Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Yeah, but the Hue controller can't control Sonoff.

The best way to do it is probably move away from the Philips hub and shove it all in to Hass.io or something.

#ballache

Oh yeh, missed that.

Probably fairly limited if you want to stick to hue.

Sticking to Hue as a hub is really going to restrict what you can do - Hass.io will give you way more flexibility for adding more and more stuff. Chuck it on a Pi with Hassbian.

I've just seen an advert for Mycroft II

So tempted...

Done a bit of digging around this eve and i think I'm going to go with hass.io. Although it looks more involving from a coding perspective, it supports a lot more of the devices I already own (ring doorbell and blink cameras)

Have managed to make decent progress with Hass.io despite my initial concerns.

It's now up and running nicely with all of my philips hue bulbs connected, and arranged nicely in the LoveLace UI with a little weather card on my landing page. I've also managed to link alexa. I've disabled the hue skill in the alexa app and the lights are now controlled via home assistant.

I've set up LoveLace with a tab for overall with simple room level on/off and weather, and a tab for each room for more granularity. Each room only has lights at the minute, but I've sonoff switches to flash with tasmota and connect to all my radiators (the one positive of electric heating).

I also found an old Motorola phone and ipad2 my fiance had given up using as it had gotten so slow. They're now reset to factory settings with nothing more than a kiosk app with LoveLace open, and will make nice wall mounted controllers.

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I think that's your best bet:

https://joshmccarty.com/add-alexa-voice-control-home-assistant-emulated-hue-bridge/

We have a belkin Wemo thing for our coffee machine. Can set it to come on and also remotely control it, great for when returning home and I don’t want to wait 30 minutes for coffee machine to heat up.

Harmony hubs are cheap (£50) at the moment on Amazon. Probably the easiest way to get TV, IR/bluetooth stuff and a fair bit of home stuff (hue, hive, etc) automated with IFTTT, Alexa/voice control, etc

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Harmony-Smart-works-Amazon-Black/dp/B014GXQ9YW

Although if you're planning to actually use it as a remote for TV, hi-fi, etc I'd definitely pay the extra to get a real remote.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-Harmony-Elite-Remote-Control-Blue/dp/B014GXQOJ2

I'm going to be selling my Ring 2 Doorbell as soon as i unmount it from the wall, as I'm moving to a more diy solution that will integrate better with Hass.io.

I currently have Hue bulbs controlled from an Echo plus, without a Philips bridge. Is it possible to have varying brightness at different times of day?

Recently heard of the Shelly devices, and I think finally this will be my lights solution - anyone uses these?

Very similar to sonoff, which is better documented. I have a handful of sonoff basic switches I've not yet gotten around to fitting.

I have a handful of sonoff basic switches I've not yet gotten around to fitting.

I've just ordered a bunch from China - I'm planning to to mod with header plugs across the pinout, flash with Tasmota, and install them behind existing light switches connected up to GPIO14 so they act to change state, rather than on-off.

That means not having to spend money on Hue switches any more.

#iactuallyhaveverylittleideawhatiamdoing

^ And plumbed into Homeassistant via MQTT

Good effort. I thought about doing the same, but hue is just so nice and easy.

I'm planning to keep hue in the main ceiling lights and set up all the lamps that are plugged into sockets with sonoff, flashed with tasmota, and linked to home assistant.

We have electric radiators so going to fit one to each radiator too.

I'm impressing myself with my growing understanding of hass.io. So far I have only completely broken it twice, managed to set up a nice UI (home page with device tracker badges for me and fiance, weather report, and room level switches; media tab with pihole status and volumio; tab for each room with switches for each light and soon radiator switches), set up duckdns for remote access, and set up push notifications for when me or fiance leave or arrive home.

I'm impressing myself

I’m glad someone is

In the process of building an extension

Would like to have smart lighting. Smart switches appear to be a more economical option. Possibly as funds are limited start out with normal switches and upgrade to smart later.

The Shelly 2 system looks attractive, can it work with dimmer switches?

can it work with dimmer switches

I'm guessing probably not.

You can hack together a dimmer with Sonoff
if you fancy getting your hands dirty.

And it looks as though you can do it for £7 per unit!

Way beyond my skill set

I’d be happy if the dimmer itself is analogue, but just the on/off is also wirelessly controlled.

For a normal switch, it's as simple as wiring a Sonoff basic inline between switch & bulb / LED.

I'd guess, though, that given how LEDs often don't play well with dimmers, that adding anything in series could make them behave even worse at lower voltages.

I would also expect the Sonoff to behave very badly with a current being chopped up by the dimmer.

Surprised you've weighed into this thread, it's like the father ted Christmas special when they all end up in Ireland's biggest lingerie section.

It seems that the connected home isn't going away so I've invested in a 3rd gen Nest thermostat and a couple of the 2nd Protect co2 and fire alarms.
They're great and they seem to know quite a lot about when I'm home or not. Is there anything I should be doing to stop this data falling into the hands of wronguns or am I being paranoid?