I've seen tons of people buying these Xfinity Xhk1-ue keypads to repurpose for dirt cheap. I'm seeing some for less than $20. Lots of guides online.
You can also find more modern versions of things on AliXpress if you know specific brands to look for.
I have some of the Xfinity keypads, bit of a pain to setup but they work well.
What are the brands to look for in Ali? I've never really seen anything.
You can look around, but the ones I went looking for are Tuya brands:
And I would stay from anything that is not battery operated. I'd never hardwire anything ordered from AE into my house for obvious reasons. You also have to accept that some pieces you get may not be the best, but I only get sensors, bulbs, and controllers and haven't had any issues yet.
Ah you just meant "things" not keypads. I was asking specifically about keypads.
Yeah I have a ton of generic tuya ZigBee devices, they work great. So far only real complaint is bulbs that act as repeaters, they really shouldn't since they can be turned off at the switch.
There are definitely a lot over there for sale, but I haven't seen any brands I recognized or wanted to take a gamble on. If you see something like, just try and find a review on it somewhere.
I've not seen a single ZigBee keypad. Some WiFi ones but that's trickier to get working without the cloud. There are also no generic ZigBee tuya keypad listed on the Z2M device list, which leads me to believe there isn't any I have missed.
It is expensive but that Frient keypad is what I have and it's fantastic. Been running it for about a year now and it's rock solid. I've even repurposed Nest tags to work with it.
Ring keypad v2
Absolutely agree, I'm running 2 of them. There's a blueprint that makes it really easy.
When I couldn't find anything that seemed to work for me I decided to go with a "hands-free" approach. My alarm will arm-home when everyone has been home for 15 minutes. It arms-away when everyone is gone. It disarms when someone gets home. If armed-home and an exterior door is opened with presence detected inside by that door it disarms. I haven't had a mis-fire since I started it.
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