What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn’t seem too horrific anymore.
But setting aside what I “can” do, is this something that I “should” do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?
Everything became very easy for me once I decided to go all open source. In my opinion, the problem is all of the different proprietary “hubs”. I got a ZigBee controller that can control all ZigBee devices without requiring a hub (there are several options available).
Lights: ZigBee Hue. Plugs: ZigBee Innr. Motion sensors: ZigBee Aqara. Cameras: Ethernet Amcrest. NVR: Frigate.
Everything is local, no data leaves my network, and everything is controlled directly from Home Assistant dashboards via the ZigBee controller, and I never have to open any proprietary apps.
Care does need to be taken to plan the network at least somewhat in advance, but that doesn’t take too long, and everything is very stable and super reliable.