4 ms·
In addition to all of the "use Z-Wave/Zigbee as much as possible" comments (which I personally do), for stuff where there's no choice like Roombas, I have a sep
by xxpor 5y ago
In addition to all of the "use Z-Wave/Zigbee as much as possible" comments (which I personally do), for stuff where there's no choice like Roombas, I have a separate SSID on a VLAN that can only talk to the internet, my DNS server running Adguard, and HA (which is on the main network). I also have stateful rules that allow connections to be initiated from the main network to the IOT network, but not vice versa. I also try to find things with ESP* controllers, as mentioned.
I've really been trying to move away from cloud based stuff not only because of data privacy, but concerns about services going away and (most importantly) latency.
My old wifi smart plugs had 2+ seconds of latency from when I'd hit the button in HA to actually turning on. Zigbee/Z-wave stuff is (from my meatsack perspective) instant. I have a zigbee door sensor on the door to get into my garage, and a zigbee smart plug connected to the overhead florescent lights. By the time the door opens enough for me to actually see inside the garage, the lights are on. Sometimes I think they never turned off. It's fantastic.
- vladgur 5y agoHow do you setup a separate VLAN and SSID? None of the "pro-sumer" wifi mesh setups under $500 support VLANs
- nybble41 5y agoThe Ubiquiti Access Point AC Mesh Pro[0] (~$200) appears to support multiple SSIDs and VLANs. Of course you'd need at least two of them to count as a "mesh", which is $400… was your $500 budget per access point or for the whole system (and if so, for how many APs)? [0] https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-ac-mesh-pro-ap https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-ac-mesh-pro-ap
- vladgur 5y ago2 will cover my needs. Do they actually work like a mesh? As in use backhaul radio to communicate between them and allow seamless switch from one to another as you travel around your home?
- nybble41 5y agoYes, this model supports Wireless Uplink with Plug & Play Mesh: > Wireless Uplink functionality enables wireless connectivity between APs for extended range. One wired UniFi AP uplink supports up to four wireless downlinks on a single operating band, allowing wireless adoption of devices in their default state and real-time changes to network topology. For devices that support Plug & Play Mesh, this functionality is extended to allow multi-hop wireless uplink – so wirelessly uplinked APs can support uplink to other wirelessly uplinked APs. (quote is from the datasheet PDF)
- xxpor 5y agoI use Unifi for wifi gear, which supports it out of the box. https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-pro/ https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-pro/ for the wired AP, https://store.ui.com/products/uap-beaconhd https://store.ui.com/products/uap-beaconhd for the extension into the back of the house. Pricy, but not completely outrageous IMO. For an actual router, I run OPNsense in a VM (on the same box as HA, funnily enough). My server has dual 10 gig ports, so I pass through one of them to OPNsense and run it as a "router on a stick", where the basic internal network is the untagged VLAN, and the public side is VLAN 99. My switch then strips the VLAN 99 tag from the packet before sending it to the cable modem, and vice-versa. My switch is https://mikrotik.com/product/crs328_24p_4s_rm https://mikrotik.com/product/crs328_24p_4s_rm, which was $379 in 2018. However, you can get similar functionality from MUCH cheaper microtik or unifi/ubiquity switches if you don't need 10 gig support. If you're starting from scratch I might get something like https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi-os-consoles/products/unifi-dream-machine https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-unifi-os-cons..., and an el cheapo dumb switch, as long as it'd pass through vlan tagged traffic. You want anything that's crossing a vlan boundary to end up on the router anyway, so you can apply firewall rules to it.
- zrail 5y agoDo you feel that using a virtualized router with other things on the box puts you at greater risk? I.e. you're putting an awful lot of eggs in that one basket. I've considered setting that up before but shied away from it.
- xxpor 5y agoAvailability risk? Sure, but that's 99.9% my own doing (constant experiments, etc) Security risk? Not in the slightest. I'm running an up to date proxmox which is just KVM+QEMU with some scripting and a website on top, basically. I know how to setup IOMMU groups and such. If it's good enough for the big cloud providers, it's good enough for me.
- zrail 5y agoYeah primarily I'm concerned with availability. I have a "production" hypervisor now with all of the household services running on it that I've promised my spouse I wouldn't mess around with which cuts off one avenue of experiments.
- sam345 5y agoI use mikrotik hap ac2. Cost $50. But complicated imo. Extremely versatile though.