I use them, and I love them.

They’re banned from the internet, and never complain.
I use both SD cards inside the cameras, and dumps over SFTP.

The general standard of integration with HASS is very good (IR control, alerts, streams, etc.)
If you want to access streams over a VPN, make sure that you configure the IP addresses manually in the app, rather than letting it auto-find (took me a while to work this out).

Doorbell cam: Lovely bit of kit. Button press and person detection hooks in nicely with HASS things.
I really like being able to answer delivery people (and be silly with visitors). 2-way audio works well in the app, I keep meaning to try integrating it with HASS now the latest version has capability baked in.

810A: Decent picture quality, the only fly in the ointment is that it uses H265 for full res, and a lot of open source things don’t officially support it.

510: Good value, and decent quality image. There is a firmware floating around that adds pet detection features too.

Hue bulbs now work on standard zigbee.
I’d have to double check that the newest ones still do, but unless Signify are being complete bell-ends, it should just work.

I switched mine over after I got fed up with that bloody hub requiring an app to do any serious config, and randomly disconnecting.
The response time seems better when using HASS too. Bulbs that are not yet paired can be easily added to the network, ones that have been paired need to be deprogrammed first.

This is how the Hue RGB bulb I have can be controlled in HA:

It’s fair to say that there really isn’t one standard yet for home automation.
You’re likely to end up with multiple radios just due to availability of products.
I started with a zigbee dongle, then got a z-wave one when I started finding products I wanted that only came in z-wave.
Then I got an SDR dongle to use 433MHz (lots of cheap gear uses 433)

I personally haven’t touched thread/matter yet.

The really nice thing about HASS is that if you can get it to talk to HASS…It can be integrated with anything else you integrate with HASS.
For example, I have some cheap zigbee push buttons.
One click toggles the hue bulbs for that room on/off. Two clicks toggles a daylight mode.
Press+Hold toggles a dim yellow mode for night.

Or for another, I have central water heating.
The toggle for heating on/off is a simple smart switch.
This is linked to a virtual thermostat in HASS, which in turn is fed by a simple thermometer that also feeds into HASS.

You can often make really nice integrations by keeping the hardware as simple as possible, then stitching it together with HASS.
Rather than buying one thing for all, and hoping it integrates well.

I’m looking forward to going over to Agile in the near future.
I was under the impression that you had to be electric only, but apparently you can have a standard gas tariff alongside. We just need to work out a few things like “how much could it cost us to make dinner during the peak?”

And the SM57 for things you don’t need a screen on.

With a bit of luck, native RTC support means 2-way comms using reolink doorbells is close at hand.

I’ll just re-share mine from last time.
I tend to use the Horizontal Stack. On a mobile device, I just get one stack per line.
And on bigger screens, I get multiple stacks to make use of space.

General “Going out” page:

Internet speedtest page:

I’ll write a quick gist for anyone coming along:

One gas boiler in the house, each room has a smart TRV.
PIR sensor to set room presence, each window has an opening mag sensor. HASS has a general presence sensor set.

Each room’s temperature is targeted based on presence and window status:
For each room, if person is home at all, and has been in the room for 5 mins, and the window is closed, TRV to 19, boiler on if <19.
If the room presence is negative and the window is closed, drop TRV target to 16.
If the window is open, drop the TRV target to 7.

There is a little more detail that that in the article, but that’s the basics.

I can only speak from a UK perspective, but most home ADSL/VDSL/Fibre providers don’t have limits, other than “if your usage is tanking the network, we’ll ask you to knock it off” type clauses.

Most providers are also signed up to an agreement that if your speed drops 50% below the agreed speed on the package on average, they’ll either give you refunds, or let you out of the contract.

The only ones that throttle are the bargain basement operators aimed at people who don’t care, and one otherwise very competent provider that for some unexplainable reason only gives 1TB by default, charging an extra £10 for 10TB.

And I guess there is also a pricing step up to guaranteed bandwidth. For business use, they tend to be things like 1gbits headline, 500mbit guaranteed burst, 100mbit guaranteed sustained.

