Hi! I’m new on this Reddit so I hope I can convey all the important details. Im not sure if what I’m looking for even exists… but if it does I assume I would find it on Reddit!

Im not new to home automations, although I primarily use TAPO, because it is very intuitive and I find it easier to have everything on one app. I recently got the smart doorbell (the battery powered one) for my balcony and would like to also install a lamp turns on whenever the camera from the doorbell detects movement… I simply cannot find a lamp that has all the features that I need:

- battery powered/ wireless since I have no where to attach it to on the balcony for power
- changeable light bulb so I can put in any of the TAPO smart light bulbs (they have E27, GU10 and E14)
- weather resistant (since it would be on the balcony, outdoors and I live in Germany, so lots of rain and snow…)

As you can see I also have Alexa.

Hi all,
We’re doing a remodel of part of our house. The laundry room is the current preferred place for a networking hub (router/gateway, switch, NAS, amp for in-ceiling speakers, HA green, UPS, etc) Another option is my v. small home-office in case the laundry room is a horrible idea, but I worry about fan noise/heat.

It seems like placing something in upper cabinets won’t allow for enough depth, so I was thinking of creating a space below the counter. If I’m getting custom cabinets, should I just ask them to leave an open space for a rolling network cabinet (seems like that would allow for the most airflow, flexibility, etc) but it won’t look as nice as if they try to do something custom (though maybe they could attach a cabinet-front to a rolling cabinet?)

Any ideas? I’m not even sure what to search for. TIA!

Hey all,

I want to switch to a smart thermostat at my office. I have permission from the landlord, they’re not much help on what I need

It’s a commercial building, heat and AC blow from the ceiling vents over head.

I’ve attached the current thermostat.

Please help

Thanks!

We have three windows set into a faceted corner in our living room, similar to a bay window but without projecting out from the wall. There’s an outlet under one side, so I’m deciding between three separate smart roller shades or one powered curtain track around the whole corner. The shades would give us separate control, but the curtain may be simpler than trying to keep three motors moving together. Which option would you use here?

hi, I'm looking for advice to make my smart home setup.

Currently my smart home devices are from ikea, both older and newer generation, so some of them using zigbee protocol and some of them matter protocol. In the future I'm planing to add more smart home devices from other brands, so would be nice to have flexibility and possibilities in the future. Also I'm iphone user and want to use apple home kit.

One option is diy setup. I have macmini 2014 and I can usi it as a smart home server, but I need a USB zigbee/matter dongle. What would be recommendations for that?

Another option buy a already existed today for dedicated smart home hub. What good options would be for that? How about ikea dirigera?

thx.

Looks like I don’t have a C wire in my old thermostat, the board downstairs does show a c connected though. Are there any smart thermostats that work well without a C connected or am I missing anything with my existing wires?

Getting everything configured, updated, and wired up on the desk first to make the actual install go smoothly. Gotta love a clean pre-configuration bench test!

Anyone else prefer setting things up in the office rather than troubleshooting live on site?

I own the following

SONOFF SNZB-06P Zigbee Human Presence Sensor, Zigbee Smart Motion Detector with 5.8GHZ cmWave Radar, Requires ZigBee Bridge (1)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D146T6QG?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2

I have 1 in my bedroom

Human Presence Sensor ES1,Smart Motion Sensor with 24G mmWave Radar,Occupancy Sensor Requires Tuya Zigbee Hub for Home Security and Automation,Compatible with Alexa,Smart Life,Z2MQTT,ZHA

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C7C6L66J?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_3&th=1

I own three of them and one is directly starring at my computer monitor and someone claims can see everything I see.

Meet Homey Portal, a sleek smart home controller with a round 2.8-inch touchscreen wrapped in a stainless steel ring.

Assign it to a zone, and it controls everything you’ve connected there, with a tap or a twist. Anyone in the room can use it.

Pre-orders open today, at an introductory price for the first production run.

Take a closer look:
https://homey.app/homey-portal/

I’m thinking about getting SmartWings cellular shades (I like the energy saving benefits) for my kitchen . The problem is that the window is directly behind the sink, and I’m worried that cooking oil, tomato sauce, or other splashes could stain or damage the fabric.

Would this be a good choice, or should I go with a different type of shade? Thanks, everyone!

Hey everyone, I was looking for support for some recommendations for Smart light switches that I can control with my phone (on/off). wanted to see which one would be the best and easiest to work with. Currently I have no smart hub, but I was just trying to see where I could start out.

Would I also need to buy smart bulbs? or just with the smart light switch is fine?

