Hey guys, I currently bought an apartment and I rebuilt every room and both corridors. The layout for the rooms is all the same: 2 led strips (above bed and curtains) 1 ceiling center light 2 small lights point into the closet 1 electric curtain 1 temperature sensor 1 smoke detector I aimed to have a 3 zone smart switch to control all lights. I will also had a Shelly zwave to the curtains since I already have them motorized. For the corridor: 1 led strip Smoke detector Sensor movement

Now it’s where I’m having some trouble in choosing what to buy during Black Friday. The house is in Portugal (EU) so zooz switches are out. I initially intended to use Shelly zwaves (4zone controller) behind a 3xone dumb switch but a smart switch might be a better option.

Then we get to what detetor to pic, I have no idea which one will be the most resilient and easy to integrate. I was planning to buy a tplink Omada switch and a n100 mini pc so I could have everything in my vlan and add home assistant. But I have zero experience with any of that.

Any suggestions on this?

It’s cyber Monday and my current door lock is broken. So I wanted to order a replacement, what’s the best lock that’ll last me through the winter? We get a peak of -45C or (-49F). I was looking at the schlage encode plus at the moment, but I don’t know how well it’d perform, i’ve also seen smonet (which is somehow a cheaper brand by far and comes with more features, which makes me assume it’s low in quality). I’ve also heard of Yale and noticed the Aqara U100. Does anyone have any recommendations of the most robust winter door locks? Or any experience with the ones I listed like the Schlage?

I'm looking to get started on home automation with something simple, and was hoping to include some self-powered smart switches so we didn't have to mess around with batteries. However, finding out what is compatible with what seems confusing and/or impossible. Is there some reliable way of doing this?

Specifically I'm looking at Ikea (Tradfri) bulbs with the Ikea (Dirigera) hub, and Moes self-powered switches (as most others are surprisingly expensive). I'm in the UK. Most forum posts I find suggest Ikea supports ZGP devices now and it should all be ok, but Moes' Amazon listing says other brands' hubs are "not recommended"...

Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can offer.

I know this topic has been asked several times but for some reason I still don't get it. I have several 3 way and 4 way switches that control my living room and kitchen area that i would like to make smart and Im looking for a cost effective way to upgrade to dimming and automation capabilities via home assistant. I do have Z Wave and Zigbee via Home Assistant so theres so many ways to do this that its confusing. Ideally, I could keep the existing switches for now and install a Shelly Dimmer2 behind light switches but Im unsure if this will work as Ive not been successful. I also heard of sonoff but read that they may not be as safe. To make matters more confusing, I was told that I may not need to add a shelly behind all switches or if i planned to replace the switches, I only need to replace 1 in each 3 way or 4 way but don't know how true that is. On Amazon, I found a Shelly Dimmer Switch or an Amazon Basics Dimmer but I don't know if any of those will work with my scenario. Considering my house was built before the 1960's, I don't think i have a neutral wire. To make it more complex, when I tried using the Shelly Dimmer 2, I didnt understand how it was wired to the light switch considering there can be several ways that its configured.

Would a local electrician know how to do something like this? If not, does anyone have any recommendations on how to approach this instead of me spending alot of money on Lutron or Leviton products to overly complicate my home setup? Ideally, I would like to standardize.

Thanks in advance

I recently had to replace one dimmer on a 3-way pole set up. I’m not an electrician and I have not a clue on how to wire things. However, I just followed what the prior wiring was. I’ve had this set up for the past 2 years without any issues. Until recently, the lights have been turning on and off randomly. I tried doing a hard reset multiple times on the app. I even removed it from Alexa and Google Home, thinking it might be the two systems doing something that wasn’t working well or some kind of app update. None of this fixed it. I ended up purchasing a new dimmer and replaced one of the 3-way pole switches. Luckily I found the right switch the first time. My question is, on the app, am I or should I be adding both switches? Since one switch is all I need to control the light from the app. Thanks!

Found a humidifier that meets most of my requirements, easy to use and doesn’t need daily maintenance. But it doesn’t have a built in hygrometer shut off. I either need to keep searching for another, or I was wondering if anyone has had experience automating this with a smart hygrometer with IFTTT or Alexa or Apple Home.

