I have tried Home Assistant several times. Each time I try it, I get it installed on a VM under my Proxmox hypervisor and start configuring my devices. I’ll use my most recent try as an example. I have several Wyze WiFi power switches, and two “Smart Life” (Toya internally) combination thermometer/switch devices. The Toya devices integrated with HA after I signed up for a Toya developer account and did a bunch of configuring. I was able to read the temperature values, but switching the devices on/off did absolutely nothing. I didn’t even try the Wyze devices; apparently Wyze doesn’t integrate with HA.
I’m not opposed to buying new “smart home” devices, but I want something that actually works properly. What I’m looking for are:
- Devices that don’t require internet access and an external API; I want to control them directly over my LAN.
- Devices that have built-in integration with HA.
Is there a list of devices that just “work” with HA? I’ve looked at the list of available integrations that “technically” work, but they often require signing up for API access with a 3rd-party company and jumping through hoops to get the devices working. I want something where I can assign it a static IP or DHCP lease and HA just talks to it. I was able to get my BlueIris DVR integration working, and it can double as a motion sensor, so I’m specifically looking for plug-in switches, thermometers, sensors, etc.
As everyone else said, basically, don’t get WiFi devices - they generally expect to be cloud controlled and call home. I suppose that’s fine for people who don’t want to set up a hub, but even then would be a hassle unless all your devices are from the same brand.
Look for an open standard local-only network protocol, starting with Zigbee or z-wave. Could also try Thread, Bluetooth, or a couple other choices, but they might be more involved/limited.
If you’re using HA, spend $30 on a dongle to get a transceiver for whichever local protocol you use, and you’re good to go. Actually with HA, you don’t need to be limited to one, but I would start with one for your sanity
I started with z-wave, because that’s where I found the most devices that I wanted (light switches) in my area. However at this point I have equal number of Zigbee and z-wave. Actually all the Zigbee claim to be flashable to Thread, which is why I chose them.
I’ve had very good success with Zigbee stuff, TP-Link Kasa outlets (but I’ve put them on a different router / subnet that doesn’t have Internet access), and ESPHome.
Tuya stuff sucks (keeps disconnecting), JuiceBox (my car charger) changed their app so the integration doesn’t work anymore, and the Aqara zigbee door sensors never worked for me (they pair perfectly, but then disconnect and never come back on).
So yeah, in my experience, once it works, it works, as long as there’s no cloud involved.
Wyze natively supports Google Assistant. If you are a HK user you can set up Homebridge and use the “homebridge-wyze-smart-home” plugin which supports a lot of Wyze devices and is regularly updated.
Can you not just use the HomeKit integration directly in HA? I don’t have any Wyze devices but I have several (like TVs) that have added themselves to Home Assistant via the HomeKit integration.
As far as “just works” get something that is directly integrated with home assistant and IMO if home assistant has direct access to the radio or method of communication, the better. As others have said both Zigbee and ZWave devices can interact directly with HA using a dongle and I do so with a VM on Proxmox and it works great, I do however think the ZWave JS and ZWave JS UI integrations are far and ahead of Zigbee ZHA integration (I won’t speak on Zigbee2MQTT as I don’t use it)
Wi-Fi devices are nifty but their reliance on the strength of your WiFI, internet connectivity, DHCP working, IPv6 support make them more variable than the ZWave and Zigbee standards that really just require you build a good mesh by having devices every so often that each other can “relay” through.
I’m a big fan of tasmota and esphome. There’s plenty of cheap esp32 devices that you can flash these onto and all will work via regular old wifi.
