The best and worst decisions I made for my smart home

Best:

Network rack, unifi wifi, and cabling

Home assistant

Zigbee devices.

Smart heating/cooling

Automated lights

Hacked T6Es

Worst:

Batteried smart blinds (with not battery level reporting)

Bed mat sensors (some issues)

Haven't watched the video yet, but I'm a huge fan of our plug-in z-wave smart blinds. Makes getting all that extra light way easier and automatable.
- In short, the issue was that the battery blinds don't alert when they are low battery, and he didn't think to hard-wire them in advance.
  Ones that are close enough to power, he's run some 5v lines on an automation timer.
- what brand? I've been wanting to get some zwave blinds soon.

A couple of words about the video wouldn't have been so bad.

Edit: By the way, very nice video! I'll have a look at the others too.

Yep, I prefer reading over videos too.
Sorry, I was lazy and I also really enjoy his videos, they're concise enough that I always breeze through them.
- Do you know if he's on Lemmy? If not, if you can contact him, tell him to pass by!

Homebridge covers a multitude of mistakes. For every non compatible device, you can usually find a Homebridge plug in that’ll make it work. The only exception I’ve run into is with Chamberlain garage door openers because the company is particularly aggressive about funneling you through their app.

I ended up making an awesome esphome rig for my garage door. An esp32 board, a magnetic switch for position detection and a little relay that closes for .5s connected to the wall button wires.
Super simple and it works crazy well. It also cuts out all the proprietary shit the manufacturer would prefer I use.
- RatGDO can do this without the need for a magnetic switch. It’s a simple ESP32 board with easy-to-terminate wire terminals. It also lets you control the lights on your opener, see the current status of the door, and even open the door to an exact in-between position (if your door supports it).
  You can program your own ESP32 if you like, or buy one from the guy that made it directly for ~$40.
  Still - props to you for making your own solution! I know it’s extra satisfying when you can homebrew your own smart home solutions from scratch - just wanted to share another solution for people who don’t have the same skills.

I wonder what his big ZigBee issue was that took him months to solve.

From the vague description it could be that his ZigBee stick was plugged directly into the USB port instead of using a USB extension cable, thus subjecting the ZigBee stick to all sorts of RF interference from the motherboard.

Or maybe the USB pass-through to the home assistant VM was wonky?

Edit: he talks about getting 30$ worth of hardware to fix the issue so it is probably not just a USB extension cable 🤔

I think it was probably where the coordinator was plugged in
- The reveal will be interesting 🙂
- Looks like you were pretty spot-on!
An issue a lot of people don’t think about is placement. If you’ve got the fob directly next to a device that’s broadcasting WiFi, you’re gonna have a bad time. Similarly, if it’s surrounded by thick wood or metal, you’re not going to have decent signal.
$30 could definitely fix those issues.
Or he was using the conbee II which a fair number of top google results suggest you get. Don't, it's terrible.