Can you recommend brands that sell smart devices that fulfill those requirements? Home assistant sounds like a fun hobby to get into but I’m wary of spending 99% of the time in web searches for what to buy instead of hours in web searches for tinkering.
It’s easier to shop for protocols and standards instead of brands. If you get a Zigbee dongle from Sonoff or SMLight and set it up with Home Assistant, 99% of devices marketed as Zigbee will work and you’ll know for a fact they don’t have Internet access and can’t really do anything that would be bad for your network security because that’s just not how the Zigbee standard works. This is where I would recommend starting.
If you plan on getting a lot of things, or think you might eventually, I would recommend getting both Zigbee and Zwave. There’s also Thread now but I don’t have much experience there yet. These are the standards that smart devices can use, with low power, to communicate without needing direct wifi access or anything. Each has their drawbacks in terms of how many devices you can use and their range. Again, this recommendation is only if you plan on going big at some point, but if you get zwave devices where you can, and focus on Zigbee for things like lighting, you’ll be able to blend the standards together and have less chance of running into interference or device limit problems. But here I’m talking about when you get over around 50 devices, if you don’t plan on doing that then it’s not really a concern.
When it comes to research, I would recommend reserving research time for the devices that have to be wifi. If you want cameras, for example, you’ll want to make sure you pick good ones that can be blocked from external access and properly secured. If you want to control a garage door or an appliance or something big like that, there’s much easier and cheaper ways than getting a smart appliance.
Can you recommend brands that sell smart devices that fulfill those requirements? Home assistant sounds like a fun hobby to get into but I’m wary of spending 99% of the time in web searches for what to buy instead of hours in web searches for tinkering.
It’s easier to shop for protocols and standards instead of brands. If you get a Zigbee dongle from Sonoff or SMLight and set it up with Home Assistant, 99% of devices marketed as Zigbee will work and you’ll know for a fact they don’t have Internet access and can’t really do anything that would be bad for your network security because that’s just not how the Zigbee standard works. This is where I would recommend starting.
If you plan on getting a lot of things, or think you might eventually, I would recommend getting both Zigbee and Zwave. There’s also Thread now but I don’t have much experience there yet. These are the standards that smart devices can use, with low power, to communicate without needing direct wifi access or anything. Each has their drawbacks in terms of how many devices you can use and their range. Again, this recommendation is only if you plan on going big at some point, but if you get zwave devices where you can, and focus on Zigbee for things like lighting, you’ll be able to blend the standards together and have less chance of running into interference or device limit problems. But here I’m talking about when you get over around 50 devices, if you don’t plan on doing that then it’s not really a concern.
When it comes to research, I would recommend reserving research time for the devices that have to be wifi. If you want cameras, for example, you’ll want to make sure you pick good ones that can be blocked from external access and properly secured. If you want to control a garage door or an appliance or something big like that, there’s much easier and cheaper ways than getting a smart appliance.
This is super helpful, thanks!