3 ms·

I’ve been wanting to jump into home automation for YEARS but the awful mix of incompatible products and standards coupled with the frequent deprecation of produ

I’ve been wanting to jump into home automation for YEARS but the awful mix of incompatible products and standards coupled with the frequent deprecation of products which often require an online presence, and the outrageous prices being asked for these quite frankly beta products, kept me away. Once matter is standard I expect prices to drop and that’s when I think it’s safe to jump in.

civilitty 3y ago
Just use HomeAssistant and find ESPHome compatible hardware. It drastically simplifies everything and there are even vendors like CloudFree [1] that support it out of the box. I've got several outdoor and indoor hydryponics systems set up that way and it's been a joy (except for the RaspberryPi SD card dying on me, which I've since replaced with a more reliable SSD based SBC) [1] https://cloudfree.shop/ https://cloudfree.shop/
- thesh4d0w 3y ago
  What kind of hydroponic automation are you doing? I've got an indoor living wall that I'm thinking of converting to hydro.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    Mostly just controlling valves and pumps. I have a dutch bucket system with peristaltic pumps pumping nutrients and pH up/down into a reservoir from which water is pumped to the buckets. An additional nutrient film setup runs on its own with the occasional top up. Indoors I just have relays controlling lighting and air pumps for a deep water culture system.
SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
Zigbee was the solution that solved these complaints for me. My home automation works 100% offline, thanks to Home Assistant + Zigbee. Posted it in another comment here already, but this is my go-to resource to figure out compatibility: https://zigbee.blakadder.com/ https://zigbee.blakadder.com/ And pretty much any zigbee device can be compatible with any gateway. In many cases it's just whether someone has taken the time to wire it up in the software or not.
nicholasjarnold 3y ago
As another sibling suggested you should seriously consider HomeAssistant here. A main selling point is it's ability to seamlessly integrate with an arbitrary mixture of Zigbee/ZWave/Matter/Kasa/<etc> devices under one management interface. I've been running it for years, keeping up to date with the regular new versions, and haven't had any major complaints for basic use cases like: "I want to turn on <set of lights> when <arbitrary condition occurs> (e.g. sundown, certain sensors detect < X lux of light, wifi device is seen by access point based on its MAC). Super useful. Huge world of possibilities, limited only by your hardware and imagination.
pbowyer 3y ago
HomeAssistant works, but I'm always surprised when it is praised on Hacker News given the preponderance here for rewriting every program in Rust. Home Assistant is an unwieldy monolith where spitting out the components would give you so much more control. The side that receives the data works well, however. The quality of the plotting in it is substandard, as is the inbuilt data storage and access. Configuring via YAML is painful, especially when you want derived values (e.g. calculating absolute humidity from RH sensor readings. HomeAssistant comes with no way to clean up dirty data which is something you'll see on their forums that many people request, as cheap sensors are notorious for spurious readings. It's easy and polished which is why I and I suspect others use it, but I wish there was a modular rewrite.
- outworlder 3y ago
  I agree with the monolith comment, but I am not sure the jab at Rust is warranted. If we are rewriting HomeAssistant, let's do it in Rust :) Only half joking. That said, I refuse to write automation in YAML. Logic doesn't really belong in YAML. Declarative stuff would be decent if all you did was to specify a desired end state and let it figure out how to get to that state. But triggers with the equivalent of 'if' conditions that run actions? Let me write the IF. It makes a big difference if you say "Lights should be on between X and Y" versus "condition: after: x before: y: action: turn on". Trivial cases are easy, but when you start combining them it becomes a nightmare. I have done a lot with NodeRED but it is... strange. It does save me from writing YAML (I do enough of that on my day job), at the expense of being weird and not easy to debug. As for plotting data, you can send that to Prometheus or InfluxDB and go from there. I also wish there was an alternative. And more modular "plugins". And a "HA" option. As it is, I have a single raspberry Pi that, while backed up and could be replicated if needed, will go offline for updates and the like, not able to run any automation in the mean time. It does work though.

civilitty 3y ago

Just use HomeAssistant and find ESPHome compatible hardware. It drastically simplifies everything and there are even vendors like CloudFree [1] that support it out of the box. I've got several outdoor and indoor hydryponics systems set up that way and it's been a joy (except for the RaspberryPi SD card dying on me, which I've since replaced with a more reliable SSD based SBC) [1] https://cloudfree.shop/ https://cloudfree.shop/

thesh4d0w 3y ago
What kind of hydroponic automation are you doing? I've got an indoor living wall that I'm thinking of converting to hydro.
- civilitty 3y ago
  Mostly just controlling valves and pumps. I have a dutch bucket system with peristaltic pumps pumping nutrients and pH up/down into a reservoir from which water is pumped to the buckets. An additional nutrient film setup runs on its own with the occasional top up. Indoors I just have relays controlling lighting and air pumps for a deep water culture system.

SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago

Zigbee was the solution that solved these complaints for me. My home automation works 100% offline, thanks to Home Assistant + Zigbee. Posted it in another comment here already, but this is my go-to resource to figure out compatibility: https://zigbee.blakadder.com/ https://zigbee.blakadder.com/ And pretty much any zigbee device can be compatible with any gateway. In many cases it's just whether someone has taken the time to wire it up in the software or not.

nicholasjarnold 3y ago

As another sibling suggested you should seriously consider HomeAssistant here. A main selling point is it's ability to seamlessly integrate with an arbitrary mixture of Zigbee/ZWave/Matter/Kasa/<etc> devices under one management interface. I've been running it for years, keeping up to date with the regular new versions, and haven't had any major complaints for basic use cases like: "I want to turn on <set of lights> when <arbitrary condition occurs> (e.g. sundown, certain sensors detect < X lux of light, wifi device is seen by access point based on its MAC). Super useful. Huge world of possibilities, limited only by your hardware and imagination.

pbowyer 3y ago

HomeAssistant works, but I'm always surprised when it is praised on Hacker News given the preponderance here for rewriting every program in Rust. Home Assistant is an unwieldy monolith where spitting out the components would give you so much more control. The side that receives the data works well, however. The quality of the plotting in it is substandard, as is the inbuilt data storage and access. Configuring via YAML is painful, especially when you want derived values (e.g. calculating absolute humidity from RH sensor readings. HomeAssistant comes with no way to clean up dirty data which is something you'll see on their forums that many people request, as cheap sensors are notorious for spurious readings. It's easy and polished which is why I and I suspect others use it, but I wish there was a modular rewrite.

outworlder 3y ago
I agree with the monolith comment, but I am not sure the jab at Rust is warranted. If we are rewriting HomeAssistant, let's do it in Rust :) Only half joking. That said, I refuse to write automation in YAML. Logic doesn't really belong in YAML. Declarative stuff would be decent if all you did was to specify a desired end state and let it figure out how to get to that state. But triggers with the equivalent of 'if' conditions that run actions? Let me write the IF. It makes a big difference if you say "Lights should be on between X and Y" versus "condition: after: x before: y: action: turn on". Trivial cases are easy, but when you start combining them it becomes a nightmare. I have done a lot with NodeRED but it is... strange. It does save me from writing YAML (I do enough of that on my day job), at the expense of being weird and not easy to debug. As for plotting data, you can send that to Prometheus or InfluxDB and go from there. I also wish there was an alternative. And more modular "plugins". And a "HA" option. As it is, I have a single raspberry Pi that, while backed up and could be replicated if needed, will go offline for updates and the like, not able to run any automation in the mean time. It does work though.