Hey good people, will my network design handle the smart home automation and devices? Family has half a dozen iPhones and laptops. I’ll have more smart devices added later on (not showing here is Apple TV 4K as well as a number of wifi HomePods).

My wife will murder me if things don’t “just work”, which includes smart switches (working as dumb switches - I am using Zooz Z-Wave) as well as all the wifi devices.


Hi, I bought a wall display from Shelly during Black Week. This device integrates Homesassistant, and you can act with it. I blogged about this; maybe you will find this interesting.

[First steps with the Shelly Wall display and adding Homeassistant functionality](https://blog.bajonczak.com/first-steps-with-the-shelly-wall-display-and-adding-homeassistant-functionality/)

Lockly iOS app Question:  I would like to put the Lockly Vision smartlock on my rental property.  I have 3 units in different locations, all remote to me.  With the Lockly iOS app, Can I give each renter shareable access to the app, and then can NOT see each other? But, I would be able to see all locks on one login?

If that is possible, would they be able to scan their own faces, etc? I am hundreds of miles away, and can not be there to go this for them.

Best regards,

Steve
Cary, NC

I am planning to buy and install ceiling speakers system. I want to have four speakers in the kitchen and three speakers just outside kitchen wall to entertain the family when weather allows me to. I have pre wired ceiling with four cable ends and three cable ends sticking out of the outside wall. I am not very experienced with this type of set up so want to ask if someone have an experience with that. I want something simple to control by mobile phone or wireless controller.

Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks.

I'm starting a large home automation project and would like to get feedback on how my idea sounds to others. So I will code website that has dashboard for controls so it can be controlled with any device on local wlan. Then there will be backend probably with flask. Those will be running on rasberry pi. Then for individual rooms I thought one ESP32 per room would be best. There will be 10 rooms to cover so I think ESP32 is best because of the wlan. Every room will have kinda similar relays to control, like lights and maybe motion sensors.

Is this idea somehow feasible, or is there something I'm missing?

I've been considering upgrading my home theater setup with a motorized projector screen. It seems like a cool feature, but I'm wondering if it's really worth the extra cost.

What are your thoughts? Have you tried a motorized screen? Is it a significant improvement over a manual one?

I'm particularly interested in the Nothing Projector Black Series. It looks sleek and has some interesting features. Anyone have experience with it?

I have a smart cat fountain that I really like, but the app it uses (Tuya Smart) won't send me notifications on my phone when the clean water runs out or the sewage tank gets full. I have to manually open the app each time to check which kind of defeats the purpose.

Does anyone know of a home automation workaround for this? Maybe a different app or a way to integrate it with a broader smart home system? Any advice would be appreciated!

I would like to automate some powering on and off of devices and have used Tasmota etc smart switches in the past, but I really don't like that these things require wifi access.

Is there anything on the market that can turn an outlet on and off that doesn't require internet access or some custom garbage android app? Something I can just sent a HTTP POST request to, ping, or some other generic interaction on an LAN-only ethernet interface?

Title sounds strange but I don’t know how best to word it.

To attempt to explain in more detail, I am looking to wire up an exterior flood light in my backyard. I have a Wyze flood light/camera combo, but would be willing to ditch this for something more appropriate.

The functionality I am looking for is the ability to have the flood light turn itself on based on motion, like your standard flood light. Although I would like to automate this so it only triggers on motion during a certain time period.

The tricky part: since I have an available light switch near my back door, I would like the ability to be able to use this switch, or replace this switch, to gain the functionality that if I flip the switch on, the light is just always on, but when the switch is in the off position, the light turns on based on motion.

So basically, power always has to run to the light, and the light turns on regardless of motion when I flip the switch.

I imagine what I need to do is just hardwire the light to bypass the switch, and replace the switch with some sort of smart switch that performs an action when flipped and that action is tied to the on/off for the flood light.

Hello

I have Switchbot curtain 2. To open it via app i need to have Bluetooth + location enabled on Android.

I read their online page but it is still not clear for me.

Can i use the SwitchBot remote to just open and close the curtains without any Switchbot hub?

If yes do i need the phone to have internet active on it(with bluetooth and location turned on).

I just want to open and close while i am physically present in the home via the remote without any need for a phone.

Thanks.

