wegster

With the BF sales kicking off, and it being beyond time to replace smoke detectors, have been looking but also being disappointed in what I’ve seen. Expensive First Alert models seem to be abandoned, lots of reviews for false alarms all over the place, etc.

Running HomeKit but will be adding home assistant over the Xmas few week break. Have a baby and wife both of which would freak out on false alarms, and a few pretty high ceilings I don’t have an easy way to get to.

Was thinking something standalone + Zigbee with just rudimentary smarts, but not sure something truly reliable seems to exist.

Is it worth looking at anything ‘smart’ at this point? I’ve got 8-9 detectors or so to replace at this point.

I’ve been expanding our smart devices and with the holidays coming, I spent ‘too much’ on some Hue Festiva light for the tree among some other things like a pair of Govee curtain lights (would have gone Twinkle for both but just read too many gripes on ‘lasted one season then died’. Will see how the Govee HA integration works out eventually.

Meanwhlle, we also have had some ‘curtain lights’ on a rear ~6-7’ x 6’ fixed window, another on a roughly 8’x8’ front set of windows, and a third set over the kitchen sink roughly 6; wide x ~4’6” tall. The two big ones are plug powered but also have a remote for modes, and the smaller one is battery pack and remote.

Of course, when we originally got them, I nudged the wife towards warm white (~2700K-ish) but she wanted white, So yeah, now she wants the 2700K, so was going to surprise her before the holidays and replace them alll. There are a ton of all over Amazon, and thought I found a match - the big sets of lights I have on Thread outlets and group them to turn ‘window lights’ on or off, and they work well enough other than being the wrong color ‘now.’ The ktchen sink lights were never ideal but I found some that had both a battery pack and USB power, with the intent of putting them all on Thread outlets for on/off.

So, the problem. On power to the outlet, you still need to use the stupid remote on the set I got, and it doesn’t retain state, meaning iif I use the remote to turn on and pick a mode, then cut the outlet power then turn the outlet back on - you still need to then use the remote, which kind of defeats the purpose. We don’t desperately need all the remote modes, just solid and or slow blink is fine, but need them to at least go on/off via Home, voice, something.

Here’s an example of the type of curtain or ’fairy lights’ I’m talking about. Considering the $$ I’ve put in elsewhere into smart home bits and now the Festivia and Govees, really was looking for expensive and can work with smart outlets. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KLV417B

I haven’t checked the bigger sets yet but the one above is a fail at this point. They’re simple (but nt enough to come on when power s apple - meh), and they make my wife happy waking up in the morning when it’s still dark out or at night. I did try adding batteries as well as wall power, waiting to see if any magic smoke was let out, but seems like it’s wired as battery backup (or sole power if not getting wall power), so then when I turn off the outlet, it just goes to battery and doesn’t turn off, again defeating the intent. I have not looked at the tiny circuit inside the battery box switch and it’s possible I may be able to solder/jump a few pins but - has anyone found working sets same style that work as described, possibly being able to be cut to length, that aren’t outrageously priced?

I’ve been expanding our smart devices and with the holidays coming, I spent ‘too much’ on some Hue Festiva light for the tree among some other things like a pair of Govee curtain lights (would have gone Twinkle for both but just read too many gripes on ‘lasted one season then died’. Will see how the Govee HA integration works out eventually.

Meanwhlle, we also have had some ‘curtain lights’ on a rear ~6-7’ x 6’ fixed window, another on a roughly 8’x8’ front set of windows, and a third set over the kitchen sink roughly 6; wide x ~4’6” tall. The two big ones are plug powered but also have a remote for modes, and the smaller one is battery pack and remote.

Of course, when we originally got them, I nudged the wife towards warm white (~2700K-ish) but she wanted white, So yeah, now she wants the 2700K, so was going to surprise her before the holidays and replace them alll. There are a ton of all over Amazon, and thought I found a match - the big sets of lights I have on Thread outlets and group them to turn ‘window lights’ on or off, and they work well enough other than being the wrong color ‘now.’ The ktchen sink lights were never ideal but I found some that had both a battery pack and USB power, with the intent of putting them all on Thread outlets for on/off.

So, the problem. On power to the outlet, you still need to use the stupid remote on the set I got, and it doesn’t retain state, meaning iif I use the remote to turn on and pick a mode, then cut the outlet power then turn the outlet back on - you still need to then use the remote, which kind of defeats the purpose. We don’t desperately need all the remote modes, just solid and or slow blink is fine, but need them to at least go on/off via Home, voice, something.

