and doesn’t seem to lag ever
• On, off, and dimming controls. Two extra programmable buttons that will eventually support Matter (coming soon supposedly)
• Includes motion sensor that can control lights via Lightwave protocol

The Sense+ is very new. I’ve only had mine for a few days after pre-ordering the switch. I was really hoping the Sense+ would be better all around, but despite its instantaneous response time, it has a few major drawbacks:

• lack of support for non-Nanoleaf lights
• built-in button programming is very limited; you can’t program a button to set both brightness and hue. Seriously, Nanoleaf?

I wish they could have the switch support direct control of any Nanoleaf light, but fall back to Matter control for anything else. Though I suppose mixing protocols could get messy. But Lightwave is really solid as long as you live within Nanoleaf’s walled garden. But as soon as you throw anything else into the mix, the illusion shatters.

I’m sure the Sense+ will mature with software updates. I’m excited to see how Nanoleaf improves the product!

I may mess around with more wireless Thread switches. ONVIS makes one that is more of a button form factor than a switch. But for now I find myself having to choose between Sense+ which is more responsive, or Wemo Stage which can control more devices.

I’m not the moderator, but I picked the community with the most subscribers. Would love to learn more about your HomeKit setups! Please join!

I love Apple Home. It has its flaws, but— just like Lemmy— I love trying out bleeding-edge tech like Thread, Matter, mesh based routers and sick lighting. I also mess around with Homebridge, and I’ve considered trying Home Assistant. I’ve learned a lot, and I want to collaborate with other home automation enthusiasts. I’m going to try to post more to that community, but I wanted to put this out there if anyone is interested in collaborating with me to build up that community.

Hi, I recently made the switch to Lemmy from Reddit. But r/homekit is one of the communities I miss the most.

What can I do to help build this community up? I’m happy to make posts, comment, and upvote. Is trying to poach people from r/homekit a bad idea?

I would love to get to know everyone better. Here’s some info about my smart home.

• I’m using Apple Home, and my primary hub is a 4K Apple TV 4K Ethernet, which I chose for the Thread radio.
• I’m almost exclusively using Thread devices, and most of those are Matter over Thread.
• Most of my lights are Nanoleaf Essentials (Matter over Thread), and despite people hating Nanoleaf, they have been much better lately.
• For more advanced lighting, I’m using WLED, which is a DIY project for controlling addressable light strips.
• My WLED lights are bridged into HomeKit via Homebridge, though I’ve considered switching to Home Assistant.
• I’m using a Deco mesh router with two nodes, and it’s been amazing for the relatively low cost.
• Outside of Apple Home, I use Ring, which I’ve bridged into Apple via Homebridge. I hate the Ring subscription, but their hardware is solid.

Excited to get to know everyone!

I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.

I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.

On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.

I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.

Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).

Not sure if this has always been the case, or if I’m only noticing with iOS 18 allowing me to pin a primary hub, but my primary hub constantly falls back to my HomePod mini from Apple TV 4K WiFi.

Whenever this happens, all my lights go unresponsive. Absolutely infuriating.

So I’m sure the issue is WiFi. I have really solid WiFi speed/ping and relatively good range, but I live in a pretty WiFi congested apartment. So my guess is WiFi noise is knocking my primary hub out occasionally. But the odd thing is I never notice my WiFi dropping in other contexts.

But then again, maybe it’s not WiFi, because sometimes pressing a switch seems to trigger the primary hub dropping.

I’m so fed up, decide to buy an Apple TV 4K Ethernet edition to pin as my primary hub. My thought process is WiFi won’t drop, and built in thread radio means it won’t rely on external border routers (HomePod mini).

But I can’t believe the Apple Home experience is this bad. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this bad pre iOS 18. I’ve never had more home hub failovers.