There are some in the datahoarder community pushing a PB.
They mostly store Linux ISOs.

z-wave may be easier than expected, as I think the devices stay linked to the hardware dongle used. (This is just from memory, mind!). But if you need to change the dongle, perhaps less fun.

imo, it will be a bit of pain to get everything inside HA, but once it’s done, you’ll be inside a platform that is pretty open, and commonly used, with lots of other people (hopefully) posting up solutions to problems before you encounter them!
And because it’s software that will run on pretty much anything, you have the reassurance that even if something crazy happened, you could just reinstall an old version.

If it were me, I’d clear an entire weekend day, power off the old kit, and work away at getting HA controlling everything.

Nice to see NC becoming involved with the board.

I don’t run that much z-wave due to cost, but I’m all for improvements and tighter integration.
Especially since when I do want to spend money, ZW works very well.

Or maybe something like this:

https://www.securemeters.com/uk/product/room-thermostats/hrt4-zw-asr/

The unit with the buttons on is a simple relay, which hass can control to turn things on and off, and use a heating control with a temperature sensor.
But if you hit the button on the front, it also gives 30 minutes of on, which can be handy if the system had issues.

Or you could have a hass controlled relay, but also leave the old controller wired in on a manual switch.
So if there was a failure, you could go back to the old control by manually flipping it over.

I get timber/PIR/plasterboard from the builders merchant, and also take that plus garden waste to the tip, 10+ times per year, in a 4 seat car that weighs under 1 tonne.

Anything truly massive, they just deliver it to me.

The day I discovered that a 2.4m 6*2 would fit inside was a very good day.
As was the one I bought roof bars.

There are a bunch of other stl files available on wikip/media too.

For example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:STL_files&fileuntil=UFO+20230214+0001.stl#/media/File:Steamboat_Willie_3D_Model.stl

A low-wiring way to do it would be to replace the bulbs with hue/similar bulbs, then just put a battery powered button in the location you want to have the controls. £10-ish for each button, plus however much the bulbs are.

Then just have the button set to toggle the lights on/off (you can also call different presets like dim etc by pressing and holding).
Then hass just directly sends the on/off commands to the bulbs.

My first integration is going to be putting my standard “going out” dashboard by the front door.
Being able to glance and see UV index, temperature, rain probability is dead useful.

imho, not dissimilar to model planes>drones.

To operate a model plane, there was a not-small amount of effort you needed to work through (building, specialist components, local club, access to a proper field, etc.).
This meant that by the time you were flying, you probably had a pretty good understanding of being responsible with the new skill.

In the era of self-stabilising GPS guided UAVs delivered next-day ready-to-fly, the barrier to entry flew down.
And it took a little while for the legislation to catch up from “the clubs are usually sensible” to “don’t fly a 2KG drone over a crowd of people at head height with no experience or training”

It’s pulled from my main router using it’s metric for it. It only updates once a minute or so, but it’s a nice metric.
Once I switch over to more powerful gear, I’ll probably have to start using SNMP, which I don’t look forward to!

I’m currently using the PoE doorbell from Reolink, and regularly use it for intercom, because I don’t like wasting delivery drivers time while I run to the door. I can definitely recommend it. It’s worth the effort running the cable to have something that just works.

The default Reolink integration can raise events on:

• Button press
• Person detection (adjustable sensitivity)
• Motion detection (same)

Recording can be on-device with a micro SD, on network (recording the incoming stream), or by FTP.
Recording can be set like a dashcam too (only save when needed, and overwrite after a certain time)

By default it lights up around the button when it detects movement, I do not like this, so I turned it off.

If the area outside your house isn’t busy, you can do cool things like getting the person detection to alert you as someone approaches, rather than waiting for them to press the bell. Can make the postman jump the first few times.

There are also some features like doing TTS replies if you don’t acknowledge the doorbell inside a certain time.
I haven’t gone through the effort of setting up return audio from Homeassistant, and just use the RL app.

One of my key buying points for hardware is “will this run without any internet, and could I set it all up again without internet?”.

This is why I’m so happy to finally have Hue on my zigbee controller. And it’s why I’m always on the lookout for a second hand Valetudo compatible robovac.