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i just spent the last month wiring up about two dozen Leviton Decora smart dimmers, companions, and switches in my new place. it was part of the larger project to replace all the fluorescent and incandescent bulbs with 2700k LEDs it was an enormous pain in the rear end compared to Hue bulbs, but it is a lot more user friendly having the switches built in instead of having to use hue smart dimmers
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Dec 1, 2023 07:52
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That was fun to wake up to: It appears that a spider managed to drape a web strand loosely in front of the lens and is getting blown around enough to trigger motion. Of course it’s under the 2nd floor soffit, time to get out the extension ladder.
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Dec 7, 2023 01:50
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If it's a night vision camera, get used to it. Spiders are attracted to the infrared light and will constantly be building webs there.
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Dec 7, 2023 02:00
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biznatchio posted:If it's a night vision camera, get used to it. Spiders are attracted to the infrared light and will constantly be building webs there. Does this also mean if I direct an infrared emitter towards someone I don't like they will experience what I'm imagining?
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Dec 7, 2023 02:37
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We put a 7-Eleven style chime/motion sensor down in our garage and the chime went off. I looked at my wife and she's like go see what the hell is down there. There was the biggest roach crawling on it.
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Dec 7, 2023 03:47
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bobfather posted:Extremely glad that I migrated my Hues to zigbee2mqtt recently. They work exactly as well as before and have considerably strengthened my mesh, too. Wait what? I have a hue hub and a four pack I was about to throw out bc no one wanted them
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Dec 7, 2023 04:44
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devmd01 posted:That was fun to wake up to: Haha I have that in front of one of my eufy cams (I know, I know) and am constantly getting person spotted alerts. Spider will be dead within a couple weeks so I’ll just leave it be.
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Dec 7, 2023 04:58
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Deviant posted:Wait what? I have a hue hub and a four pack I was about to throw out bc no one wanted them All Hue lights (but not Hue Wiz bulbs) are just really high quality Zigbee bulbs. If in the Hue app you unpair the bulb it will enter pairing mode and be immediately detected by a working Zigbee setup (in my case, HASS running zigbee2mqtt on a Sonoff P dongle).
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Dec 7, 2023 11:57
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I really wish vendors who have HomeKit would use better printing for the barcode, the Meross lights are functionally useless to scan and you can barely read the numbers to enter the code manually. I had to guess with one of the digits even! Probably why Meross is cheap tho 
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Dec 7, 2023 17:45
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Is there any difference between the Nest Thermostats available other than one comes with a fancy OLED display? Really tempted to upgrade both thermostats so I can turn the heat on without getting out of bed.
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Dec 7, 2023 22:33
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FunOne posted:Is there any difference between the Nest Thermostats available other than one comes with a fancy OLED display? Do not buy Nest thermostats. They are absolute garbage that have and will continue to ruin HVAC systems due to multiple software issues (that come and go as they are updated) and bad solid state relays that have no supervision so when they go bad/half closed the thermostat doesn't have any way of knowing or alerting you. This has been going on since the very first models, they have claimed they have fixed it, and it still happens. If you want something with similar but better features/app for your phone with no other infrastructure required look at Ecobee.
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Dec 7, 2023 22:38
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What's better, installing a whole smart switch, or installing a smart relay like shelly behind a normal switch? If all else is equal.
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Dec 8, 2023 00:26
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priznat posted:I really wish vendors who have HomeKit would use better printing for the barcode, the Meross lights are functionally useless to scan and you can barely read the numbers to enter the code manually. I had to guess with one of the digits even! The more modern meross & TP-link stuff has been coming with sticker printed QR codes in addition to the device ones for this reason. If you’re struggling to scan, take a picture with a secondary device, then zoom into the code to scan with the main device or read the code.
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Dec 8, 2023 00:28
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:The more modern meross & TP-link stuff has been coming with sticker printed QR codes in addition to the device ones for this reason. Yeah the silkscreen was just so blurry it was useless as a qr code (it was also light grey on white, wtf) and one of the digits could have been a 9 or a 0 or an 8 (it was a 0). I wrote the code down (which I will probably lose) for future reference!