Here’s an example of the type of curtain or ’fairy lights’ I’m talking about. Considering the $$ I’ve put in elsewhere into smart home bits and now the Festivia and Govees, really was looking for expensive and can work with smart outlets. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KLV417B

I haven’t checked the bigger sets yet but the one above is a fail at this point. They’re simple (but nt enough to come on when power s apple - meh), and they make my wife happy waking up in the morning when it’s still dark out or at night. I did try adding batteries as well as wall power, waiting to see if any magic smoke was let out, but seems like it’s wired as battery backup (or sole power if not getting wall power), so then when I turn off the outlet, it just goes to battery and doesn’t turn off, again defeating the intent. I have not looked at the tiny circuit inside the battery box switch and it’s possible I may be able to solder/jump a few pins but - has anyone found working sets same style that work as described, possibly being able to be cut to length, that aren’t outrageously priced?

Hi all,

So I'm in mid-migration away from Alexa to HomeKit at the moment, and got some good advice and things to look at in a recent post here. Am familiar with the existence of Home Assistant which was in the original plan 5 years back, still have a Pi reserved for - but wife and life put that on pause. I know about Homebridge in that it exists. It's possible I wind up going down one of those paths, or both, but am focusing first on 'where I want to wind up' and work from there.

Current setup:

Focusing on main floor only at the moment (second floor is a mother-in-law apartment) which has 3 bedrooms, large open combined entry/living room/dining room connected to an open large-ish open kitchen/eating area o the one side, then a T hallway with guest bath, my office, baby's room with a jack and Jill full bath connecting those two, then the master bedroom, master bath and a sunroom.

4 HomePod Minis, 2 new, 2 used/refurbs, will probably be adding another 2 over time. For 'right now' still leaving Alexa enabled concurrently.

Hue hub with approx 30 bulbs currently including several for 'driveway' groups (garage sconces, lamp-post + front door entry). Covers driveway, living room groups, breakfast area in kitchen, master bedroom and my home office.

A few Kasa smart plugs which I'll probably replace with the pair of Matter/Thread smart plugs I just picked up (Onvis), added a trio of nanoleaf Thread/Matter bulbs and a 3 pack of Eve motion sensors. I have a Schlage Encode Plus en route - I know Schlage will be coming out with a new model for full Matter/Thread support, but door entry is becoming problematic with a new baby, stroller, and occasional need to let a sitter in and out - so at least will run on Thread for better battery life and it is hopefully more robust vs August and the like/not being replaced every 6 months

Moving forward:

Well, I'm still working on basic automations , the most immediate being proper trigger and reset along the lines of these:

1. When motion is detected in the Master bath from Eve sensor, and it's after sunset - turn on lights to 5-10%, then turn off after a few minutes of inactivity. (I did find 'duration' buried in eve app properties, but unsure if this will work correctly in Home as of yet.
2. When motion is detection in Master bath during daytime and lux < X (haven't sorted right value yet), turn on at 75% and turn off a few minutes after no motion detected.
3. Same pattern as # 1 for breakfast area with subset of kitchen lights for 'motion triggered night light' type of behavior.
4. Will wind up mostly using proximity access for the home lock, but sitter will wind up with a code. If proximity (arriving home) or code entered and driveway group lights are not on and it's > sunset (I migrated my schedule for these from Hue but have not confirmed working, basically they should be on at sunset then next hour, otherwise off), then turn on AND turn on some limited set of lights inside at X %.

Not entirely sure as of yet if will need to go to HB or HA/other to allow the relatively flexible automation and conditionals or not?

Rest of plan is right now some additional motion sensors and lights (the two other bathrooms) with similar 'night entry and exit' vs daytime entry in dim conditions on/off, one more motion nite-light and smart light set in the other half of the kitchen and a pair of smart dimmable switches to deal with the insider entryway and dining room many-bulb fixtures.

After that, garage door and start to look at blinds. There's a lot of glass/big windows in this place, which we generally love, but in particular the breakfast room 'around dinner time near sun-set-ish' has two tall windows (out of five on that particular wall, all next to each other) with a separate 'lite' (another pane of glass) above them that manages to blast me in the face. No immediate plans to put smart blinds on all the glass in the house ($$$$ from what I've seen), but at least starting with the ability to drop them partway (none in place right now) like N minutes before sunset or something like that.

