this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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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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I see a lot of posts about people who like their Zigbee and Z-Wave products. As I'm setting up the hardware in my home, I'm using Wi-Fi products because I already have Wi-Fi. I don't see much difference in price. What is the actual benefit of setting up a separate network for home devices? Is there a reason that I should consider setting up one of these networks?

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[–] pageflight@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I very briefly tried a couple zwave light bulbs with a USB zwave adapter for Home Assistant, but couldn't get it reliable. I do like the mesh + low power idea though and played around with ZigBee dev boards previously.

I have settled on mostly Tasmota firmware on ESP8266 based devices. Lots of switches (from the CloudFree shop among others), smart plugs, and other devices. I also like to assemble my own sensor/relay boards, which Tasmota is great for. I did have to set a fixed 2.4Ghz channel on one router, and later set "IoT mode" on my Unifi network, to avoid devices falling off the network. I also have flashed most of the devices, but am happy to do that (not so different from uploading an Arduino sketch once you're used to it).