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Dec 8, 2023 02:00
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hogofwar posted:What's better, installing a whole smart switch, or installing a smart relay like shelly behind a normal switch? If all else is equal. I would say depends on how much room you have in the box. I just installed a few smart switches and wouldn't have room for a shelly and a switch in the box.
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Dec 8, 2023 02:14
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Are there any cheaper or better Hue dimmer switch holders than this one by Samotech? https://www.amazon.com/SAMOTECH-Switch-Cover-Philips-Dimmer/dp/B09BFW76BW?th=1 We have several panels that have 2 or even 3 rocker switches, but no more than two dimmer switches will be attached to any single panel.
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Dec 8, 2023 02:56
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Kibner posted:Are there any cheaper or better Hue dimmer switch holders than this one by Samotech? https://www.amazon.com/SAMOTECH-Switch-Cover-Philips-Dimmer/dp/B09BFW76BW?th=1
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Dec 8, 2023 03:20
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Kibner posted:Are there any cheaper or better Hue dimmer switch holders than this one by Samotech? https://www.amazon.com/SAMOTECH-Switch-Cover-Philips-Dimmer/dp/B09BFW76BW?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-Aurora-Dimmer-Philips-Z3-1BRL-WH-L0/dp/B07RJ14FBS?th=1
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Dec 8, 2023 04:41
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Kibner posted:Are there any cheaper or better Hue dimmer switch holders than this one by Samotech? https://www.amazon.com/SAMOTECH-Switch-Cover-Philips-Dimmer/dp/B09BFW76BW?th=1 I got a couple 2-gangs from Etsy that work well.
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Dec 8, 2023 05:03
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Three Olives posted:https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-Aurora-Dimmer-Philips-Z3-1BRL-WH-L0/dp/B07RJ14FBS?th=1 I already have the switches (have had them for years); I just want some holders for them. And they would go over rockers, not a toggle like dimmer. Right now, we have some blank covers on the rockers and some magnets in them that we jury-rigged years ago, but that isn't enough to prevent them from getting knocked off.
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Dec 8, 2023 05:28
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bobfather posted:All Hue lights (but not Hue Wiz bulbs) are just really high quality Zigbee bulbs. If in the Hue app you unpair the bulb it will enter pairing mode and be immediately detected by a working Zigbee setup (in my case, HASS running zigbee2mqtt on a Sonoff P dongle). This is cool! A couple of questions:
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Dec 9, 2023 19:41
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Motronic posted:Do not buy Nest thermostats. They are absolute garbage that have and will continue to ruin HVAC systems due to multiple software issues (that come and go as they are updated) and bad solid state relays that have no supervision so when they go bad/half closed the thermostat doesn't have any way of knowing or alerting you. This has been going on since the very first models, they have claimed they have fixed it, and it still happens. I did the research a while back and I went with Honeywell because nest and echobee have some strange limitations. You can see several differences if you study the manuals but the big one is that Honeywell temp management can be independent of the thermostat while echobee averages between selected sensors AND the thermostat. If you want to manage temps on a per room basis, don't put your echobee in a cold hallway! Somewhat related, I just setup Home Assistant on my Raspberry Pi and it detected all of my Honeywell sensors automatically. Now I can use the motion sensors to create other automations, like turning off lights when I leave a room. So cool
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Dec 10, 2023 16:58
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My ecobee is set to ignore the temp on the thermostat and has been for three years now, I’m not sure when they added that feature but it definitely works.
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Dec 10, 2023 17:19
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Honeywell has the option of local control on at least one of their models, that seems rare.
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Dec 10, 2023 17:24
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I fell down the home assistant rabbit hole  What's the best bang for the buck in room sensors these days? Temp/humidity in particular, maybe Co2 as well.
