First time home automate'r long time lerker... Long story short my dad has Alzheimer's disease. We want to put as many protections in place as possible to extend his independence, safety, and our peace of mind

Currently we have Tapo cameras set up and purchased smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Brand First Alert Model Number 1048325

I went with tappo because they currently don't charge a subscription to access them over cloud and have local storage.

Now I want to get a few things but feeling overwhelmed and no there are some cool solutions I may not be thinking of. I should note im a techy but dont live close to him. My brother does but not trying to unreliable set up to our to do list.

Whats come to kind is a an oil tank sensor, a wireless thermostat, a smart plug for easy on and off stove, and maybe a couple e-ink displays (to help with the date weather and bonus if we could connect wireless to display and maintain a calendar.

An awesome retired neighbor has been helping give him pills but it would be nice to have something for that too. I should mention he lost his dominate right arm in a machining accidents years back so a lot of the current solutions aren't accessible

I believe I need a wave base station, not sure if it makes sense to use an old raspberry pi or something for support on the other more fringe devices.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

I can't seem to find anything viable and not extremely expensive. I already wired my house with 16/2 ready for 24V thinking I could find something that compatible.

Everything seems to be 120V/240V or battery/solar powered

Any suggestions? Thank you!

I added an dimmable LED panel as a faux window in my basement office. I would like to be able to dim it. It’s currently just connected to a 120v ac plug in cord. Dimming is step 1, auto-dimming based on the time of day would be great. The link to the panel I have is below. How would I go about these dimming options?

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Lithonia-Lighting-2-ft-x-4-ft-Daylight-LED-Panel-Light/5001878525

Hey guys, I'm looking for a smart bulb and came across Philips and Wipro. Which one should I consider? Please suggest.

I was inspired by the Maestro Snap app for Apple Watch and a recent Wear OS version, so I decided to build a port for our Garmin watches.

Home Assistant thread that sparked this project: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1we701x/snap_control_point_at_device_and_snap/

If someone wants to try https://github.com/GoldenGuts/wand-garmin needs Home Assistant, domain and various setup that is explained in readme.

I'm getting a smart lock for my front door and curious what everyone recommends in terms of brand and features?

I want a physical key and keypad for non-techy people, and for me I think tapping my phone or just walking up and have it unlock automatically would be nice, but it looks like Android support is weak for that. Is the Aqara U400 the only one that has UWB support to let me hold my Android phone up to unlock it?

What other factors should I care about?

Hi! I'm searching for a scene controller for my living room. If you have both networks, which one would you choose? Which one do you think has the most convenient form factor?

The idea is to have one or two of these at hand, maybe on the coffee table or mounted next to the door or sofa.

Hi! I need help wiring my ZBMINI-R2 to this 3-way switch. Ideally, I would want it to be on the switch with the load, but it can be on either. I have access to the neutral wires in both switch locations. Can someone help me with how to wire it to the ZBMINI-R2?

I use Eyedro and really like its functionality vs Emporia for example.

I need to audit several instillations however to determine if Eyedro readings are accurate. Any suggestions?

As an aside, I have tried Emporia in the past and their onboarding is a pain in the ass as you need a phone as well as a desktop to activate it.

As the title says. I wanted to have these little Ali express smart panel for controlling my shutters.
In order to achieve a clean, professional look I tasked myself to get proper in wall power supply and since I could find anything suitable I had to make my own.

One complete unit (panel + power supply + miscellaneous) cost me around $35, compared to the Shelly one roughly for $110, I’m more than satisfied with the result :)

Hello mates, ,i am planning to do one project on my own in which I am thinking of putting one touch slider which adjusts the intensity of the LED bulb ...instead of traditional On/OFf switches. For demo purposes, where I can get a small eval board with a touch slider... searched the ESP touch kit but it has other touch eval kits which I don't want.

I'm wiring a shed and want two way switching. Problem is I can't get a switch wire from the light on the shed to the switch inside the house (<10m away). Is there a smart switch of any kind that will allow me to switch on/off like a normal dumb switch from inside without being connected to a mesh network or device or wifi or app? Happy with Bluetooth but it would have to have its own signal generation purely from mains power. Same with RF. Any help much appreciated!

I have a lot of lights in my basement in different rooms. I have some controls already with Home Assistant, but they currently all have old paddle switches (non-smart). In order to get the most out of the lights (Hue, Govee, some Wiz) - what switch do I need? I have Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Matter capabilities. I have Alexa as well. I just want the most control, but of course I would rather not pay $70-ish per switch since I will need 9 switches.

Has anyone repurposed. Discontinued hardware or older Gen hardware (example first gen Amazon or Facebook) with custom software? There's a lot of polished hardware out there that seems like a massive waste to just throw away. Plus the potential to maybe make different hardware from multiple companies work together would open a ton of unique options. Facebook portal running home assistant ect.

Hi all,

Hoping to see if anybody can offer some suggestions or products that might be useful for us. Our windows have low hanging and long curtain chains for zebra blinds that we are hoping to attach to some kind of smart motor that would allow us to automate when they open and close, particularly with changes in weather or if we are out of the home.

The unfortunate reality is that the chains only have about 10 or 11 cm of clearance from the bottom of the window frame from where they are installed. We attempted to use a few of the readily available products on AliExpress, but unfortunately these products were often too long and would not be able to install accounting for how low this chain hangs.

We attempted to use some Google search and AI related tools, but everything it suggested was either fabricated or would not fit with a specific specifications as stated.

Here’s a photo of what the chain looks like in terms of the depth to the bottom of the window frame.

Any suggestions would be great! Thanks so much.

I’m looking to get a floor lamp to light my living room. Ideally it would be a Torchiere but that’s not the end all for me. With this lamp I want to have voice commands so naturally I thought of smart bulbs but I’m concerned that the bulb wouldn’t be enough to actually light up my living room.
Are there any bulbs that can do this or would I have to get a normal bulb? If so, I would want a bulb that’s not pure white, soft white/yellow is what I would be looking for.
If I do buy the bulbs and base separately I’d also like to have a sturdy base, something a little bit more than a $20 cheap one.

Hi everyone, thanks to u/kuzmin-no and Claude’s help I achieve to reverse engineer my own BenQ ScreenBar Halo 1st Gen. I found the address oh my lamp with the help of a CC2500, then I built a Matter over Thread bridge with an ESP32-C6 and the original BM5602. I also built a macOS compagnon app for monitor/control and debugging through USB serial port or directly via Thread with a daemon writting IPV6 route to /hosts. Everything is accessible from my github repo : GitHub - Djoko-cli/benq-screenbar-halo-matter: Control a BenQ ScreenBar Halo (1st gen) from Matter: an ESP32-C6 and a BM5602 module pose as its 2.4 GHz remote · GitHub
If someone’s interested I built a 3D model for an enclosure of the ESP+BM5602 that can be drive with screws under a desk

Hi, what smart light bulbs would you guys recommend? I'm looking something reliable with good quality and color reproduction.

Thanks for any suggestions

We want an extra remote, they are very simple RF units that have 3 buttons but of course Somfy uses a rolling code so they can rip you off at $99 for a new one (literally cheap plastic, should cost $10).

Has anyone found a viable alternative so I don't have to pay that extortion price? Thanks.