What will Elevate your setup in 2022

💬 Lounge
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Like Aaiyar and Sebastien, I want to enjoy the house for the most part.

  • I want to finish putting in the remaining door sensors for interior doors. I purchased a bunch of Iris V2 Contact sensors and I plan on recessing them into the top of the door so they are hidden. I don't necessarily have a plan for any automations with these, but who knows what the future holds.

  • I also want to scatter a few more motion sensors around the house where there are none - just because. Again, no plan to automate with these, just for general monitoring.

  • I would like to add some air quality monitoring and radon monitoring this year. This is one area where I don't have anything like it, and I probably need this.

There isn't much else new on the market right now for smart homes that really intrigues me. And I am running out of things to make smart where it makes sense to do so. Every light switch in my home is smart. Every door and window has a sensor. Every room does/will have motion sensing. Thermostats are integrated, garage door is integrated, smoke detectors are integrated and so on.

I don't want to go over the top with IOT or smart home stuff. There are just some things that don't need to be smart like my oven, or a toaster or things like that. And I never got into home theater or central sound systems or that stuff. My Tivo and Roku are integrated, but I never have done anything much with them, I don't see the need.

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13

I'm still working the kinks out of my ceiling fan integrations courtesy of Bond. I've suspended debugging the outdoor fan until the temperature climbs a bit, so we'll definitely push that into 2022. I'd also like to get better integration with my LG and Sony TVs. It's really flaky. And I'm thinking of contemplating ripping out my 10 arlos and putting in Ubiquity cameras. In an old house that's a big deal.

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14

I have a Roku tv, so the only integration I do is to make sure it turns off when we shut down the house (we all have a bad habit of leaving the tv on)

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15

I like being able to turn on my Roku, TV, Hue Play strip, and Hue sync box all at once. I have it all working more or less but if someone turns on the Roku or TV manually I'd like to be able to turn on the corresponding virtual switchesmand trigger the rest of the automations. I haven't gotten the flakiness of the integrations figured out quite yet.

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16

I think I'm feeling a bit more pedestrian in my Goals for '22. I'm planning on continuing my transition off the C4 and onto 2 C7s for Devices, and my C5 for rules.

I'm also going to figure out some brackets for contact sensors so I can place them on the inside of my closet doors -- so they aren't visible.

Beyond that, there's some switch and outlet replacents to still be done!!!

And, as always rewriting rules/automations into superior versions is always a goal!

S

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17

Up to August of 2021, my smart home was fully serving our needs, and anything I added was just to serve my desire to "always add more". But then I pulled it all apart in preparation of our house sale.

I decided based on feedback from others that it could help our sale to include smart home gear, but I knew from years of showing friends and talking about it to customers; people want simple.

What I saw as a bonus and worthwhile struggle (the keeping it all functional and in-sync struggle), everyone else viewed as a burden they would never want to engage. So our home sold with what many would consider far too elaborate, but I consider bare minimum. It's VERY stable and fault tolerant, and that's what I insisted upon.

For those curious, the house sold with the following setup;

• Hubitat Elevation C7
• Hue Bridge
• Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge Pro
• APC 600VA Back-UPS - Model BE600M1
• Lutron Caséta dimmers in every room
• Lutron Pico remotes in almost every room (Some are in double-gang wall plates to control Hue bulbs that serve as accent lights, while some are acting as 3-way switches via the Smart Bridge Pro)
• Two motion sensors (one Hue indoor and one Third Reality) paired with HE
• Two Sengled BR30 bulbs paired directly with HE and controlled by a Pico.
• Two IKEA Trådfri LED drivers for kitchen under cabinet lighting and toe-kick accent lighting. Paired directly with HE and controlled by a Pico (accent lights are turned on via the Hue motion sensor after 10pm and disabled 30 min after sunrise).
• All smart bulbs (except for the two Sengled) are Hue, joined with the Hue bridge and controlled via the HE Hue Bridge integration and Pico remotes.

What does 2022 bring?

I now have the chance to start over in our new home and expand what works perfectly, drop what was problematic, and try new devices.

• Insteon devices
Yes, it is looking unsettlingly grim for Insteon. They swear that it's merely the semiconductor shortage and supply chain issues, but it is certainly looking like their shrinking popularity is taking its toll. The fantastic devices like their micro controllers have been discontinued, and all product is near impossible to get. My Insteon integration is full local and every device I own is joined to my existing Insteon hub. So even if their cloud went offline tomorrow, I'd still be able to use every Insteon device I own, fully local. I'll use it until it dies. These were some of the best devices around that rival Lutron RA2 reliability and features, but at below Lutron Caséta prices.

After installing so many Caséta dimmers in preparation for the house sale, I came to realize how much I value the Insteon dimmers and how well they work with LED ceiling lights. I think I'm going to miss them when they're someday obsolete, but for now they still have a seat at the table.

• Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge Pro and Picos
These are winning smart button devices that are highly programable and rock solid. No way I can give them up. They look like switches when you mount them in wall plates, they have great accessories for bedside, car, etc. Love them. They sit next to HE at the head of the table so to speak.

• Hue Bridge
Only two of my many Hue bulbs were used in the renovated, and now sold house. The designers wanted Edison filament bulbs and Philips Hue had the only smart bulbs in that style at the time. They're really orange looking, but that's actually perfect as accent lights. The designer loved them. So I have a load of soft white and tunable Hue bulbs that will be used in our new home...probably :thinking: Too soon to know for sure, but a new Hue bridge has been purchased for use in the new place.

• Xiaomi devices
Y'all do what you feel like. I'm sticking with these devices joined via HA and a ConBee 2 with Home Assistant Device Bridge. A wonderful driver/app. Changed my smart home experience and made these my go-to input devices for most applications. The bonus is I get access to most of the compatible HA devices in HE. Total win.

• Homebridge
Solid performance. Never have to touch it. We're a MacOS/iOS family. This will be back online in the new setup for sure.

• Aeon Home Energy Monitor v1
I own three of them and they are great for monitoring the state of dumb appliances and overall home energy use. I have three HE hubs, so these will return in the new setup on a hub by themselves, just as before. They are Z-Wave 300 series so, I want to keep them isolated from the newer Z-Wave devices I own.

•Yale YRD 256
Excellent locks. I sold them with my house and immediately ordered more for the new house. I'm continuing with Z-Wave. It's never given me any trouble, and they were available as low cost warehouse deals. No need to change what isn't broken.

•IKEA Trådfri LED drivers
They're inexpensive and after discovering that, while they are not always 100% reliable when joined to a Hue Bridge, they ARE reliable when joined directly to HE. I bought a few to use in the new house. They will join a new Hue color LED strip and I'll experiment with adding some color to the kitchen under cabinet lights. Wife approval pending :wink:

•Amazon Echo and Google Home
These two are under review. HomePod is private, but limited. Amazon is tough to give up. So functional, and the new Air Quality sensors are interesting, but their invasion into our privacy from all angles is really making me uneasy about continuing. Google isn't much better than Amazon, but their Home Hub is a really convenient kitchen device for questions, recipes and an easy to use dashboard. I want to go all HomePod, but none of these manufacturers, including Apple, are making the decision easy,

•Miscellaneous

  • Sengled BR30 bulbs and my homebuilt on/off controllers made from Sengled BR30 Zigbee modules.
  • IKEA outlets and repeaters
  • Xbee
  • iDevice switch and outlet. Meh, they were free and they work just fine through HomeKit. :man_shrugging:
  • Nest Protect smoke/CO alarms (They're the best option in my opinion)
  • Delta VoiceIQ module and Delta Touch faucet. WiFi only and needs Alexa routines, but it works and I'm very happy with it.
  • Homeseer HS-FS100-L Z-Wave light sensor
  • Inovelli LZW36 fan controllers. I own two, and while I'm not sure there will be ceiling fans in the new home, the LED indicator capabilities are just so nice, I'm hopeful that I will want to re-use these, but I'm not going to create a use case for them.
  • Leaksmart, Centralite, Insteon and Xiaomi leak sensors. Not one of these failed to perform. They will all be used in the new home.

New for 2022!

  • Moen Flo - Our new house has Poly B plumbing that needs replacing. Until that time, I'm going to add Flo to our home to help prevent my new investment from getting soggy. :grimacing:
    So happy that I'll be able to integrate it with HE thanks to the work by @david2. Plus, I've wanted one of these for a long time, and this is a great excuse to spend the money. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

  • Shelly 2.5
    These are a great substitute for the now discontinued Insteon micro switch modules. These will occupy only 2 out of a total of 10 IoT WiFi devices I own, so I'm not concerned about network performance degrading.

  • Sense
    Yes, despite the one month trial, and the experienced users warning me, I'm still wanting to repurchase this. It's almost a moot point since electricity costs are so low where I'm moving to, but Sense is now promising we'll see the long awaited feature (or at least some form of it), where users can help in the training, without needing to buy a compatible product like Hue or TP-Link. I'm a glutton for punishment I guess, but I've still got my sites on owning one of these again. I'm sometimes more excited by my hobby than I am smart about it. :rofl:

Devices that may, or may not not return

  • Ecobee
    It's a great thermostat, and while I think it will do just fine being owned by Generac, I'm not certain I will have an HVAC system that supports it at this time. The new house currently only has electric resistive heating and no AC. There's no gas service to the house and we're on the fence if we should spend $4000 CAD after subsidies to bring Gas to the house. It pollutes and our electricity is inexpensive and 95% hydro-electric supplied. So the new heating and cooling setup is completely up in the air. Ecobee is only going to be useful if we go with gas heating and a conventional AC unit.