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Dec 12, 2023 00:35
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Wibla posted:I fell down the home assistant rabbit hole I like Aqara (Aquara?) for the first two, idk if they make a co2 one though, never looked
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Dec 12, 2023 00:51
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Yeah, for temperature and humidity, you probably can't beat the Aquara sensors in price, especially if you order a stack of them from Aliexpress. For CO2 sensors there are two ways to measure it. First you have the sensors that use NDIR (non-dispersive infrared sensor). Those are very accurate, but very expensive (>$100). If you want a really good one, the Aranet4 is on sale right now and works nicely with Homeassistant over Bluetooth. The other way is sensors that measure VOCs or something else in the air that's easier to measure and then estimate CO2 from that. They are cheaper and put out a value that might be good enough for some kind of traffic light indicator (good/okay/bad), but are not very accurate.
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Dec 12, 2023 09:08
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Tamba posted:Yeah, for temperature and humidity, you probably can't beat the Aquara sensors in price, especially if you order a stack of them from Aliexpress. I always feel this compulsion and I guess tonight I'm turning into Mr. Hyde about this poo poo. I work as a respiratory therapist, obviously in the hospital and not like doing home IT installations but I really think that people monitoring the CO2 in their own homes is some crazy poo poo. If you can detect that it's stuffy in your home yourself, that's the only indicator of low ventilation that you really need. If you crack a few windows in your house, or a window in your condo, that's gotta be pretty much good enough right? I feel like this feeds into people's anxieties and makes them obsess over numbers floating in their air instead of just being reasonable. I spend hours and hours every week worrying about the CO2 in people and it kills me to see people decide to start worrying about it at home for what I perceive to be no good reason. Why???
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Dec 12, 2023 09:20
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VelociBacon posted:I always feel this compulsion and I guess tonight I'm turning into Mr. Hyde about this poo poo. I work as a respiratory therapist, obviously in the hospital and not like doing home IT installations but I really think that people monitoring the CO2 in their own homes is some crazy poo poo. If you can detect that it's stuffy in your home yourself, that's the only indicator of low ventilation that you really need. If you crack a few windows in your house, or a window in your condo, that's gotta be pretty much good enough right? I feel like this feeds into people's anxieties and makes them obsess over numbers floating in their air instead of just being reasonable. I spend hours and hours every week worrying about the CO2 in people and it kills me to see people decide to start worrying about it at home for what I perceive to be no good reason. Why??? I've questioned this from the other side: most of these sensors, even the "expensive" ones aren't expensive enough, installed properly, calibrated properly and recalibrated properly enough to be real data. I don't understand the point. What action does this data drive? Either automated or otherwise? Same for temp and humidity per room. People are real wrapped up in it though, and will fight about it. I think they're just feeding their anxiety a-la step counter.
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Dec 12, 2023 14:39
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I could see some use cases for humidity and temp in a specific room—musical instruments, firearms, other types of collections. Even CO2 if you’re a plant or fungi nerd. But whole house seems like a pile of un-useful data.
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Dec 12, 2023 15:20
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Unless those rooms are separate and sealed climate zones what actions can you take based on that data vs. the data for the house/floor that you're probably already getting from your thermostat for temp and humidity?
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Dec 12, 2023 15:26
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You can cycle an ERV based on CO2 data easily enough. I don’t think it’s meaningfully better than a timer switch unless you throw a lot of parties.
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Dec 12, 2023 15:32
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I made some small greenhouse-ish things, basically metal and glass cabinets that have LED/UV lights in them, wife is a huge plant nerd, has a million houseplants. In each cabinet I have a temp/humidity sensor and each cabinet gets lights / fan / water supply differently so low humidity vs high humidity plants are segregated into each cabinet. The sensors run in each and send a notification if its ever outside a specific boundary for temp or humidity. It works pretty well, ultimately the driest cabinet is no drier than the ambient house humidity, but the more humid cabinet can be maintained via turning on and off a lil ultrasonic humidifier in there. It's neat, and a niche use case for very local sensor data. For the rest of the house I just look at the humidity % data coming from one of the smart thermostats.
