Yes, I wanted to show that you don't have to spend a load of money to do a reasonable amount of stuff. I might do an "out of reach" version in the future.
Third option, set up a VPN on your router (presuming it's capable) and mobile device, this also gives greater security in case your using a compromised WiFi network somewhere. This is how I access my HA when out and about.
Yeah, that's certainly another option! I don't do this myself though because VPN on all time can drain a bit more battery. (Be interested to know your experience) Also, my partner has an iPhone which doesn't natively support always-on VPN I believe. I don't want her coming to me saying that her browsing has stopped working every now and again because of low signal making vpn unstable etc 😀 She has been trained to not connect to public wifi though 😉 It's definitely the most secure option though!
@@lets-automate I don't tend to have it on all the time either - only turn it on when I need it, or need to check something in HA when I'm away, but the times I have left it on say whilst on holiday I've not noticed excessive power use. I only really use HA for basic monitoring so don't need an always on connection back to it - app notifications still work with out it I believe.
I haven't used Hubitat, so I can't comment too much. I just happened to choose Home Assistant all those years ago. It looks like HA is a few years ahead in terms of the user interface and I believe has more development resources working on the project. But both seem to be well run professional projects; and I think it's great that there are alternatives to the likes of the Goggle and Amazon ecosystems.
Unfortunately Aqara has no nice dimmer and no physical 2-way switching. The combination of that and the fact that they seem to implement things with a proprietary flavor (ZigBee not quite standard, some features require their hub, ...) makes my alarm bells go off. So unless they can provide a nice dimmer as well, I won't get any of their products. If they want to do things in a proprietary manner, they should better deliver a complete package. I'd rather buy products from various other manufacturers as long as they are open and stick to the standard. However I'm still not seeing any good solution of a open, compatible Zigbee/Zwave/Thread dimmer for the EU market.
Totally agree. No good dimmer and no 2-way switching is a missed opportunity. I think Aqara gets a bit too much stick for the zigbee standard compliance stuff though. They were just quite early versus most others and also it was zigbee 1.2 standard back then. I used Aqara before it became popular and it was the only decent stuff out there. All of their newer zigbee 3.0 seems to be pretty decent. It's credit to them that I'm still able use their old stuff tbh. Also, they are embracing local operation and automations going forwards, which can't be said for some companies. True that some features aren't available without their app, but a lot of that is more about the Matter being fairly new still, and that's why others like Govee etc have similar things. I'm going to be exploring thread more soon, so will be interesting to see how compatibility across ecosystems evolves. And thanks for the comment!
This is great. It seems like most of the videos online about smart home setups are way out of reach for most of us.
Yes, I wanted to show that you don't have to spend a load of money to do a reasonable amount of stuff.
I might do an "out of reach" version in the future.
Great video, I started off with one room purchased everything from Amazon then moved to Aliexpress for the others much cheaper.
Love home assistant.
Very well thought of, what one needs and what you can get out of it!
Third option, set up a VPN on your router (presuming it's capable) and mobile device, this also gives greater security in case your using a compromised WiFi network somewhere. This is how I access my HA when out and about.
Yeah, that's certainly another option!
I don't do this myself though because VPN on all time can drain a bit more battery. (Be interested to know your experience)
Also, my partner has an iPhone which doesn't natively support always-on VPN I believe. I don't want her coming to me saying that her browsing has stopped working every now and again because of low signal making vpn unstable etc 😀
She has been trained to not connect to public wifi though 😉
It's definitely the most secure option though!
@@lets-automate I don't tend to have it on all the time either - only turn it on when I need it, or need to check something in HA when I'm away, but the times I have left it on say whilst on holiday I've not noticed excessive power use. I only really use HA for basic monitoring so don't need an always on connection back to it - app notifications still work with out it I believe.
Ah makes sense! I don't know how many times a day we go into it, but it's a lot. The geo location updates is a big one for us.
Hubitat is probably a better option
I haven't used Hubitat, so I can't comment too much. I just happened to choose Home Assistant all those years ago.
It looks like HA is a few years ahead in terms of the user interface and I believe has more development resources working on the project.
But both seem to be well run professional projects; and I think it's great that there are alternatives to the likes of the Goggle and Amazon ecosystems.
Unfortunately Aqara has no nice dimmer and no physical 2-way switching.
The combination of that and the fact that they seem to implement things with a proprietary flavor (ZigBee not quite standard, some features require their hub, ...) makes my alarm bells go off. So unless they can provide a nice dimmer as well, I won't get any of their products. If they want to do things in a proprietary manner, they should better deliver a complete package.
I'd rather buy products from various other manufacturers as long as they are open and stick to the standard. However I'm still not seeing any good solution of a open, compatible Zigbee/Zwave/Thread dimmer for the EU market.
Totally agree. No good dimmer and no 2-way switching is a missed opportunity.
I think Aqara gets a bit too much stick for the zigbee standard compliance stuff though. They were just quite early versus most others and also it was zigbee 1.2 standard back then. I used Aqara before it became popular and it was the only decent stuff out there.
All of their newer zigbee 3.0 seems to be pretty decent. It's credit to them that I'm still able use their old stuff tbh.
Also, they are embracing local operation and automations going forwards, which can't be said for some companies.
True that some features aren't available without their app, but a lot of that is more about the Matter being fairly new still, and that's why others like Govee etc have similar things.
I'm going to be exploring thread more soon, so will be interesting to see how compatibility across ecosystems evolves. And thanks for the comment!