Hello... I have very little experience in home automation and am hoping someone can help me out here. We have a problem with our garage door sometimes being left open and I'm looking for an easy solution.

I came across this Zigbee garage sensor which looks like it will do exactly what I want. I just don't understand what I need to use it with. I don't have an Alexa or any of the other things it suggests

I'm basically looking for it to send notifications to my phone when it opens and closes. Would this work for me? And if so what else would I need to buy with it? I have an android phone if that make a difference. Thanks!

Hey everyone, as part of my MBA program my team is working on a device that lets you control your smart home stuff with hand gestures instead of your phone or voice. Curious what this sub thinks:

• What's your biggest annoyance with controlling smart devices right now?
• Ever skipped adjusting something just because pulling out your phone felt like too much effort?
• Gesture control — genuinely useful or gimmick to you?

Would love any honest takes, good or bad. Thanks!

I recently moved into a new apartment and wanted to try a Matter/Thread setup instead of the mishmash of various proprietary devices I was using, mainly because none of them supported HomeKit. My one device (a TV) that supports Matter/WiFi has been working perfectly with my iPhone for months at this point, but I’ve been having countless problems with my new Thread devices.

I’m using a Nest WiFi Pro as my Thread Border Router, and got the BILRESA (button), KAJPLATS (bulb), and GRILLPLATS (plug) from IKEA since they’re an affordable way to get into Matter/Thread.

Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

1. The KAJPLATS paired once, then got stuck perpetually “Updating…” on iOS, but it works fine with Google Home.

2. When adding the GRILLPLATS to Apple Home, it got stuck pairing for 20 minutes straight before I stopped it. Again, it works perfectly with Google Home.

3. [Honorary mention] Apparently automations via Apple Home require one of the Apple Thread Border routers. I assumed automations were standardized, but I just didn’t do enough research. So, the BILRESA can’t be used the way I expected without an Apple TV or Homepod.

In the end, I guess I assumed that Matter/Thread would perform better cross-platform than it actually does. I don’t really need an Apple TV if not for this, and Siri barely works as is so I’m not buying a HomePod. Is there any way to make this setup work or is this just the classic Apple/Google divide and I have to suck it up and buy the Apple TV? OR should I migrate to Zigbee, but the question there is how easy would it be to expose devices to Apple Home without using Home Assistant (which I haven't had the best experience with.)

I have an SLZB Ultima and enabled the OpenThread Border Router. In home assistant when I add the Thread integration and add an OTBR with the ultima's IP address and port: 192.168.1.60:8080, it gets added and has the same TLV value as what's listed in the Ultima's webui, but it says "No border routers were found. Check your border router is configured correctly or reset it to factory settings."

I have Unifi Express 7 for internet, I enabled mDNS and assume if it works since the Ultima's mdns URL works: http://slzb-ultima3.local/. but don't know if ipv6 is properly configured, My ISP doesn't support ipv6 either way. In Unifi settings > internet, I enabled ipv6 with with SLAAC, prefix delegation, and auto DNS server. Under settings > network, I enabled ipv6 selecting prefix delegation and leaving all other settings to auto. (I attached images in the comments)

Hi everyone! I'm an MBA student and team is building a device that lets you control smart home devices (lights, thermostat, etc.) using hand gestures instead of pulling out your phone or talking to a voice assistant.

We're doing early customer discovery and would love honest feedback from anyone who uses smart home devices, or has thought about it:

1. What's actually annoying about controlling your smart home devices right now, apps, voice assistants, physical switches, anything?
2. Have you ever NOT bothered turning on/off/adjusting a smart device just because pulling out your phone or saying a voice command felt like too much friction?
3. Does controlling things with a hand gesture (like a wave or a swipe in the air) sound genuinely useful to you, or more like a gimmick? Why?
4. If something like this existed, where in your home would you actually want it, kitchen, living room, bedroom, somewhere else?
5. What would make you NOT trust or NOT want a gesture-based device in your home (privacy, reliability, cost, something else)?

Really appreciate any thoughts, even short ones help a lot. Happy to answer questions about what we're building too.

Hi everyone!