Hi all, I have a smartthings/GEJasco switch set up (first installed in ~2015, some replacements since then) that I am tired of replacing dead switches in. Ready to rip them all out and start with something fresh.

It seems like Zooz is the most direct replacement, but I do have 2 3-way dimmers and 1 3-way switch that currently use the jasco add-on switches. Is replacing both ends of the dimmers with Z77's the way to go to get dimming functionality on both sides?

Alternatively, is there a better path to go entirely? Open to considering anything. Setup currently is mostly smart switches with dumb-bulbs, a couple smart plugs, and a few RGB lights run through smartthings.

Thanks for the advice!

If I absolutely had to run a space heater on an extension cord with sufficient watts and volts for instance, the extension cord has 1875 W capability and 125 V capability. The space heater has 1500 W and 120 V what else can I add if anything to make it safe?

Hi everyone- getting started planning for some home automation and video/audio distribution. Plan is to run everything to a centralized server/control room with a few racks of gear (have 1 now completely filled) and then run Baluns to a couple different zones for video and run some low voltage for audio.

My issue is trying to figure out what I can use for video matrix system that supports Dolby Vision/HDR 10 and can work with either Savant/Control4.

From what I can tell, neither of these currently offer support for DV/HDR10 and would need to go with someone else and try to integrate them into the Control4/Savant system.

I’m just working to learn what I need to all get right now so I can plan out rack space, etc. I’m very DIY but will have a programmer/integrator help with all of this. Right now it’s mainly for me to understand what I need/how it will work so I can figure out space needs/floor plan layouts for when we are looking to buy.

I have several shellys around the house, one of which is a Dimmer2. It’s been acting weird for a couple of weeks (not responding but only late at night) and I finally investigated the problem. Turns out I had wired the Shelly without neutral, which is fine as long as you’re drawing more than 10 watts, but I used home assistant to turn the Shelly on when someone entered the room and during night this was set to be very dimmed. So I guess it was regularly strangled for power.

Anyway, I wire a neutral into it and turn it on. The relay works but I can’t connect to it over the network. So I do a network reset and connect to it’s AP, but now the web UI doesn’t load. It just shows the coloured background and nothing else. The console complained about authentication so I figured it was something to do with the admin password and did a factory reset. No change.

Question is, did I brick it somehow? Could it be the firmware? It still works fine as a relay, the switch turns it on and off and it can dim the lights, but it’s nothing more than a dumb dimmer relay at this point. Is there any way to fix it?

At my old house, I had Christmas lighting receptacles on Honeywell 7 day timers. My new (to us) house just has switches (with neutral in box).

But it seems like perhaps I should look at something like a programmable switch; I wouldn’t mind having most of my lights in general on such switches, so I can easily see what is on and turn things off as I desire.

When I started looking at these devices, I realized smart switches had seriously proliferated.

So, any advice on what brands/models to be looking at? UL listed of course. I also use apple products, so compatibility there might be useful.

Been trying to find the answers all day but cannot see it.

Can the Yale connexis L2 connect to HomeKit and use Homekey?

have different smart devices brands for home automation. I would like which hub that I should buy to make all my tapo, Amazon/Alexa, switchbot, Philips devices to work on alexa voice commands over wifi?

Thanks in advance.

Hi, I have at rented home Prana Recuperator which get stuck at update state. It's not responding to remote controller which come with it, I can't see it on Prana android app, only where I can see it is on WiFi router that is it connected but there is 0 up/down. Turning off and on power doesn't help. Not sure the model number I just know it's have all sensors and Bluetooth/WiFi connection options. Maybe somebody had already similar encounter? Would be thankful for any help.

Hi - wife and I are not super tech savvy. House we moved into recently has a U-bolt pro. Previous owner gave us their combo. We struggled to figure it out. Put in the code numerous times and never had any luck opening it or locking it. Tried downloading the app and I keep getting an error message. I’m a loss for what to try next and U-Tec is useless. Any tips I can try to get this to work before I call a locksmith and go back to a traditional key lock with a spare hidden elsewhere?

As a Builder, we're looking at how to make our homes "smart". A while ago, we clearly had fewer options. Today, it's beyond clear that Matter/Thread offer incredible solutions which offer/rival the high end experience.

What are your thoughts on this? Seems like Lutron and Crestron's own environments will be less valuable?