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 :)
For lighting, I would personally avoid smart bulbs, especially if you are redoing the apartment anyway.
All they lead to from my experience are annoyances when guests/partners inevitably flick a switch and turn off the smart bulb.
I live in Australia so the spec may be different from where you are, but I have found ZigBee to work amazingly.
So using for example a Shelly relay would be more ideal? I was thinking of using smart lighting because you can for example have more warm light in the evening and more white light in the morning for example.
Smart bulbs are fine and the only solution if you want more than just dimming. Just make sure to also use a smart switch or relay that can be set to control the smart functions without actually cutting the power to the bulbs. The main problem with smart bulbs is when someone uses the physical switch and shuts off the power to the bulbs themselves.
Yeah if I choose for smart lighting I’ll just install in-wall smart switches. You have any experience of the longevity of smart bubs?
- Use IKEA Tradfri bulbs and get a Zigbee coordinator stick that’ll work with HA (Sonoff Dongle-E ZigBee 3.0). Some of their bulbs are CRI 90+ which is great. They’ll also act as Zigbee bridges.
If you can, add Shelly 1’s to all light switches so you have manual control over them (via HA).
You can also just put shellies only and use normal light bulbs. - If you’re redoing the whole place (including windows), add standard electric covers and then use Shelly Plus 2PM which will allow you to set the precise position as well. It’ll be hidden in the wall behind the switch and allow manual control as you would if there wasn’t anything smart behind it.
- Shelly 1PM if you need power measurement, but if you don’t want to fiddle with power sockets and mounting stuff behind them, you can also use any Zigbee/Z-Wave plugs.
- HomePods could do the job if you’re in that ecosystem. Snapcast has matured so it might be a viable option as well, albeit less clean. If you wish to go the Sonos route, check IKEA’s sonos speakers as they’re cheaper and perform excellent.
Bonus: Spin up OpenWRT + managed switch + a dedicated AP if you want to have a killer network that can handle insane amount of devices and throughput. Also make sure to route Ethernet cables to every room (use CAT6A for future proofing) and add an additional one in the room you wish to put your WiFi AP in so you don’t have to use a switch there if you wish to have a Ethernet connected device in there as well. Depending on the apartment size, you can get 2 U6 Lite APs, flash them with OpenWRT and enable fast roaming or just get a U6 LR, but make sure you test the coverage thoroughly before drilling and installing. Either way, go with OpenWRT wherever you can, it’s an amazing piece of software.
Hi, thanks for your comment :) I just looked at the Ikea bulbs and they seem to be cheaper than Philips Hue. I’ll look into it more later today. As for the blinds, that Shelly Plus 2PM looks interesting I have to look into it how it exactly works (I’m not an electrician, it’s all new for me ;) ) I’m not into the Apple ecosystem (for privacy reasons) You know any way to connect my Navidrome server to HA so I can stream to those Ikea Sonos speakers?
I already have a router flashed with OpenWRT and I really like it. I just bought Unifi Enterprise 24 PoE switch and a barebone router of AliExpress (4x 2.5G ports, intel celeron cpu) so I can experiment with OPNSense. For APs I already have some U6 LR, didn’t knew you can flash those with OpenWRT, will look into that :)
If you have a network mount for your music, you can mount your share within HA and use HA as the media player if I’m not mistaken.
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!
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.
I’m not an expert, but if I look around, I see lots of DIYers who use ZigBee and things like that. But professionals use for example KNX. As far as I know KNX is all local, wired and so on; but a multitude more expensive. I guess there are other protocols.
So if money isn’t an issue and I had a new home, I would research KNX first, and eventually add some ZigBee gear.
Also, go for the basics: smart heating, smart switches and smart outlets. That allows the best automations. Maybe add some wires to your doors for openclose detection, power for smart blinds and so on.
Hi, you mean I can directly wire a open/close sensor? That is interesting. You have any recommendations for those and the smart blinds?
- Get the sonoff and z2m and go zigbee wherever possible. It’s worked very well for me, and the devices have to be local so no cloud bullshit. Z2M has a good page with supported devices listed, so you can check what works before you buy. I use mainly smart plugs and go on/off only but use bulbs where smarter control is needed. Plugs are mostly tuya from aliexpress for lights, with domesticly bought higher quality (aquara and hue) for higher demand loads. Bulbs are all Ikea, they are cheap and work well. You should literally never need a hub with zigbee, thought some devices might loose some features without the hub.
- I have an ikea blind, the battery lasts a long time but there are guides online for hacking them to be wired. They do have some QC issues, i had to take min apart to fix a loose setscrew but it’s worked perfectly after that. From what I’ve seen it’s an assembly issue and not a design issue, so i would have no problem buying more.
- How hard is it to replace the outlets? Here it’s illegal to DIY so quite expensive, therefore I’ve gone all zigbee smart plugs. If you can DIY changing the outlets that is not an issue, and smart outlets may be a better option. I always try to think of what happens if something fails, some things can get very expensive at a later point. YMMV…
