Heyho,
as I will soon move into my first “own” apartment (have lived in shared apartments so far), I would like to set up some smart home devices. Primarily lights, but I am open to other ideas.
Looking into the topic I noticed that basically all cloudless setups need a server - often they use a Raspberry Pie, a low energy protocol - like Zigbee or Thread, and a managing software like Home Assistant or openHAB.
Currently, I think about using the Raspberry Pie 5 (should also be helpful for other projects such as Immich) together with some kind of USB to connect to the Thread network (guess there is something similar like conbee2 for Zigbee) and openHAB as the software for greater customization. While openHAB is probably overkill, as a computer scientist I think I might enjoy the greater customization options.
So my question: Are there any good tutorials for this setup? While I knew of Zigbee before this project, I wasn’t aware of Thread and am just looking into it. I don’t feel comfortable yet to double down on it without learning more on possible ways to connect Thread to openHAB on a Raspberry Pie.
Thanks in advance!
Alright: For now I have bought:
- Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2, Zigbee 3.0/Thread/Matter USB-Adapter
- Soyo MiniPC M4
Instead of choosing openHAB, I will start with Home Assistant. While some people argued that they use Zigbee without issues, I still feel like Matter/Thread is the more interesting standard. Given that you can only use one standard with a ZBT-2, I will try to find all my devices in the Matter/Thread ecosystem.
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Matter is a shit-tier standard. The fact that big tech companies put their weight behind Matter and that several have already walled it off behind mandatory account creation tells me all I need to know about their intentions with it.
Just saying that HA offers a lot of customization already. I’d start simple and only add stuff where needed.
Home assistant is a beast, not sure openhab can actually match it today. Unless you already have a pi5 and a SSD (avoid micro sd card), you could consider a mini pc with n150 (or n100) processor. It doesn’t consume much power (close to pi5) and it will be more powerful and more Ram which will be useful for immich.
Start with zigbee first, much more mature than thread. I don’t personaly use thread but i believe some zigbee dongle also can deal with thread at the same time.
About the setup. If mini pc, you can use proxmox so you will be able to create a VM for home assistant and another one for immich.
Do you have any concrete mini pc in mind? Most I can find are considerably more expensive than the pi.
My home has some 100 ZigBee devices… Definitely can recommend ZigBee. Lots of cheap options, specially anything from Sonoff is good quality.
Some devices like thermo/igrometers and smart plugs you can go as cheap as aliexpress allow you…
Some devices like TRVs, smart energy switches I would spend money for a Sonoff or equivalent price point.
You need to invest in pure router devices too, specially in a biggish home. Definitely in multi-stories homes.
And go with an high quality coordinator as well.
You can check my wiki https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=homeautomation%3Astart which I wrote mostly for myself for future reference, in the hope it could be useful to others.
Wdym with pure-router devices? What makes them better than smart plugs for routing? I have ~50 Zigbee devices across 4 floors and the plug/bulb routers seem to be perfectly fine.
In my experience I needed some routers, not smart plugs, to ensure a smooth mesh. Maybe my smart plugs where too cheap. Anyway, I added one router per floor and had no more devices dropping out randomly.
A dedicated router is a small dongle connected to a USB power adapter in a wall outlet. Add to the mesh, and they only provide routing for other devices, no other function.
Maybe you have better quality devices… I have lots of super cheap switches that behave weirdly without.
I can say some zigbee plugs have terrible/problematic antennas. I had a situation where:
Plug A <------> Plug B <-> Plug C, where B would have connetion issues but
Plug A <------> Plug C <-> Plug B would be solid
It maybe be that my selected zigbee band is not optimal for every device I use. That could also effect the range/signal strength
I have the same experience. 5he worst ones are the cheap ones from aliexress. I think some of them generate lots of interference maybe by sending energy consumption updates too often
I was also intrigued by the introduction of the matter standard, but the reality is there are already a ton of low power, cheap ZigBee devices out there that can operate for years on a battery.
I think I’ve run into one thread/matter compatible device that I was considering, but found a HA forum thread saying their experience with that protocol+device+HA wasn’t as stable. So I didn’t do it. I’m not even sure how cheap and low power thread/matter devices can get.
There are two things in my house I don’t “play” with: internet connectivity and core home functions (lights, locks, garage doors, etc). That doesn’t mean I don’t self host anything or then, but I always start from a mindset of “must work”.
I run HA on a Yellow (functionally an RPi 5 with radios and storage interface built in). My lights are either Hue running as plain Zigbee devices, or Zigbee switches. I don’t necessarily want more customization with home automation, I want stable, extensible, and easy to use day today. HA checks all those boxes easily. I’ve not done much looking into OpenHAB, but I would caution against going with something for home automation just because it’s more customizable. Sure, it’s great to have an automation routine that turns on your lights when you get home, it’s less great to have an integration that misbehaves and now you cannot turn off a light, or lock your door, or turn down the volume on your music, etc. Be sure to know what you want to accomplish before you buy devices, build automations, and always build things with a manual backup operation option.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage Zigbee Wireless mesh network for low-power devices
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Buy a Home Assistant green and self. Host HomeAssistant itself
Great software, and purchasing the green is a great way to support them. Also, the green is a beautiful and very high quality piece of hardware that’s worth the money anyway.
Buy also the thread/ZigBee dongle they provide, again, top quality for the bucks and also support the project.
If you’re starting with ha, don’t feel confined to only one.
IMPORTANT: a local area mesh is not just a low powered way of connecting devices but is inherently local-only. Highly recommended
The more common local area meshes include
- Zigbee - open standard, lots of inexpensive sensors
- Z-Wave - devices need to pay for certification but are more standard. I found more smart switches using this in my area
- Thread - the new standard. Same frequency as Zigbee but IPv6 based. Slowly rolling out.
The new Matter/Thread standard has support of the major players (Apple, Google, Amazon) so seems like the way to go for the future, but products are slow to roll out so you can’t count on it yet
Personally I found the strengths of each compelling so quickly added all three of the above to my ha setup. Ha is fine with it so why limit yourself
I follow the principle that devices must work “as expected” for my users, automation adds capabilities but does not replace them. This comes together with a focus on smart switches
- can be used interactively just like any switch
- continue to work as expected even if ha is down
- typically act as routers to strengthen your local area mesh. I have switches acting as routers for Zigbee, zwave, and Thread, so all my local area meshes are solid everywhere
- then I can automate
