What kind/brand of devices do you recommend and where do your source them? Things like smart outlets, bulbs, sensors, etc.
I have a hard time sourcing gear because it’s all either locked to Amazon/Google or requires the manufacturer’s cloud services and their dedicated app.
I’m looking for devices that can work completely offline and only communicate with my HA/MQTT or at least a local base station that can bridge to HA.
For the last few years, I’ve been buying bulbs/outlets from AliExpress with Tasmota pre-flashed. Before that, I was ordering them from Amazon and re-flashing them, but that was always a crapshoot as not all of them were compatible with tuya-convert. They’re also ridiculously difficult to disassemble to flash manually.
Anybody willing to share some tips to source some new devices?
Edit: I’ve also built a few custom sensors with ESP8266 and ESP-Home but they’re not particularly pretty.
Edit 2: Thanks everyone! I think I’m going to look into some Zigbee devices and bridges. That sounds like the most “open” way to expand my smart home gear.
Shelly does some nice devices which can easily run offline-only. Apart from that, the pre-flashed Tasmota devices work really well for me.
Yeah, the Tasmota devices have been rock solid for the last few years. Absolutely no complaints. They’re just not quick to ship from Ali.
Also, forgive my ignorance, but can you elaborate on Shelly? I’m googling that and not getting any relevant results.
https://www.shelly.cloud/
Fantastic. I’ll give them a look. Thanks!
He’s talking about Shelly.cloud, it’s a great manufacturer with cool devices, most of them are easy to flash with Tasmota or ESPHome, but the original firmware is good too, and can be set to work 100% offline.