Well, this all started this year. Wife and kiddo gave me a Nest thermostat for Father's Day. Pair of Ring doorbells were added because at the time they were the best non-wired video options. A couple Echoes were there too, mostly because Amazon had deals to add them for "free" with those purchases (one with Nest,one with Ring #1.) Then came the first great "failure" and motivator towards the whole endeavor: I tried to buy a decent video baby monitor that came with an almost Echo...
That monitor was garbage. So next came a couple Wyze cams, and some Tuya bulbs (house has old wiring and I was intimidated.) We loved it, and I had been bitten by the bug. Enthusiasm came before research (always an issue with me) and I started adding bulbs every paycheck. Then the idea of not having to ask for the lights added Smartthings and door sensors. Fast forward to the end of summer and I now have a very basic, but fair foundation for messing around.
My "gear" as it stands right now:
Tuya bulbs: too many 25-30 (I will replace most of these color wifi things with Zigbee Sengled bulbs that make more sense as they burn out. We don't really play with color everywhere and the wifi clutter is noticeable, but not terrible)
Sengled Zigbee bulbs: 4 I like these, but notice a bit of lag on the door sensor automation sometimes.
Smartthings hub and 6 door sensors, 2 motion sensors. Where automation begins. I'm not actually using the motion sensors right now, cats set them off and playing tug of war with an automation routine taught me a lesson.
Nest thermostat the device that started it all, I love and hate this thing. I think I would go Ecobee if I was starting over, but hey it was a gift.
Ring doorbell: I have 2 of the 1st gen Rings, these hate the wifi congestion I would go Eufy now that I know better.
Kwickset wifi locks 2 of these for my front doors, I would go with the Z-wave ones now, but you live and learn. I could see "upgrading" somewhere in the future.
Echo devices: 4 gen 3 Dots, 1 Echo gen 3 proper, 1 flex plug with nightlight, 1 show 8 inch gen 2, and 1 show 5 inch. Technically my living room soundbar has Echo light properties. 3 fire sticks: 2 older, 1 new.
Notion bridge and 2 sensors just kinda floating there. A gift from my home insurance company. If I could tie them into my system "yay in a deadpan voice" if not no big deal.
Wyze cameras 2 stationary and 4 pans with some acting as home security, and a couple as baby monitors. These are acting perfectly, my first step in this journey but it was a good one.
and just for complete transparency:
Asus AC3100 routers times 2 acting as a mesh system. Had one, loved it, wanted to go to a mesh system to give the cameras a little better coverage. Bought a Eero mesh, didn't love it; gave it to my Mother-in-law. She's happy. I added my second router and I'm happy.
Goals:
When things go "back to normal" and the house is empty during the day I want the lights to trigger when we get home. This has been working off door sensors and Alexa routines.
Lamps in the bedrooms need to keep color bulbs. "Dark" toned blue makes for excellent nightlights. We can sleep with them on and get up and dodge cats etc when we have to. I suspect this will come into play even more when kiddo #2 arrives in December.
I want to automate the hall and bathroom lights with good motion sensors. This is where I want true automation, everywhere else voice commands are quite fine.
All in all I'm at a happy spot, mostly. ST has outages, and for me sometimes a crazy amount of lag (door sensor closes, light turns on after 3-5 seconds normally not terrible... but every now and then I'll get a huge delay like a full minute or two) this is what made Hubitat (with local control) a next step in my progression.
) I have most everything directly paired to HE via ZW or ZB.