  • Ring Alarm
    This is a great alarm system, and the price/features are hard to beat. The unofficial integration is excellent, and really useful for using the door/window sensors for double-duty. But Ring is now part of Amazon's extreme reach into our privacy. I'm on the fence. There's a really old alarm system in the new home (which I've yet to set foot in - modern times :rofl:), and it appears to be wireless. So that's going to an electronics recycling center.

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18

I just purchased a Fibaro Smart Implant. Going to be putting that in the hot tub controller/pump. That will certainly be a project!

I also just purchased a Zen16. One relay for garage door and the other two...ah! That is going to be a great thing if I can pull this off.

Sacrificing a spare key fob for each daily driver I have roughly sorted out modifications to them to add JST pigtails.
Using the pigtails will allow me to have them as spares still in case of emergency and also be able to remove them for security during a vacation etc. The other ends will be wired into the remaining two relays. Through HE I will then be able to.....remote start!

Part of wake up routines, conditionals for outside temperature, and my wife's favorite that she has long wanted but I didn't think was possible till now...."Alexa, start Elanor." It's the name of her Ford Edge.

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19

This...I set up HA with the HomeKit Controller integration just to get faster feedback from my Ecobee. Planning to add an Aqara hub and sensors using this HE app.

With all those low-cost Aqara sensors available, maybe I'll finally make use of HSM...

Probably also spend time optimizing existing rules and moving them into Rule5 to take advantage of the new variable features.

And if I get really carried away I might try to learn me some groovy. One thing that feels really clunky in HE is math. Seems like the new hub variable structure would make it straightforward to write a dedicated app to offload some of the math in my rules.

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Is this a house, or an ark? Looks like you are ready for a big flood!

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21

If you're not going to use a ConBee 2, then I would suggest the Mijia Multimode Gateway instead of the Aqara hub. It can join both Xiaomi Mijia and Aqara devices. With the Aqara hub, you can only join Aqara devices.

Another option (although you may struggle without repeaters), is the CC2531. It's just $5 and comes pre-flashed.

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22

I've tried pushing them all overboard, they somehow keep swimming back....

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23

I could be persuaded. How hard is it to add the ConBee to HA and manage (add) devices? My main motivation to use the Xiaomi hub was so I wouldn't have to change (and possibly break) anything in my HA setup.

Maybe I should also add to my 2022 list: rework my HA setup and add an SSD. I'm a bit intimidated by HA, but I gather that using the SD card for the OS is not the best idea for long term reliability.

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I use a Conbee 2, but have it linked to HE using deConz. Some people have no issues at all, and most of the time neither do I, it is just when I restart I can have issues with it wanting to do a firmware update. Hence my preference to reorganise my setup to move InfluxDB and Grafana off that rpi and have only additional hardware paired to that rpi.

I have also set each of my rpis up with ssd's. My original one I tried to migrate from the SD card to an SSD. I don't think I technically achieved complete removal of the SD card, but I think it is only required during system boot. If you have capacity and the time, setting up a new install might be a cleaner option, but it doesn't have to be done that way.

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I’m using the ZHA integration. It’s been a while, but if I recall correctly, I just plugged in the ConBee 2, added the ZHA integration and pointed to the USB port address. In the video I linked to, Dr Zzs shows how to do it at about the 1 minute mark.

It was easier than adding the Xiaomi Multimode Gateway, which also wasn’t difficult at all.

I run home assistant core on an old Mac, so some things are a little different than setup on haas.io, which should be easier in every case.

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26

My current goals for '22 are new device research, systems simplification and rules refactoring, data collection/analysis and probably most importantly WAF/FAF and CAF (Customer Acceptance Factor).

Also will continue to replace some older mostly ZW+ devices that have limited capabilities relative to the newer stuff. The dream is not to keep swapping things out but to establish a baseline of acceptable devices and HA functionality - a setup that can last for years with minimal changes and flexible enough to incorporate newer stuff if required.

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27

Its hard to find the time with a newborn but I plan to get into more DIY devices such as pressure sensing mats and car presence sensors.

I'd like to get into room presence detection but am probably over my head on that one.

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As a parent of two young children, I recommend not having them. Kids suck. Send the kid back for a refund, then start buying more devices on amazon.... I'd return mine, but they're past the return date so I have to keep them.... I may try ebay next

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VERY OFF TOPIC
There's certainly humps to get over, and then more humps after that. But the road tends to even out with time. Of course there was a time, when there was time, for a reciprocal (but unwritten) agreement where the parents became "the children of the children's care". That deal ain't as common anymore except in a few culturally rich and traditional communities. Blame it on us Boomers I guess.

BACK ON TOPIC
As far as 2022 HA devices go - I intend to get to the bottom of some bewildering battery burnout and become less burgeoning in buying; focusing on reliable quality over sometimes less reliable quantity in my solutions.

Addendum- Just saw this goal and like the way it sounds.... it almost applies to the kids discussion above as well :joy: :wink:

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So does this mean we should be building a smart home to look after us in our old age....? :wink:

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Not me.... Euthanize me, mix my ashes with ground powdered glass and throw me into the faces of my enemies...