Home lighting, thoughts and eventual decisions

🌎 Around the World 🇬🇧 UK
1

Hi Guys,

I've not posted in a while, but I thought I'd share my thoughts about my own home IOT journey. After a bit of thought at the beginning (about a year ago), I decided to concentrate on getting the lighting in my house done first, before thinking about anything else.

First thing I did was create a seperate VLAN for all the IOT devices home network, like a lot of home networks mine lies in the 192.168.1.0/24 range.

New VLAN for IOT
SSID "HomeWifi_IOT" (VLAN Tag 40) ip range 172.16.69.0/24

Screenshot from 2021-11-28 09-31-48
Screenshot from 2021-11-28 09-31-481310×247 43.8 KB

At the start, I spent a fair bit of time trying to find a decent Zigbee non-neutral switch, unfortunately none of them passed the wife test, invariably they were white plastic and a bit rubbish. After a bit of thought, I decided to go with the Shelly 1L and a nice brushed metal (old school) switch which seems to be the preferred option of the family.

PXL_20210802_143814664
PXL_20210802_1438146642160×3840 1.6 MB

Next year, LED strip lights (more) and Zigbee smart bulbs connected to some of the Shelly smart switches (in detached mode), something I'll need do some research about. Getting there slowly.

Take care and have a good Christmas.

Billy

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2

Admire your methodical approach. Can't say I could be that disciplined, too many "bright shiny things" to explore. I don't have any resident critiques passing judgement on my work, so am free to roam... which has it's own problems... :slight_smile:

I did focus on lighting first like you, setting up my Philips Hue lights with increasingly complex rules using third-party apps. I know Philips isn't everyone's flavour, but as an entry into HA I was happy to at least start with an established setup, regardless of the baggage that can bring. I eventually wanted more, which lead to purchasing my C-4 hub.

I guess that's where I want to encourage you to branch out, treat yourself to the many other options a HE hub provides... But there is something to be said for nailing a part of a HA setup, I can't claim that, but I still enjoy the journey.... however bumpy it may get.

Same to you, and thanks for taking the time to share your experience, don't leave it too long between posts...

Simon

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