Hello there!

I just bought my first apartment and I would like to make as much as possible smart and connectable to Home Assistant. I have to redo the whole apartment (electricity, walls, etc) so drilling some extra holes is not a problem ;)

I just have a few questions where I can’t really find a good answer to it. I hope you guys can help me :)

First of all, I have a few criteria:

  • Everything should be local only (so no 3rd party cloud or accounts)
  • Selfhosting is possible (I have a Proxmox server running Home Assistant in a VM)
  • It doesn’t have to be of the shelf hardware (DIY is fine, if it works as expected).
  • I prefer FOSS over proprietary software/hardware (I know that FOSS hardware is difficult to find). If proprietary see point 1 & 2.
  • Zigbee/Zwave > ethernet > wifi
  • Available in Europe

What I’m struggling with:

  1. Lighting: What is the best solution for smart lighting? I already have a few Philips Hue bulbs and switches, now with the account restrictions they have I was thinking of buying a Sonoff Zigbee USB dongle off AliExpress instead of using the Hue Hub. Are there any better solutions like Shelly maybe or something else? For LED Strips I was thinking of using WLED on an ESP32
  2. Smart blinds, I already found some smart blinds (Like the one from Ikea) but they all work on batteries. As I have to redo the whole apartment I would like to have something that I don’t have to charge every few months.
  3. Smart plugs: Maybe any in-wall/out-wall outlet that has the capability to see electricity usage that you recommend?
  4. Audio: I would like to have some multi-room audio as I really like to listen to music. I have 4 rooms that I want to control the music in. I was thinking to buy 4 old Sonos Connect AMPs Gen 1 from eBay, than I saw that they are not compatible with streaming music from my Navidrome (subsonic server) using HA. Is this true? Also I found a promising project called Snapcast, is it good?

Sorry for the long post, thank you so much for your time! If you have some tips and tricks you want to share that will be kind of you :)

  • @[email protected]English
    2•1 year ago
    1. Get the sonoff and z2m and go zigbee wherever possible. It’s worked very well for me, and the devices have to be local so no cloud bullshit. Z2M has a good page with supported devices listed, so you can check what works before you buy. I use mainly smart plugs and go on/off only but use bulbs where smarter control is needed. Plugs are mostly tuya from aliexpress for lights, with domesticly bought higher quality (aquara and hue) for higher demand loads. Bulbs are all Ikea, they are cheap and work well. You should literally never need a hub with zigbee, thought some devices might loose some features without the hub.
    2. I have an ikea blind, the battery lasts a long time but there are guides online for hacking them to be wired. They do have some QC issues, i had to take min apart to fix a loose setscrew but it’s worked perfectly after that. From what I’ve seen it’s an assembly issue and not a design issue, so i would have no problem buying more.
    3. How hard is it to replace the outlets? Here it’s illegal to DIY so quite expensive, therefore I’ve gone all zigbee smart plugs. If you can DIY changing the outlets that is not an issue, and smart outlets may be a better option. I always try to think of what happens if something fails, some things can get very expensive at a later point. YMMV…