My wife dog sits for these people and mentioned that he was into home automation and might be able to set me up with some stuff at cost. Sounds good! Turns out (among other things), he sells, installs, and manages Eero, Lutron and alarm.com. He caught me at a time when I knew I needed to start thinking about upgrading my network. I really want to get stuff OFF Wi-Fi. Up until now I have been thinking about running new cable runs, new switches, going Unifi . xyzel or something else. Now he's got me thinking Eero might serve my purposes. What are the general thoughts on using Eero? Are there any drawbacks or gotchas with it?
On a semi related note he's also got me thinking about Lutron, but i think the cost on that is going to hold me back a bit.
Lutron is expensive, but 100% reliable, and (assuming your house wiring has neutrals in all the correct places) could all be installed with zero wire pulls.
Having both retro'd an old house and built out a brand new house, I cannot recommend it more highly - in both houses, it's been "install it and forget it", because it just works, every time.
UniFi + Lutron has been 100% reliable and great performance for me.
I am not a fan of Eero or any of the WiFi Mesh systems. Way too much happening behind the scenes, including cloud connections sometimes, for my liking. I prefer to have everything local and have access to all of the 'knobs' so I can tweak as I see fit.
I've been running eero for many years now, but it's just a small house, so I actually only run one unit (currently a Pro6 model). I've been very happy with eero.
Just understand that eero's goal has always been to simplify networking hassles, and (for better or worse) they do that by automating how all of the mesh/routing works -- they expose very little networking controls. But they do that automation well, so that's a win in most cases, but any networking power user will be quickly frustrated at the lack of "controls".
I'm considering it. I'm just not sure I can get it past the finance department. (aka my wife) she's been remarkably tolerant of the HA stuff. but she has her limits, especially in the face of trying to upgrade our network.
When I started the switch from Z-Wave to Lutron, my WAF went way up. Instead of just 'tolerating' my home automation hobby, my wife and kids actually asked me to automate more. The reliability improvement was night and day. Instead of her informing me a light did not come on (Z-Wave), she started asking me to automate additional lights (laundry room, coat closet, etc...) It was actually pretty cool as I look back on it. Lutron was not cheap, but it was a great investment in both technology, and my relationship with my wife!
I did see that. I'm trying to get AWAY from Zigbee. I'm down to three motion sensors and three light bulbs. They also do have a thread radio, which makes me think they might work as an edge router for Matter? Right now, I'm using the Apple TV for that.
which brings the question, can you use it Without entering your Amazon Credentials? Hunches has really burned me to where I don't want amazon anywhere near automations.
Amazon has really not been what I would call the leader when it comes to Matter/Thread. Apple seems to hold that title at this time. Your Apple TV with Thread is probably going to be much more stable and reliable than anything from Amazon/Eero.
There's a Thread radio on/off option in the eero app. Mine's off, and I don't plan to ever turn that on. I don't have any Alexa stuff, so my eero's not tied to an Amazon account.
So far, Amazon's acquisition of eero hasn't scared me off, but if the under-the-hood ties to big Amazon get any sketchier or more entangled, I will bounce to something else.
ETA - didn't intend that as a response to @aaiyar in particular - I meant to just respond in general
After the hunch debacle I kicked all the echos and dots out of the house. Eventually we'll replace them with home pods. IF I can use it without my amazon credentials I'm not as concerned, I trust Amazon more than Google, but that is still not saying much.
Not sure if you've seen it yet, but Ubiquiti recently released a new all-in-one device called the UniFi Express. It is a small device (about the size of an Apple TV box) with a built-in WiFi 6 access point, router, and runs the UniFi Network Controller app. It has just one WAN port and one LAN port. It is priced at $150.
It does have a few restrictions compared to its bigger brothers. The biggest issue - it can only adopt 4 other UniFi devices (Access Points, Switches, or other UniFi Express devices (in AP mode)).
It could be a low-cost entry into the UniFi networking platform. Later on. if you ever decided to upgrade to a UniFi Dream Machine class router, the UniFi Express could then be put in Access Point mode and thus still be useful.
I have 5 of the Eero+ mesh Wi-Fi system. No zigbee radios, only super fast well behaved networking across two building (house and detached garage). Works great even when the Internet is down, so no 'cloud' needed. This system runs circles around the Nest wi-fi mesh devices. Highly recommend the Eero+ system.
Absolutely. WAF here is 100% with the Lutron portions of the show, with a grudging tolerance for the Zigbee/Z-Wave things that fill the gaps.
(...and yes, I asked the Lutron engineers in person why they wouldn't make a single-button pico in the same form factor as their regular switches/dimmers. That would make a lot of the Z-stuff around here go bye-bye.)
That is what I was looking at. It's been out of stock, but i got a restock alert on it yesterday. My thoughts on that however were that I want to get things like my TV's, apple tv's etc. off the Wi-Fi and hard wired, which was going to get me into a larger project having network cables run throughout the house. Even though the house is only 3 years old (so has all the neutrals, etc.) for whatever (stupid) reason they have three cat6 cables run through the attic, but none of them go anywhere, they are just lying there and dangling in the walls (not even any terminals on the ends. There is no media panel or box anywhere.
Were those cables possibly pulled for old POTS telephone wall jacks in your house? Just a guess as to where you might find the other ends of those cables.
Nope. This is Cat6 cable. The house is only three years old! There are no phone lines (or jacks) in it. We are the second owners, but we moved in when the house was only 8 months old.
Oh, I've found the other ends. One dangles in the wall in my master closet, the other end pokes through the brick outside, not connected to anything. There is another cable that pokes out and is just laid across the attic, there is enough length to drop in my bedroom. The third has a terminal in the family room, but the other end is just up in the attic and end by the same outside wall the other two punched through. so not of them are connected to anything on both ends. Very weird. There is an alarm system, but that didn't use any of them, it was a wireless system (ranger tech). I can't remember what the protocol was, it wasn't zwave, but close to the Zwave frequency. It was some kind of one-off system.