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Dec 12, 2023 15:38
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Motronic posted:Unless those rooms are separate and sealed climate zones what actions can you take based on that data vs. the data for the house/floor that you're probably already getting from your thermostat for temp and humidity? For my household, it would be good to have a temp sensor in the bedroom, the office, and the open living room and change the sensor used for the AC depending on time of day. I work from home, so having the AC set to the office would be great during work hours. Having it switch to the living room/kitchen after work, and then to the bedroom when time for bed would be ideal.
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Dec 12, 2023 15:38
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Kibner posted:For my household, it would be good to have a temp sensor in the bedroom, the office, and the open living room and change the sensor used for the AC depending on time of day. I work from home, so having the AC set to the office would be great during work hours. Having it switch to the living room/kitchen after work, and then to the bedroom when time for bed would be ideal. This sounds a lot like bodging a climate control system that is improperly installed/adjusted/has too few returns. Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the root cause rather than selectively freezing rooms you aren't currently in to make up for rooms with insufficient circulation?
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Dec 12, 2023 15:45
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I like the ITEAD SONOFF SNZB-02 Temp and Humidity sensors. They're zigbee and they work great with ZHA on Home Assistant and I would assume Zigbee2MQTT. I've had a couple for three years and haven't needed to replace the battery yet. https://itead.cc/product/sonoff-snzb-02-zigbee-temperature-and-humidity-sensor/ I also picked up a used Awair Element a year ago when they shut down some crypto scheme around air quality and the used market was flooded with cheap devices. It has a VOC, CO2 and PM2.5 and has a local api with full support in HA.
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Dec 12, 2023 16:11
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Motronic posted:This sounds a lot like bodging a climate control system that is improperly installed/adjusted/has too few returns. Wouldn't it make more sense to fix the root cause rather than selectively freezing rooms you aren't currently in to make up for rooms with insufficient circulation? How would I do that with a single central AC unit in a two-story townhome? The office has two computers, a tv, and multiple consoles so it will always be much warmer than anywhere else in the house while in use. The sun also sets facing the windows in the room so it is the last room to cool down. The bedroom is the complete opposite (almost no electronics, windows facing where the sun rises). The living room area has a higher ceiling than anywhere else and also has windows facing where the sun rises, so it also cools down quicker than the office.
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Dec 12, 2023 17:28
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Kibner posted:How would I do that with a single central AC unit in a two-story townhome? The office has two computers, a tv, and multiple consoles so it will always be much warmer than anywhere else in the house while in use. The sun also sets facing the windows in the room so it is the last room to cool down. The bedroom is the complete opposite (almost no electronics, windows facing where the sun rises). The living room area has a higher ceiling than anywhere else and also has windows facing where the sun rises, so it also cools down quicker than the office. With proper air balancing using the register dampers to start.
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Dec 12, 2023 17:31
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Hed posted:
Motronic posted:I've questioned this from the other side: most of these sensors, even the "expensive" ones aren't expensive enough, installed properly, calibrated properly and recalibrated properly enough to be real data. I don't use air quality sensors, but for me the temperature sensors have a very real use: this house has serious thermal gradient issues, and having a sensor on each floor gives us an objective measure of whether the stuff we do to mitigate it is actually helping rather than just basing it entirely on Vibes™. A sensor per room would probably be overkill, though.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:02
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ToxicFrog posted:temperature sensors have a very real use: this house has serious thermal gradient issues, and having a sensor on each floor gives us an objective measure of whether the stuff we do to mitigate it is actually helping rather than just basing it entirely on Vibes™. A sensor per room would probably be overkill, though. I completely agree with this. I have a retrofitted AC unit for just the second floor with it's own thermostat (typical for older colonials around here) that I can use for the same purpose. It tells me if I've dampereped enough registers on the first floor during the heating season to get a decent amount of heat to the second floor. Alternately, if I wanted to go full on automation it could drive addressable dampers but I just don't feel the need for that.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:13
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