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I'm not buying any device that's not 3, everything else turns into a brick as soon as there's some larger change. I have some older Google Speakers, and while

I'm not buying any device that's not 3, everything else turns into a brick as soon as there's some larger change. I have some older Google Speakers, and while they seemed to be 2, after being powered off for long enough they can't be set up again, not even with internet access since their firmware was also outdated and the app isn't able to set them up again.

c0wb0yc0d3r 2y ago
I learned my lesson with LIFX light bulbs. Luckily for me I was able to find an old version of the Android app. Manually installed it, and was able to rescue the few I have. These days I’ve found that when in doubt get the device that is home kit approved. That usually ensures local only control. You have to fake it with home assistant, but it can be done with little fuss.
birdman3131 2y ago
I am ok with devices that default to 2 but can be converted to 3. Don't recall if Shelly's default to 2 or 3 but I like that you can flash em to tasmota for a gaurenteed 3.
- AdrianB1 2y ago
  Most devices are in the category 3, except for BLU that are currently in 2. I have almost 1 of everything they make and I did set up the BLU ones using 2 with their app, I did not test to see if their app works without Internet, but I doubt the BLU can be configured without their app.
wlesieutre 2y ago
That’s why I’m sticking to Zigbee as much as possible. The only place where there’s an internet connection is at the Home Assistant computer which has a Zigbee USB stick.
- re5i5tor 2y ago
  Slightly off topic but I just bought an inexpensive water leak monitor set and it uses LoRa — I’ve had range problems with other bands “Extremely Long Range: Powered by LoRa technology, the long-range low-power system offers the industry’s longest receiving range (1/4 mile). Areas such as basements and sheds connect up to 100 sensors to deliver product information smoothly.”
  - hathawsh 2y ago
    LoRa sounds like a good idea for water sensing in particular. Water catches all radio signals at 2.4 GHz and turns the waves into heat (that's why microwave ovens work, after all), so spread-spectrum transmission seems like a good way around that issue. I would test the transmission range in a bathtub.
- mrandish 2y ago
  I settled on Zigbee for door, window and some motion sensors, stand-alone buttons and other devices that need to be battery powered but for everything that's built into a wall or perma-attached to an outlet (like light switches, dimmers and wall plugs) I use generic commodity hardware running open source Tasmota firmware. These devices are based on standard reference designs, made by multiple Shenzen manufacturers and dirt cheap via Amazon, eBay and AliExpress. They're mostly based on ESP-8266 or ESP-32 chips and communicate via wifi. The reason I use wall-powered wifi devices alongside Zigbee is the Zigbee architecture was designed to enable tiny battery powered devices that can run for a year or more on a small battery. Zigbee does this really well but I didn't want to be changing batteries on nearly a hundred wall switches, plugs and sensors that are connected to 110V anyway or perma-installed in places where wall power was easy to supply. There are also many devices like ultra wide band motion sensors, RF bridge repeaters, etc that can't be battery powered for long periods. This Wifi+Zigbee split architecture has worked flawlessly in both our primary residence and a vacation home but they are both large detached homes, well-covered by wifi mesh routers with wired backhaul and other 2.4Ghz wireless neighbors a hundred or more feet away from our outer walls. So it's important to test wireless range and environmental compatibility inside your specific wall construction and unique RF domain before settling on wireless standards and architecture and installing a bunch of devices. Also, I'll mention that it's always tempting to just use wireless backhaul because it's easy but I think a big reason my large, complex home automation installs have avoided issues with randomly varying latency and intermittent signal loss is that I put in extra effort to get gigabit wired backhaul to each wifi mesh node and wired a Zigbee node alongside each wifi node. This entailed getting creative, like using an old pre-existing coax cable run with a Docsis modem to one mesh node and powerline ethernet to another. I'm pretty sure that extra pain up front prevented a lot of niggling gremlin pain later.
mrandish 2y ago
> I'm not buying any device that's not 3 Same here. My gold standard for this is hardware that comes with the open source Tasmota firmware (or which can be flashed to Tasmota). All 75 light switches in our new house run Tasmota firmware and to me it's the perfect combination of simple, flexible and yet deeply powerful. Devices can be controlled via MQTT, web requests, webUI console or serial and not only does it avoid any cloud dependency, Tasmota devices aren't even dependent on having a router to coordinate locally with each other! They can be set so that if they don't see a wifi router, they'll form an ad hoc mesh network. To me, this is the ultimate in reliability because even if the internet connection is offline, even if the Home Assistant Raspberry Pi crashes, even if the wifi router crashes - as long as there's power, the lights will still always communicate and work together in their device groups. When we built the house I just ordered cheap ($15) wifi light switches from Amazon, flashed them with Tasmota, configured their device groups, labeled where they went, and gave them to the general contractor's electrician, who knew nothing about home automation. So we didn't pay anything extra for special installation, design or programming - in fact we got a $5 per switch discount because they didn't need to supply the dumb switches. The only slightly tricky part was convincing the very old-school electrician he didn't need to run traveler wires for all the three, four and five way switches. Even after I explained it to him, he didn't quite believe me that they would work so he could test them with just his temporary construction power in an unfinished house with no internet, wifi or controller hardware. I just told him to start by installing the fixtures and switches for a hallway and he was amazed when switches along the hallway controlled fixtures they weren't connected to - including sharing dimming memory and the behavior of the micro-LED strip on each light indicating brightness and status!
- mariushn 2y ago
  Could you please share the Amazon link or light switch name? Thanks
- jakupovic 2y ago
  Hi, I'm using Kasa switches and not sure they can be flashed? Can you provide couple links with the switch and the firmware you used. Thanks
teekert 2y ago
I have Hue lights, they're nice, always just work. But now (some time back) they suddenly require an account and I get ads in the app. I have always easily moved Hue lamps from the Hue bridge to the Home Assistant SkyConnect (now called Connect ZBT-1, much better ahum). I sleep better because I know I can do this.
- tedivm 2y ago
  Yeah I also use Hue lights, but since I don't use a Hue bridge and simply use Zigbee directly the lights have no internet access and I have no restrictions on usage.
hermitdev 2y ago
Total stab in the dark here, but it could be the local time on the device. Your local clock needs to be relatively close to the actual clock. I've run into this more than a few times with an old Surface Tablet I seldom use. Powered off/battery dead, clock gets out of sync. Power on, cannot get online because everything is TLS/SSL now, even clock sync. Cannot even sync the clock, because of certificate issues. Manually set the time to approximately correct time has resolved my issues with long powered off devices. That is, assuming of course, the _ability_ to set the time on the device.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > but it could be the local time on the device. Your local clock needs to be relatively close to the actual clock. Yes, this is one of those nasty hidden costs that the "just use TLS/SSL for everything, it's easy!" people don't seem to recognize - introducing certificates to the mix suddenly makes your application coupled to wall clock time being in sync with the rest of the world. That is a big step in complexity right there - as everyone who ever had a clock drift couple minutes off the rest of the world, and saw half of the Internet stop working for them. (And don't get me started on getaddrinfo(), another step function in complexity, hard-coupling even most trivial software to a heap of things that isn't relevant to it at all; or how it all interacts with SSL.)
rafaelmn 2y ago
When it's cheaper to replace device 2 than get device 3 I guess walling it off in a subnet makes sense. These devices need to get replaced eventually anyway so unless the manufacturer goes under in a year or two of purchase IDK really. Depends on the kind of device though - I'm not so keen on changing switches for example and would not compromise there. But cameras or robot mops or voice assistant, throwaway stuff after warranty expires no matter who the source is.

