gelfin

In a former house, the ground floor was an open common area. We didn’t walk around naked down there because lots of windows. In addition to the cameras outside, I did put one in that ground floor space for a few reasons:

1. Check in on pets.
2. Bit of paranoia while traveling, like I’d want to check in once every day or two and make sure I didn’t see a raging fire.
3. We had a cleaning service come in once a week with a frequently rotating crew, and having a visible camera in the house works as a small deterrent against shenanigans.

The indoor camera was set to never, ever record. I figured if we ever had a break-in the alarm would go off and I could connect and start recording as evidence. It never came up, fortunately.

More to your point, though, if my wife had ever breathed a word of concern or discomfort that the camera was to watch her, it would have come down immediately and we would have been having a talk to figure out why she worried I’d do that, because to me that’s a question of trust in the relationship, and it’s best to sort that out on all sides. Like, if I want to know what somebody close to me is doing and don’t think I can get the information I need by just asking them, that’s a much bigger problem that can’t be solved by adding ways to gather information without their cooperation.

In a former house, the ground floor was an open common area. We didn’t walk around naked down there because lots of windows. In addition to the cameras outside, I did put one in that ground floor space for a few reasons:

1. Check in on pets.
2. Bit of paranoia while traveling, like I’d want to check in once every day or two and make sure I didn’t see a raging fire.
3. We had a cleaning service come in once a week with a frequently rotating crew, and having a visible camera in the house works as a small deterrent against shenanigans.

The indoor camera was set to never, ever record. I figured if we ever had a break-in the alarm would go off and I could connect and start recording as evidence. It never came up, fortunately.

More to your point, though, if my wife had ever breathed a word of concern or discomfort that the camera was to watch her, it would have come down immediately and we would have been having a talk to figure out why she worried I’d do that, because to me that’s a question of trust in the relationship, and it’s best to sort that out on all sides. Like, if I want to know what somebody close to me is doing and don’t think I can get the information I need by just asking them, that’s a much bigger problem that can’t be solved by adding ways to gather information without their cooperation.

You might be getting beyond what I’m able to help with, then. What else I’ve got is largely hearsay, so I’m really hesitant to make any suggestions about what money you should spend. I’ve seen reports of people trying the HA SkyConnect and going back to ConBee because it worked better for them. The Hue Bridge certainly would work if anything will, but people are a bit upset with Hue at the moment over a move to require an Internet connection to the hub. And of course, it isn’t a general-purpose Zigbee controller, so if you want other devices you’d need something like the ConBee anyway.

Wish I could help more, but that’s what I’ve got.

The channel change was the real game changer for me.

To clarify, I did not mean stringing the stick across the room by any stretch. Just that the computer itself is a big ball of EM interference and a foot or two of distance can make a difference. If everything is in the same room the range shouldn’t be a huge concern anyway, so those suggestions might not be as relevant.

I’m using a ConBee II in this configuration without much issue. There are a couple of things you can try:

Make sure the ConBee is on a USB extension cable and moved a bit away from the computer case rather than just plugged right into a port on the back.

Are you sure the stick is close enough to one or more of the bulbs to communicate reliably? Zigbee has pretty good range, but environmental factors can make a big difference. You could try an experiment where you put one of the bulbs into a lamp you could move around to test signal reliability.

In the ZHA integration configuration it is possible to change the Zigbee channel. Tap the pencil icon next to the channel (NOT “Migrate Radio”). There is a warning about channel migration being experimental but if all you have is Hue bulbs I wouldn’t worry too much (my bulbs are Tradfris, and they were fine at least). I had to do this initially to get reliable coverage, and everything has been solid since.