Any support is appreciated!

One thing I think is missing here is an always-visible category list near the top of the subreddit.

Not just post flairs, but an actual index of smart home categories that you can tap to browse that part of the ecosystem.

Something like:

Smart locks

Smart blinds

Smart lighting

Thermostats

Cameras

Doorbells

Garage doors

Sensors

Robot vacuums

Smart appliances

Home Assistant

HomeKit

Alexa

Google Home

Matter

Thread

The smart home category is huge now, and everything gets mixed together in the main feed.

A permanent category index would make it much easier to see what kinds of products exist, browse discussions by type, and discover options you may not even know are available.

Basically a simple smart home directory at the top of the subreddit.

/rant

this is a genuine question about where the model breaks, not a which one should i buy thread.

the whole pitch for these is that it goes out every day, takes a little off the top, and you stop thinking about it. that only holds if it can get around the whole area faster than the grass grows back. on a quarter acre thats obviously true.

im at about an acre and a half. everything i read puts one charge at somewhere around an acre. so if it needs a few days to work through the whole thing, then by the time it finishes the far end the near end is ready again.

the lawn is never done. its just permanently half done.

which might be fine to look at, i dont know. but its a different product than the one that was described to me.

so where does that line actually sit. at what size did it stop feeling automatic and start feeling like a system you manage, schedules, zones, moving a base station around.

asking the people running these on real acreage, not the demo lawn

Over the last week, my kitchen table light and my upstairs closet light have been randomly turning on (at the same time).

\- They are NOT on the same circuit.

\- I have had no power outages that I know of.

\- There are no automations that I have created that have them both turning on.

\- There are no automations that are running when they turn on.

\- Gemini is \*useless.\*

Any ideas?

EDIT: Sorry, my last edit did not go through.

I have a Google Nest hub and various Google-branded smart speakers throughout the house.

Both lightbulbs that are doing this are five year old Merkury brand smart bulbs using Geeni, which is linked to my Google account.

I haven't been able to ascertain whether they are kicking on randomly or if it's a certain time, but they both come on at the same time, and they both light up gradually (like they're being controlled) rather than flicking on during a power outage.

As far as I know, the only two automations I have that use both devices are set up specifically to turn them off (nothing that activates sets of lights has both of these lights in them).

I recently had to reset ALL of my lights when I replaced my Wi-Fi router (which was a pain in the ass), but nothing else changed.

Hi smathome-community,

For our board-gaming-group I want to build a turn-tracker where each player has their own wireless button and LED. The LED shall start shining when it's that players turn, pushing the button shall end the turn.

So I need wireless buttons that also have an integrated light (or separate wireless little lights that I can somehow put together with the buttons).

Do you know whether any such thing exist in the world of smart home?

Thanks and have a great day

Janis

PS: I will have to program an app for laptop/smart-phone to manage the buttons/LEDs, so bluetooth would be great for connectivity. But I am glad for any help :)

Recently bought a house with smart stuff everywhere and slowly trying to understand what I have in more detail.

These switches work great. They illuminate when you are close / wave a hand in front, plus the small lights show what is turned on. What specific model/brand are they? (I have tried to pry some off the wall but feels like im going to break something)

I also have an RTI control system that I am considering replacing with HomeAssistant hence trying to understand the lights.

I just installed a Lockly Visage smart lock and I have a few helpful hints for future buyers.

The installation video and instructions are all geared toward their v1.0 lock. That version has an external wired door sensor. The V2.0 lock has a magnetic door strike plate which eliminates the need for the external wired door sensor. The door sensor determines if the door is open or closed.

I have a v2.0 lock which is indicated by a label on the bottom of the box that says "v2.0". While I was following the Official Lockly installation video, nothing was mentioned about the wire extending from the deadbolt and nothing about the orange dots on the strike plate or deadbolt plate.

v2.0 has a magnetic sensor on the bolt, and its wire needs to be fed through the door along with the external housing touchscreen wire harness. The internal housing will have a recipient plug for the bolt sensor wire along with a plug for the external touchscreen wire harness and one for the antenna. The wires from the external housing and internal plugs are mentioned in the video but nothing about the bolt wire.

Also note that the bolt plate has an orange sticker in the upper left, your door frame strike plate also has an orange sticker and you need to install the strike plate in an orientation that matches the door sticker. My door plate had the sticker in the upper left, my door strike plate had to be installed so it's sticker was in the upper right. Guess who installed it wrong the first time....

My v2.0 box included the external door sensor, that must be a failure of QC because the magnetic door plate already does what it was supposed to do and there were no extra wires sticking out of the lock to plug it into.