c0wb0yc0d3r 2y ago

I learned my lesson with LIFX light bulbs. Luckily for me I was able to find an old version of the Android app. Manually installed it, and was able to rescue the few I have. These days I’ve found that when in doubt get the device that is home kit approved. That usually ensures local only control. You have to fake it with home assistant, but it can be done with little fuss.

birdman3131 2y ago

I am ok with devices that default to 2 but can be converted to 3. Don't recall if Shelly's default to 2 or 3 but I like that you can flash em to tasmota for a gaurenteed 3.

AdrianB1 2y ago
Most devices are in the category 3, except for BLU that are currently in 2. I have almost 1 of everything they make and I did set up the BLU ones using 2 with their app, I did not test to see if their app works without Internet, but I doubt the BLU can be configured without their app.

wlesieutre 2y ago

That’s why I’m sticking to Zigbee as much as possible. The only place where there’s an internet connection is at the Home Assistant computer which has a Zigbee USB stick.

re5i5tor 2y ago
Slightly off topic but I just bought an inexpensive water leak monitor set and it uses LoRa — I’ve had range problems with other bands “Extremely Long Range: Powered by LoRa technology, the long-range low-power system offers the industry’s longest receiving range (1/4 mile). Areas such as basements and sheds connect up to 100 sensors to deliver product information smoothly.”
- hathawsh 2y ago
  LoRa sounds like a good idea for water sensing in particular. Water catches all radio signals at 2.4 GHz and turns the waves into heat (that's why microwave ovens work, after all), so spread-spectrum transmission seems like a good way around that issue. I would test the transmission range in a bathtub.
mrandish 2y ago
I settled on Zigbee for door, window and some motion sensors, stand-alone buttons and other devices that need to be battery powered but for everything that's built into a wall or perma-attached to an outlet (like light switches, dimmers and wall plugs) I use generic commodity hardware running open source Tasmota firmware. These devices are based on standard reference designs, made by multiple Shenzen manufacturers and dirt cheap via Amazon, eBay and AliExpress. They're mostly based on ESP-8266 or ESP-32 chips and communicate via wifi. The reason I use wall-powered wifi devices alongside Zigbee is the Zigbee architecture was designed to enable tiny battery powered devices that can run for a year or more on a small battery. Zigbee does this really well but I didn't want to be changing batteries on nearly a hundred wall switches, plugs and sensors that are connected to 110V anyway or perma-installed in places where wall power was easy to supply. There are also many devices like ultra wide band motion sensors, RF bridge repeaters, etc that can't be battery powered for long periods. This Wifi+Zigbee split architecture has worked flawlessly in both our primary residence and a vacation home but they are both large detached homes, well-covered by wifi mesh routers with wired backhaul and other 2.4Ghz wireless neighbors a hundred or more feet away from our outer walls. So it's important to test wireless range and environmental compatibility inside your specific wall construction and unique RF domain before settling on wireless standards and architecture and installing a bunch of devices. Also, I'll mention that it's always tempting to just use wireless backhaul because it's easy but I think a big reason my large, complex home automation installs have avoided issues with randomly varying latency and intermittent signal loss is that I put in extra effort to get gigabit wired backhaul to each wifi mesh node and wired a Zigbee node alongside each wifi node. This entailed getting creative, like using an old pre-existing coax cable run with a Docsis modem to one mesh node and powerline ethernet to another. I'm pretty sure that extra pain up front prevented a lot of niggling gremlin pain later.

