Short background: I work in tech, and actually have worked with RF mesh types of devices in my career. I have a family + increasing work hours. Would like to eventually go to a more full-featured system like home assistant on one of my PIs, but for now, mostly have a ton of Hue lights and hub, a few switches, Ecobee, and…… Ring doorbell (I know, I know - but killer deal and nothing else Ring in the house), and a few cameras.
I want to be adding a front door lock, possibly a water sensor in the crawl space, garage door opener. We have a lot of glass/windows in the house, but automated blinds and the like are definitely some ways out. I do use scheduling when we’re away but that’s through Hue at this point, not Alexa.
Why do I want to change especially when I have nearly given up on Siri for being useful (soooo very far behind on ‘AI’ in general, but different convo…)?
- Amazon data collection. Yeah, I trust them moderately more than Meta/Facebook, but that’s saying
- Google’s no better and probably worse as they and meta both track you to monetize your habits and info for ad revenue and targeting.
- I kind of dig what they’re trying to do/get to with Matter, Thread, etc. Zigbee and Z-Wave are pretty darned old, and while reading quickly it seems like the hw and software isn’t quite there yet, well - I’ll be adding stuff for a while.
- I’m at the point where I don’t really have much single ecosystem investment, but that’s going to start growing, so now’s the time to switch if I’m going to.
The HUE lights, Sonos Arc, Ecobee can all do homekit. The couple of plugs can either do Homekit or I’m ok with replacing. I might keep a single Echo Show (2 5” bought during various Black Fridays for almost nothing) around until I replace the Ring doorbell at some point. The other misc cameras I’m ok leaving independent for now but eventually need to sort (Wyze intentionally as ‘know they will get replaced but don’t know by what yet, so why spend big?), and not worried if I need to replace a couple of switches here and there (although I think they’re all HUE driven vs Alexa specific).
I’ve got 2 Apple TV 4Ks (last or current gen), family is pretty much Apple (and Linux…) from watch, iPad, laptops standpoint. I’d be ok adding a couple of HomePod Minis if I really must.
I have scanned threads here, and interestingly saw numerous comments on having to repeat things multiple times for Alexa (which my wife seems to hit a lot but I don’t) while Siri, amazingly, got it right, while I’ve had an underwhelming experience with Siri just turning off an alarm or setting a timer on my watch I’m 3” from vs my ipad 20 feet across the room.
I don’t keep up on deep dive levels of info in home automation as it’s fascinating stuff, but just family and work time beat out hobby time nowadays, so pretty much open to any tips, DONT DO IT, and the like.
I don’t think Zwave and/or Zigbee are going away for a while.
I like using a third party hub like Hubitat or HomeAssistant where you can do more complex automations but also integrate natively with HomeKit and the voice assistant of your choice. Or all three.
I have the “all of them” going right now. Home Assistant was used to bring automation to a combination of Tuya-compatible Bluetooth & Wifi devices plus very few Homekit devices I ended up with, and some Google Nest Minis but that software isn’t what I need it to be on my phone, watch, and Macbook. No AppleTV or Homepod at the time so HA let me do quite a bit. Then I brought in Zigbee thinking I was going to keep everything off the cloud. But I ended up with a Homepod Mini anyway. It fills some holes in HA. Now there’s such a mix needed to be consolidated though. I don’t actually want voice control but I’m deep in the Apple ecosystem so I’m going to make use of it for notifications and quick control from my watch. Zwave sensors will define my entire space once I can ditch the Zigbee stuff, or keep it, we’ll see. Walk into room X and have lights turn on with colour temp and intensity based on time of day, with a delay after human presence is no longer detected before shut off so it’s not on off on off if it’s many trips while cleaning or doing laundry. Space heaters and fans will stay on outlets (or IR blasters) controlled by presence and temperature to compartmentalize areas. Lights will likely never be on switches cause almost all are RGB. What started as TV bias lighting turned into “room tinting.” That’s where either voice or the Home app comes in. But it still keeps my devices off WiFi or BLE (even though I have the network to suupprt it) and gets out of the Tuya/Smart Life/Random Amazon shit environment and only iCloud. Home Assistant and Z-lighting brings back some of the lighting features lost when WiFi lights are added to Homekit directly. We’re too far away from Matter being there. I think that should meet the function, security, control, and notification requirements for me.