Home Assistant. If you ever want to do home automation properly, this is the way. Works with pretty much anything—Zigbee, zWave, BT LE, MQTT—while keeping things manufacturer agnostic, local, private and highly responsive (your commands don’t need to go through some server 3000 km away and won’t have ugly 1 second latency as a result).
DAVx⁵ and Radicale to sync contacts and calendars between devices without snooping middle-men.
Syncthing to sync any files between devices. Works remotely, too, thanks to Syncthing relays.
Navidrome for your personal music streaming service.
Debian, Docker, Docker Compose and Portainer as the backbone to run all your services.
One of the best things about HASS is the counterweight it applies to the home automation industry.
When everyone is trying to lock people in to proprietary systems, the hass community is keen to find alternatives.
“To use this temperature sensor, you must use our hub and app”
2 days later: ‘Good news everyone, it’s manchester coding on 433Mhz, and I’ve written a direct integration for rtl_433’
I was searching for some nice way to keep my KeePass files in sync across my phone + pc. Tried Syncthing as soon as I saw your comment and it’s a life saver :D Thanks so much!
I’d actually recommend Podman over Docker nowadays. It’s basically a drop in replacement and embraces open source while Docker’s moving more in the direction of a closed monetized model.
(I only own older Tuya devices that I flashed with Tasmota before setting them up with Home-Assistant. But I think what they sell nowadays can’t be flashed with a free and open-source firmware. So the Tuya integration should work. But I haven’t tried it.)
Unfortunately with the smart home stuff, you’re often stuck with some vendor and their decisions. You have to pay close attention before buying devices. There is a chance your Tuya devices are supported by something like the mentioned Tasmota. They have a long list. But flashing a new firmware on some lightbulb is a bit cumbersome and you can brick the devices easily. It’s probably not something you want to do unless this is your hobby.
I can recommend buying Zigbee devices and a supported gateway, or something alike. That works without some cloud service.
I have a zigbee gateway. I use it for physical buttons that control other smart devices using the scenes in the Smart Life app.
The zigbee stuff has been the devices to give me the most trouble, plus they cost more.
Most of the affordable plugs and sockets are all compatible with Smart Life (which is just Tuya with another brand label). Quite a number of real cheap devices that have their own apps are also just copies of Tuya so they all end up working with Smart Life.
I am going to start looking into flashing firmwares. There’s SO MANY devices running hardware for those platforms, it would be great to break them free of the cloud apps.
Unfortunately things once have been easier. The first Tuya devices contained ESP8266 microcontrollers and had a vulnerability that allowed users to just upload a different firmware. But at some point they started using some cheaper microcontrollers that aren’t as easy to program. So there is no custom firmware available for many/most of the recent devices. Beware if the supported devices repository says “soldering required” or “module needs to be replaced”. I don’t know why they do this, but it requires a hot air soldering station and proper soldering skills.
Regarding Zigbee: I bought some Ikea stuff. The lightbulbs work fine. But I also had issues with the buttons.
It does work although breaks occasionally and you seem to need a (free) token from tuya to get it running now. That said it let’s me use my tuya devices through homekit now which is pretty handy.
Yeah, you don’t need a VPN as their is also a relay component that forms a sorta sync thing network. While the data is always encrypted, with the relaying you are using external servers to route the traffic. The relaying also isn’t required, but ensures data can be synced even when a direct connection isn’t possible (e.g. You arent home and aren’t on your VPN).
Yes, you can sync between two on devices anywhere in the world as long as a connection path can be found.
The downside of this is that both devices have to be on. If not on the LAN it may go though some unknown gateways too which makes me nervous (though it should be all encrypted). It can take some time too for the devices to find each other and then do the transfer (even on the LAN).
Some people place syncthing on their NAS so it is the always on device. Also if you do not want your connection to go through other peoples bridges then you can disable that feature (and loose the global WAN transfer capability), or you can put up your own bridge in a VPS on the WAN.
I am no expert on this. For me I use syncthing only sometimes and only on my LAN. Mostly I use SSH, Nextcloud, or Bitwarden Send myself. I’d like to play more with some of the other options though. Seafile or placing Send on my VPS for example seems interesting to me.
Home Assistant. If you ever want to do home automation properly, this is the way. Works with pretty much anything—Zigbee, zWave, BT LE, MQTT—while keeping things manufacturer agnostic, local, private and highly responsive (your commands don’t need to go through some server 3000 km away and won’t have ugly 1 second latency as a result).
DAVx⁵ and Radicale to sync contacts and calendars between devices without snooping middle-men.
Syncthing to sync any files between devices. Works remotely, too, thanks to Syncthing relays.
Navidrome for your personal music streaming service.