mrandish 2y ago

> I'm not buying any device that's not 3 Same here. My gold standard for this is hardware that comes with the open source Tasmota firmware (or which can be flashed to Tasmota). All 75 light switches in our new house run Tasmota firmware and to me it's the perfect combination of simple, flexible and yet deeply powerful. Devices can be controlled via MQTT, web requests, webUI console or serial and not only does it avoid any cloud dependency, Tasmota devices aren't even dependent on having a router to coordinate locally with each other! They can be set so that if they don't see a wifi router, they'll form an ad hoc mesh network. To me, this is the ultimate in reliability because even if the internet connection is offline, even if the Home Assistant Raspberry Pi crashes, even if the wifi router crashes - as long as there's power, the lights will still always communicate and work together in their device groups. When we built the house I just ordered cheap ($15) wifi light switches from Amazon, flashed them with Tasmota, configured their device groups, labeled where they went, and gave them to the general contractor's electrician, who knew nothing about home automation. So we didn't pay anything extra for special installation, design or programming - in fact we got a $5 per switch discount because they didn't need to supply the dumb switches. The only slightly tricky part was convincing the very old-school electrician he didn't need to run traveler wires for all the three, four and five way switches. Even after I explained it to him, he didn't quite believe me that they would work so he could test them with just his temporary construction power in an unfinished house with no internet, wifi or controller hardware. I just told him to start by installing the fixtures and switches for a hallway and he was amazed when switches along the hallway controlled fixtures they weren't connected to - including sharing dimming memory and the behavior of the micro-LED strip on each light indicating brightness and status!

mariushn 2y ago
Could you please share the Amazon link or light switch name? Thanks
jakupovic 2y ago
Hi, I'm using Kasa switches and not sure they can be flashed? Can you provide couple links with the switch and the firmware you used. Thanks

teekert 2y ago

I have Hue lights, they're nice, always just work. But now (some time back) they suddenly require an account and I get ads in the app. I have always easily moved Hue lamps from the Hue bridge to the Home Assistant SkyConnect (now called Connect ZBT-1, much better ahum). I sleep better because I know I can do this.

tedivm 2y ago
Yeah I also use Hue lights, but since I don't use a Hue bridge and simply use Zigbee directly the lights have no internet access and I have no restrictions on usage.

hermitdev 2y ago

Total stab in the dark here, but it could be the local time on the device. Your local clock needs to be relatively close to the actual clock. I've run into this more than a few times with an old Surface Tablet I seldom use. Powered off/battery dead, clock gets out of sync. Power on, cannot get online because everything is TLS/SSL now, even clock sync. Cannot even sync the clock, because of certificate issues. Manually set the time to approximately correct time has resolved my issues with long powered off devices. That is, assuming of course, the _ability_ to set the time on the device.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> but it could be the local time on the device. Your local clock needs to be relatively close to the actual clock. Yes, this is one of those nasty hidden costs that the "just use TLS/SSL for everything, it's easy!" people don't seem to recognize - introducing certificates to the mix suddenly makes your application coupled to wall clock time being in sync with the rest of the world. That is a big step in complexity right there - as everyone who ever had a clock drift couple minutes off the rest of the world, and saw half of the Internet stop working for them. (And don't get me started on getaddrinfo(), another step function in complexity, hard-coupling even most trivial software to a heap of things that isn't relevant to it at all; or how it all interacts with SSL.)

rafaelmn 2y ago

When it's cheaper to replace device 2 than get device 3 I guess walling it off in a subnet makes sense. These devices need to get replaced eventually anyway so unless the manufacturer goes under in a year or two of purchase IDK really. Depends on the kind of device though - I'm not so keen on changing switches for example and would not compromise there. But cameras or robot mops or voice assistant, throwaway stuff after warranty expires no matter who the source is.