Home Automation

79 readers

2 users here now

Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

Rules

No abusive behaviour. This is a forum for friendly discussion; personal attacks will not be tolerated and you will be banned without warning.
Referral/affiliate links are NOT ALLOWED!
NO POLITICS! There are plenty of other communities to discuss them; this is not one.
When posting project details must be included. Posting a video or image without detail will result in a removed post and may result in a ban.
Crowdfunding links are not allowed.
Reposts, low-effort content and karma farming may be removed at the discretion of the mods. Posters may be banned without warning.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

communick@selfhosted.forum

MQTT Smart Dimmer Switch (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by InternationalSet6134@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have a WiFi controlled LED light strip in my bedroom which I use as my main lights. I wanted to control them with a regular wall switch, so I installed a Kasa HS220 smart dimmer switch (not wired to any load) and wrote a Home Assistant automation. If you turn on the smart switch, the led lights come on via the automation, and similarly the brightness controls on the switch control the strip via the automation. So basically, the switch controls the lights “virtually” rather than physically.

The problem is that the Kasa switch has no way of telling Home Assistant that it has changed. Home Assistant can only poll it for changes. I’ve noticed that hitting the switch takes about 10 seconds for the lights to come on. I increased the polling rate and now I can get it to turn on in 1-2 seconds, but it’s just a stupid solution.

Any ideas for fixing this? I’m thinking that an MQTT switch could do the job, just not sure what is good to buy. I like Kasa’s hardware, it feels very solid while being affordable. But the software is dumb. I want full LAN control with events, not polling.

Thanks for your help!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] silasmoeckel@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Only if they have a device to device communication channel that most wifi devices lack. Like I said the problem is not the medium but the protocol design. Wifi's orders of magnitude faster throughput does not fix a bad protocol.

[–] MikeP001@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The original suggestion was that it was a wifi latency problem. It's not, there is no perceivable latency due to using wifi. And it's not cloud, this is a local API.

Kasa picked a poor implementation - there is indeed a TCP protocol standard available (UPNP/SSDP) that works very well over wifi and includes device to device eventing. Most devices, including kasa, don't implement it - that's a manufacturer failing. Don't buy those, or at least buy the ones with a local API that will work with HA (et al).

Yes, zwave has a (expensive) way to solve it by building a redundant network. Most IoT users already have house wide wifi, and many already have a automation/consolidation hub like HA to work around the mismatched API. Zigbee works too, so does wifi if you pick the right devices.

[–] silasmoeckel@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

devices need to communicate with each other not just via the hub or worse several layers like your seeing. Throwing in poling makes it even worse.

Your fixated on wifi throughput. That's what I originally said, it's a protocol issue typical of wifi devices. Not that you can't get wifi to work well rather that IoT over wifi tend to be implemented badly.

[–] Silent-Piccolo@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Again, the problem is not Wi-Fi or that the devices use Wi-Fi to communicate. The problem is the protocol that they are communicating with. You can't immediately say that any Wi-Fi smart home device is inherently bad just because it uses Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is synonymous with cloud control, but more and more products are including Wi-Fi and local control, including some official standards like matter and MQTT.