Local control, most use very little power and can either be plugged in or use a 1-3yr battery you swap out sparingly, and they communicate on a separate set of channels from your internet at low-latency so they don’t eat up internet bandwidth.

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

So, if I'm reading things right, anything that runs on Z-Wave or Zigbee will necessarily run locally, because those are mesh protocols?

Anyway, thanks a lot. Those are really simple keywords to check.

[–] Flying_Hellfish@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

The Hook Up had a great video on this. He compared a lot of different options and ranks them based on functionality with and without internet.

https://youtu.be/wnFoQ84SRL4

[–] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yep.

My favorite smart outlet switch though was recently sold out and it’s an Aeotec smart switch 7. Zooz makes something similar though I think.

I’ve got it set up on Home Assistant so that whenever certain devices in my home are detected on or off via watt usage minimum changes I monitor on those smart switches, it toggles the Lutron Caseta (best smart light control there is) lights via commands for different rooms in my house.

I also have things like waterproof outdoor gate sensors made by Zooz that are smaller than a single stick of gum where the small flat watch battery in it lasts for almost a year and it will alert me when the gate opens or closes, but only when I’m a certain distance away from the house’s geofence I’ve set up.

You will also need an overall little USB stick to connect to your Home Assistant server device (like a NAS or Raspberry Pi) to control everything, but there’s one that’s made by Aeotec that does both Zigbee and Z-wave long range protocols. Z-Wave LR (long range) works really far too… like I think around a mile potentially, if you have a nice clear line of sight signal.