#Sensor recommendations

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

rare silo
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Hi all, newish to HA and I'm starting from scratch again with a RPi5. Have a few Hue Lights downstairs (bridge) and various ESP32 boards dotted around. Want to move away from Hue. The floorlamps (poles) are very expensive and wanted to look into Govee floorlamps instead as they are HA compatible. I'm also looking for a selection of cheap but reliable sensors I can use that are compatible with HA, I can buy in bulk, without needing a bridge (eg zigbee) and not wanting to spend £50 per sensor. I've done quite a bit of googling and YTing so wondering what people are using out there that seems reliable.

Namely I'm after temperature sensors, motion/presence sensors, door/window sensors that are all WiFi connected (as some will be in the garage out of Bluetooth/hub range)

Many thanks

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Forgot to say, I bought a Tuya temp sensor to try out and see if that works well. If so I can order more and add them to the home setup

idle notch
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what works well for me is

  • a usb to sata cable so my pi 4b can boot from ssd. sd cards are terrible for performance and longevity
  • a zigbee usb stick (i got the nabu casa one) on at least a 0.5m usb extension cable to get it away from the internal radios in the pi and the usb cable.
  • tuya-based zigbee sensors are almost always ha compatible. tuya-based wifi sensors are nothing but pita. just walk away from them
  • sonoff battery based sensors have had so many mechanical issues for me that i recommend staying away. having to reseat the batteries in every one of them multiple times a year is - again - a pita
  • aqara zigbee sensors have behaved fine for me
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btw - my zigbee mesh is built mostly with all my light bulbs (ikea, osram, and once in a while a hue), and also some power outlets (tuya, ikea)

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outdoor lightbulb provides connectivity all the way to a door sensor on my mailbox lid out in the street.

rare silo
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Thanks for the reply. Reason why I wanted to lean away from having a wifi-only setup and not have 3rd party dongles/hubs is that some of these sensors will be in the garage out of range, and only have a Wifi mesh node there, so won't be able to talk to the hub/dongles

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If you had to buy a few temperature sensors and door sensors (nothing fancy, just values) that are accessible to HA, what would you advise to look at?

idle notch
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most wifi sensors want to only talk to their cloud service. ha then integrates to that. lag for my tuya wifi bulbs and switches that i started out with was just too high, and the hassle of getting the local integration working in a stable manner was too much. i migrated everything to zigbee after hours of outage on tuya cloud service knocked all my bulbs out one day.

i would rather see if i could extend the mesh to the garage using outdoor bulbs or dedicated routers (sonoff usb sticks flashed with router software and a usb cable to power them)

rare silo
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I have a Deco mesh network with 3 nodes - 2 in the house and 1 in the garage

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I was also hoping to keep things all local and not rely on cloud services for various 3rd parties, as that just adds to the mess, but it seems most companies want this cloud integration with their service

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That's why I was looking at doing my own ESP32s dotted around, integrating with HA. Just an issue with manually wiring the sensors and dealing with an ESP32 case that dones't have space for said sensor