Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

So all I need is a fire stick? You run Nord directly on it? Ideal.

Edit: seems so, ideal, thanks!

Only shows the £60 4K one in stock for me at Google and most places.

Maybe I should risk it, my old Fire Stick is failing.

You run Nord directly on it?

Yep, just an app on the firestick.

I have Google TV built in to my TV, so I watch everything through that then just switch to the firestick when I want to watch bbc etc.

Works great, if there is a issue clearing the cache on the iplayer app is generally the fix.

Fire tv works perfectly, thanks for the tip!

No worries, hey duggie marathons here we come.

I want to add a few things to my house:

1. Door sensor for my basement
   
2. Humidity/temp sensors for a few rooms and basement
   
3. Front doorbell
   
   

For the door sensor and doorbell I want a physical chime/alarm but also to get a phone notification.

I already have some Tapo cameras so I was thinking of getting their hub and sensors, but the only thing putting me off is that they use a proprietary protocol instead of something like Zigbee. I guess that means I’m reliant on their services (and that they won’t start charging monthly) whereas if I had Zigbee sensors I could theoretically roll my own monitoring. The other downside to Tapo is that they don’t seem to have an IP rated button that I could use as a doorbell (I don’t feel the need for a video doorbell).

What other options do I have?

Aqara stuff is cheap reliable, a bit ugly and local so no cloud reliance for it to work. Also HomeKit compatible.

A lot depends on whether you want something that works out of the box or you're willing to run something like Home Assistant.

If you're willing to use Home Assistant then you can mix and match cheaper accessories easily and get notificaitons however you want.

Halfway house would be something like an Alexa or Samsung device with Zigbee, Matter, etc built in.

getting my summerhouse powered and networked up.

if i have a HA instance running on a machine under my stairs indoors whats the easiest way to add a zigbee hub out in the summerhouse that can talk to it so i can put stuff like my smart hygrometer out there? all running on same network.

note i have a conbee 2 usb hub plugged into the back of my HA machine which i want to retain use of for indoor devices.

whats the easiest way to add a zigbee hub

Buy a zigbee hub, the put it in a bucket of wet cement. Let it dry. Then buy a boat. Sail out to sea. Drop the lump of cement into the sea. Go home. Buy an Alexa or similar.

For srs, tho - I have HA running on a laptop, with a Zigbee dongle - It's the most temperamental / useless piece of crap.

I have any number of powered repeaters / zigbee plugs to extend the network to my office outside, but the bulbs may as well be invisible.

In theory you can just dot around a load of mains powered zigbee stuff and it should work as extenders. Unless you have a massive garden then something at the end of the house and something else in the summerhouse should do the job.

IKEA sell specific repeaters. https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/tradfri-signal-repeater-80424255/

I found Zigbee and HA was a bit shit when I was using zigbee2mqtt, using the other Zigbee integration works much better.

Sorry this may have been asked before, but are there any really cheap radiator valves that work with a google nest thermostat? Don't need them to do anything other than turn up and down wirelessly. Assumed there might be aliexpress ones or something?

Everyone’s Tados working ok? I can’t get onto the app, it’s stuck on the startup screen, and weirdly their website doesn’t load? Internet fine for everything else.

Ok, just found out that the app works if you don’t connect to home WiFi, use 4g. Super weird.

No issues here.
We never got round to doing a schedule though, just use the app to suit what we are doing.

Can you access the website?

https://app.tado.com/en/main/home

Nope. Page won’t load.

I can.

Could be a DNS problem in that case.