Smart homes will turn dumb overnight as Charter kills security service

Re:Smart homes will turn dumb overnight as Charter kills sec... by bonzini on Saturday January 18, 2020 @09:41AM (#22084650)

Zigbee lights are generally not vendor dependent. You can buy Ikea lights and they will interoperate with a Philips hub just fine.

To use a Raspberry Pi as the hub, you can use Home Assistant and a USB or GPIO Zigbee adapter such as the Conbee or Raspbee. Home Assistant generally requires a Pi 3. Automations are all defined within Home Assistant so they do not depend on having homogeneous vendors.

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Re:Smart homes will turn dumb overnight as Charter kills sec... by nicolas_t on Saturday January 18, 2020 @09:52AM (#22084707)

Thanks, so I would also need to use zigbee switches everywhere and use zigbee to turn the lights on and off? Are there any good websites that review zigbee switches to find which ones are decent...

I usually go to Wire Cutter for this but their specific article is not really useful since they don't recommend any pure zigbee switch but only proprietary solutions.

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Re:Smart homes will turn dumb overnight as Charter kills sec... by bonzini on Saturday January 18, 2020 @10:22AM (#22084876)

Yes, you would. I am actually working right now on a way to use an ESP8266 or ESP32 as an interface between dumb switches and Home Assistant (via MQTT), but it requires substantial rewiring and, being all DIY, is probably not suited for something that you rent.

For Zigbee switches, depending on your lights it could also be power plugs. Ikea and Philips are again the easy choices if they sell what you want. Depending on where you are based you could also find something that fits in your existing switchboxes.

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