I recently bought a zigbee dongle to use with a home assistant VM. Do you have any advice on products? There is alot of stuff out there and I am trying to make sure I get good stuff.
My current plan is that id buy assorted types of lights to fill the roles of actual lighting and mood lighting, and I would pair that with a 4 button switch to toggle between some different presets. Been looking at Moes for the scene switch buttons and Sengled bulbs, and still need to find a solution for having home assistant to turn on or off non-smart items by delivering power or withholding, but i feel like i am flying blind.
IKEA has a lot of cheap, yet quality stuff you can use. The best thing for me is that they are nearby, and things like switches and buttons are super cheap.
Are you using home assistant? Their website says ikea switches arnt compatible with it.
Ikea smart home stuff uses Zigbee, and just about all of their devices are supported in Home Assistant, either with ZHA or, better, zigbee2mqtt. I have dozens of buttons, bulbs and sensors from Ikea and they are very reliable most of the time.
There’s the Sonoff ZBMINIR2 device. You install it between a physical switch and the wiring, and then tuck it into the electrical box. It has three different modes:
- As a relay, so that you can control the light either with the physical switch or by ZigBee. Works just like normal when the server is down.
- Detached mode, so toggling the physical switch sends a ZigBee message to trigger an action on the server, and the server controls the light.
- Like 2, but the light socket is always powered so it supports a smart bulb.
I have a couple, and they’re great. They just don’t support dimming.