Debian, Docker, Docker Compose and Portainer as the backbone to run all your services.
And many others.
One of the best things about HASS is the counterweight it applies to the home automation industry.
When everyone is trying to lock people in to proprietary systems, the hass community is keen to find alternatives.
“To use this temperature sensor, you must use our hub and app”
2 days later: ‘Good news everyone, it’s manchester coding on 433Mhz, and I’ve written a direct integration for rtl_433’
Wait a minute, is FLOSS home automation really this robust? Having avoided most wifi enabled gadgets, I’m pretty out of the loop here
It’s pretty good, honestly!
I also avoid wifi gadgets where possible, I try to go for Zigbee, Z-wave, or 433MHz stuff.
For things that “have” to be IP, I put them on a separate vlan, then interface through them using hass.
You can check what it supports. Though there are some stuff that people have created support for that aren’t on there yet as well
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/
I was searching for some nice way to keep my KeePass files in sync across my phone + pc. Tried Syncthing as soon as I saw your comment and it’s a life saver :D Thanks so much!
I’d actually recommend Podman over Docker nowadays. It’s basically a drop in replacement and embraces open source while Docker’s moving more in the direction of a closed monetized model.
I really want to use podman, but the compose part in it is still a bit too far behind
I guess I’m pretty basic with my compose files, what did you end up running into with that?
I’ve been seeing Home Assistant mentioned a lot lately.
Can it control smart plugs and switches that are made for Tuya/Smart Life?
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/tuya/
(I only own older Tuya devices that I flashed with Tasmota before setting them up with Home-Assistant. But I think what they sell nowadays can’t be flashed with a free and open-source firmware. So the Tuya integration should work. But I haven’t tried it.)
Yeah I saw that. It doesn’t help me in trying to break free from those cloud services if I still have to integrate them into my setup.
Unfortunately with the smart home stuff, you’re often stuck with some vendor and their decisions. You have to pay close attention before buying devices. There is a chance your Tuya devices are supported by something like the mentioned Tasmota. They have a long list. But flashing a new firmware on some lightbulb is a bit cumbersome and you can brick the devices easily. It’s probably not something you want to do unless this is your hobby.
I can recommend buying Zigbee devices and a supported gateway, or something alike. That works without some cloud service.
I have a zigbee gateway. I use it for physical buttons that control other smart devices using the scenes in the Smart Life app.
The zigbee stuff has been the devices to give me the most trouble, plus they cost more.
Most of the affordable plugs and sockets are all compatible with Smart Life (which is just Tuya with another brand label). Quite a number of real cheap devices that have their own apps are also just copies of Tuya so they all end up working with Smart Life.
I am going to start looking into flashing firmwares. There’s SO MANY devices running hardware for those platforms, it would be great to break them free of the cloud apps.
https://templates.blakadder.com/
Unfortunately things once have been easier. The first Tuya devices contained ESP8266 microcontrollers and had a vulnerability that allowed users to just upload a different firmware. But at some point they started using some cheaper microcontrollers that aren’t as easy to program. So there is no custom firmware available for many/most of the recent devices. Beware if the supported devices repository says “soldering required” or “module needs to be replaced”. I don’t know why they do this, but it requires a hot air soldering station and proper soldering skills.
Regarding Zigbee: I bought some Ikea stuff. The lightbulbs work fine. But I also had issues with the buttons.
Fucking GREAT info! Thanks!
It does work although breaks occasionally and you seem to need a (free) token from tuya to get it running now. That said it let’s me use my tuya devices through homekit now which is pretty handy.
Wait, does this mean I don’t need a VPN to sync remotely? That has been the doubt I have had since I heard about such software.
Yeah, you don’t need a VPN as their is also a relay component that forms a sorta sync thing network. While the data is always encrypted, with the relaying you are using external servers to route the traffic. The relaying also isn’t required, but ensures data can be synced even when a direct connection isn’t possible (e.g. You arent home and aren’t on your VPN).
Yes, you can sync between two on devices anywhere in the world as long as a connection path can be found.
The downside of this is that both devices have to be on. If not on the LAN it may go though some unknown gateways too which makes me nervous (though it should be all encrypted). It can take some time too for the devices to find each other and then do the transfer (even on the LAN).
Some people place syncthing on their NAS so it is the always on device. Also if you do not want your connection to go through other peoples bridges then you can disable that feature (and loose the global WAN transfer capability), or you can put up your own bridge in a VPS on the WAN.
I am no expert on this. For me I use syncthing only sometimes and only on my LAN. Mostly I use SSH, Nextcloud, or Bitwarden Send myself. I’d like to play more with some of the other options though. Seafile or placing Send on my VPS for example seems interesting to me.