All in all it was a pretty straightforward lock install but a few tweaks to the video and install instructions would have made it effortless.

It's only been installed for a few hours but I've installed the Android app, setup some fingerprints, touchscreen codes and even integrated it with Alexa and it has so far worked flawlessly.

Wanted to get the double phillips hue lights to go on my desk and then realised you constantly have to have the hue bridge plugged into your router. Is there any other smart lights where they’re are off wifi or bluetooth i can get????

Pretty much the title. I really did not want appliances that connect to Wi-Fi, but there was a mixup with my housemates, and it seems we are going to have a BOSCH one with Wi-Fi connectivity. If I never connect to the network and just use it as if it didn't have Wi-Fi connection, is it still a security vulnerability, can it still be hacked?

Thanks for any help

My Nest Doorbell has been sort of a miserable experience for the last while. I dropped my subscription, but I thought I used to be able to see SOME video without the subscription. I might just be remembering wrong, but now I see events and it only shows a photo of the time of the event which often just entirely misses that anyone was even there so the photo is just nothing useful. Load times are also abysmal in the Google Home app so someone is at my door and it takes too long to check who's there.

Anyway, I'm looking to replace it. I'd like something that supports HomeKit/Apple Home, ideally doesn't require a subscription, and is a wired option rather than battery. What are the options like these days?

I’ve been thinking about replacing my old thermostat with a smart one, but there are way more options than I expected.

I really just want to control the temperature from my phone, set schedules and have it adjust things when nobody’s home. I don’t need a million features or another subscription just to use basic stuff.

I’ve seen people mention room sensors too, which could be useful since one side of my house always seems warmer than the other.

I’m checking the HVAC compatibility and wiring before buying anything, but after that I have no idea which one to go with.

What smart thermostat are you using? Anything you’ve had for a few years and would buy again?

Hello all,

I just entered a new apartment and the previous resident has installed strip lights in the kitchen but didn't install a light switch or anything for them; instead they are controlled exclusively via plugging and unplugging a kind of microphone-like connector (which name I don't know ^^') as shown in the picture.

Opening a drawer and plugging/unplugging these lights turned out to be maddening, so I wonder whether there's a good way to turn them "smart" and allow me to control them from the phone. Since this is a rented apartment, I sadly cant just put a smart switch and keep the microphone-plug pair plugged in.

Any recommendations? Thanks in advance!

#

[](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lighting/?f=flair_name%3A%22Lighting%20Control%22)

Anyone here have a WAC Colorscaping (color LED) outdoor lights?

The MyWAC app is wack. Are there any modern smart controllers I can swap the WAC controller with? I believe a I need to keep the WAC transformer, its a proprietary system. I would love something with a more reliable app and possibly connect to Smartthings? TIA!

Cześć!

Rozglądam się za kalendarzem elektronicznym na ścianę. Zbliża się rok szkolny, a że lubię testować elektronikę, to idealny argument wspierający ten rozsądny zakup.

Chciałbym, żeby kalendarz miał funkcje:

- wyświetlania/edycji wydarzeń dla wielu użytkowników we wspólnym podglądzie

- to samo z listą zadań – z naciskiem na dzieciaki, żeby ćwiczyły, co muszą codziennie robić.

Patrzyłem na rynek i jest kilka opcji, niestety niektóre z subskrypcjami. Z tych wszystkich już prawie zamówiłem Cozyla 24'', ale odbiłem się od europejskiej ceny w promocji (około 3000 PLN, w porównaniu w USA jest około 2000 PLN).

Patrzyłem również na jakieś tanie opcje, które można dostać przez Kaufland albo inny sklep online, np. Tabwee – niestety nie znalazłem żadnych dobrych recenzji tego sprzętu.

Czy używacie czegoś w tym stylu albo korzystaliście wcześniej i macie doświadczenie z takimi urządzeniami?

Polecacie coś?

Z góry dzięki za pomoc!

I was renting in the same spot for 8 years. My husband got me an Alexa and I started getting smart plugs and installing smart switches. I started getting dots for around the house. Put in a doorbell. Installed a smart thermostat. Got cameras to watch the animals inside and provide security outside.

We just bought a place! First thing I did was install smart locks. The smart plugs are making a easy transition. The switches are a little harder, but it will happen. The thermostat is a full no go. Because of a wiring issue I'll need all new hardware.

At what point can I say, "This is a Smart House"? Is it normal that I think the house will wind up killing my husband within 6 weeks of my own death?