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Finding Something that "Just Works"
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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homeassistant
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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
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ZigBee devices are probably the obvious choice. You'll need a ZigBee dongle which acts as a controller, then HA can talk to all the devices.
This is my advice after moving house and setting everything up from scratch again.
Attach the dongle and then go through the smart device's pairing procedure and it should just pop up on HA.
Xiaomi/Aqara, Tuya, IKEA, etc are all or largely Zigbee (although check as I have some Bluetooth Xiaomi kit and they've been a pain in my backside) are all inexpensive but are solid and you don't need a hub.
HomeKit also seems to work well but I only have 1 HK compatible device and I didn't realise it was when I bought it. However, you may pay more of a premium for them (although I didn't).
Thanks for including the list of companies with compatible devices! It wasn't until reading your comment I realized Zigbee was more of an industry standard than rather than a single manufacturer.
I'll be getting me one of those dongles, now.
Yes, Matter/Thread may change things but, as it stands, Zigbee is the format that seems to be absolutely solid and available in the lower-priced end of the mark (so you can get handfuls of sensors for not much).
If a friend asked for my advice to get a smart home up and running, I'd say grab a ZBDongle-E (discussion here) and whatever Zigbee devices you like. With the latest versions of HA being so much more user-friendly than when I started out, it is about as easy as it gets without buying some fancy bespoke system. I got all my Zigbee devices up and running in about the same time it took to get a single Bluetooth device onboard, so just stick with Zigbee and you can't go far wrong, at least in my experience.
Don't skip out on Z-wave too. They're typically more expensive devices, but they use less power and are more reliable. You'll obviously need a separate Z-wave transmitter/receiver but they're under $30. You might also buy a couple USB extension cables so you can move both the Zigbee and Z-wave transmitters away from the ports since with some setups you can run into signal interference from the ports themselves.
Reading through the replies here, there are multiple suggestions for ZigBee. I think that's the route I want to go, but I'm not entirely sure how to lay everything out.
I have three separate buildings that need ZigBee devices. I could attach a dongle to the HA server, but that would only have range to work with the devices in that building. My house is much too far away for any wireless access, but it has a 10Gb fiber link to my server rack. The third location doesn't have a wired connection, but it's close enough to get WiFi, and probably close enough to mesh with the ZigBee devices in either of the first two locations.
Is it possible to have multiple ZigBee base stations on the same network; will HA work with this setup? As an alternative, I could maybe install repeaters, but I'm not entirely sure if the locations on my property with electrical connections are close enough together.
Zigbee can be set up with either a USB dongle on the HA server (if you go that route get a dongle with a proper antenna), via hardwired networked hubs, or by Zigbee2mqtt or similar DIY options.
So for coverage across a large property with multiple buildings, networked hubs would be a good bet.
Most zigbee devices act as repeaters/routers for other devices, but they all need some route to the hub. so in your case, multiple hubs would be an option.
Don't use the built in zigbee implementation, your best bet imo would be either a network zigbee adapter or roll your own with a raspberry pi (or equivalent), a sonoff zigbee dongle and zigbee2mqtt.