On the bathroom and for motion, someone mentioned elsewhere using built-in switch sensors which I suppose could work, but I expect the 'cone' isn't really 180* for detection, in at least the cues bathroom and second bath, you're entering from 'behind' the switch, so I think I'm stuck with motion sensors?

I also have a handful (6+) of Wyze cameras (yeah, I know, but go cheap before big $, and they've generally been ok other than phone home/security breaches - like virtually every other out there), a Ring Pro front door camera/bell (pretty solid BF deal year or two back), a Hatch Rest (baby combo light/sound machine), and a $$$ 'Nanit' (baby camera that lo and behold, looks like Amazon/Ring bought them out). I wouldn't mind getting mainly the cameras onto 'single system' but not sure it's possible or not (seems like even ring notifications/Ring API was deprecated), less concerned with Nanit (we have an alternate non-smart camera) and Hatch, but I don't know what I don't know at this point RE: what's possible.

For new devices, am leaning Thread wherever possible (lower power, 'better Zigbee'), am OK if Matter knowing I may be missing out on some specific capabilities at this point.

Unsure if any of the listed 'legacy devices' have a workable path, if I need to 'think bigger' and go the home bridge and/or home assistant route for the conditions/automations I want to do or not (or possibly to connect some of the other devices), and of course, any recommendations on the additional sensors, switches and the like are appreciated.

Oh, I guess one more point - wife factor leans on reliability, otherwise switches start getting used. The ability to set bulb brightness in 'most' of the house is quite useful due to the baby's sleep times (even with sound machines, blackout curtains etc.). I'm ok loading up the Pi but reliability trumps recurring fidget time or likelihood of 'randomly all lights on full blast in middle of the night' type of behaviors. ;)

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Short background: I work in tech, and actually have worked with RF mesh types of devices in my career. I have a family + increasing work hours. Would like to eventually go to a more full-featured system like home assistant on one of my PIs, but for now, mostly have a ton of Hue lights and hub, a few switches, Ecobee, and….. Ring doorbell (I know, I know - but killer deal and nothing else Ring in the house), and a few cameras.

I want to be adding a front door lock, possibly a water sensor in the crawl space, garage door opener. We have a lot of glass/windows in the house, but automated blinds and the like are definitely some ways out. I do use scheduling when we’re away but that’s through Hue at this point, not Alexa.

Why do I want to change especially when I have nearly given up on Siri for being useful (soooo very far behind on ‘AI’ in general, but different convo..)?

1. Amazon data collection. Yeah, I trust them moderately more than Meta/Facebook, but that’s saying
2. Google’s no better and probably worse as they and meta both track you to monetize your habits and info for ad revenue and targeting.
3. I kind of dig what they’re trying to do/get to with Matter, Thread, etc. Zigbee and Z-Wave are pretty darned old, and while reading quickly it seems like the hw and software isn’t quite there yet, well - I’ll be adding stuff for a while.
4. I’m at the point where I don’t really have much single ecosystem investment, but that’s going to start growing, so now’s the time to switch if I’m going to.

The HUE lights, Sonos Arc, Ecobee can all do homekit. The couple of plugs can either do Homekit or I’m ok with replacing. I might keep a single Echo Show (2 5” bought during various Black Fridays for almost nothing) around until I replace the Ring doorbell at some point. The other misc cameras I’m ok leaving independent for now but eventually need to sort (Wyze intentionally as ‘know they will get replaced but don’t know by what yet, so why spend big?), and not worried if I need to replace a couple of switches here and there (although I think they’re all HUE driven vs Alexa specific).

I’ve got 2 Apple TV 4Ks (last or current gen), family is pretty much Apple (and Linux..) from watch, iPad, laptops standpoint. I’d be ok adding a couple of HomePod Minis if I really must.

I have scanned threads here, and interestingly saw numerous comments on having to repeat things multiple times for Alexa (which my wife seems to hit a lot but I don’t) while Siri, amazingly, got it right, while I’ve had an underwhelming experience with Siri just turning off an alarm or setting a timer on my watch I’m 3” from vs my ipad 20 feet across the room.

I don’t keep up on deep dive levels of info in home automation as it’s fascinating stuff, but just family and work time beat out hobby time nowadays, so pretty much open to any tips, DONT DO IT, and the like.