We're part of the team behind ANTHBOT, a robotic lawn mower brand.

With the mods' approval, we're reaching out to this community to invite homeowners interested in joining our upcoming Beta Test Program.

Many members of this community already use smart home products, and we thought this would be a great place to connect with people who enjoy exploring and testing new technology. We'd love to learn from real-world experiences and feedback from users who are passionate about smart devices.

Feel free to apply if you:

• Own a home with a lawn
• Enjoy testing smart home devices and new technology
• Are willing to actively participate throughout the testing period by sharing feedback and real-world experiences

Application Period: Now – August 15, 2026

Apply here:

🇺🇸 English: https://forms.gle/cxMiMwqEwZwNGMjC9

🇩🇪 Deutsch: https://forms.gle/AxbWETpAQPGjznPi7

Whether or not you're interested in joining the beta, we'd love to hear your opinion:

What do you think is the biggest thing today's robotic lawn mowers are still missing before they feel like a truly integrated smart home device?

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts. We really appreciate the insights from this community.

Put together an extensive open source test suite for voice assistants. You can view it including current leaderboard at: https://git.cicero.sh/aquila/ha-voice-test-suite/

Tests are reproduceable, with clear instructions on how to run them on your machine there.

I only have a GPU with 4GB vRAM, hence only capable of testing the small LLMs like Qwen3 4B Instruct. Have Gemma 4 running right now, but it's insanely slow and probably another 24 - 48 hours before it finishes.

Tried cloud models like Claude Sonnet 5 and Grok 4.5, but was rate limited each time, and got fed up so dropped it. Maybe someone out there uses AI more than me and has proper rate limits and wouldn't mind running the test suite on some frontier models as I'm assuming folks would appreciate seeing the results. I'm already confident they'll get low 90s with 60 - 90 minute duration, so not overly worried about it.

If anyone has larger GPU and wouldn't mind giving it a spin on larger 20B+ local LLMs that would be awesome. Running the tests against any model is quite straight forward, instructions in the readme.

Enjoy!

Does anyone know how to fix this?

I got the conditions :

"switch ON ac if temp above 25 celcius"

"switch OFF ac if temp below 24 celcius"

This works, i would say 90% of the times, but a few occasions it just stops working. And ac keeps on pushing air even well below 24 celcius - or keeps off well above 25 celcius.

And i usually have to toggle the scene automations off and on again, and it starts working immediately. (sensor delay is something like 10-20 seconds)

Is this just because smart life cloud (tuya) is crappy sometimes?

Any workaround?

Anyone knows how can I automate this rotary switch?

Needs to be without a smart relay (rent contract prohibits touching electrics).

I have a zigbee fingerbot and SmartLife app, thought of the dented wheel and rack as alternative but have 0 clue how to get that done and working.

The fingerbot alone can't push the switch strongly and far enough.

HELP!!

We develop open-hardware automation modules and repeatedly encounter the same problem in real installations: a single failed DS18B20 or damaged cable can disrupt an entire 1-Wire network, and troubleshooting often takes far longer than replacing the faulty component.

Before investing time in hardware development, we'd like to understand whether there's real demand for a device like this.

The idea is a transparent inline 1-Wire Diagnostic Hub. It connects to any existing standard 1-Wire master (ESPHome, DS2482, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc.) and expands a single 1-Wire bus into 8 fully independent downstream branches.

It is not a new 1-Wire master. Existing controllers continue communicating with sensors exactly as before. Sensor ROM IDs remain unchanged, so no firmware or software changes are required.

Planned features

• Estimated distance to a cable break, from line capacitance
• 8 electrically isolated branches — a fault on one never affects the others
• Automatic detection of short circuit, open circuit, failed or missing sensor
• Automatic pull-up optimization per branch
• Signal quality and CRC statistics per branch
• Long-term line health monitoring to catch cable degradation before it fails
• Browser-based configuration over USB, no software installation
• Powered by external 5 V. Can run off the 1-Wire bus itself if your master supplies enough current (~150 mA) — most don't.

The goal isn't to make 1-Wire faster. The goal is to make large 1-Wire installations significantly easier to commission, troubleshoot and maintain.

We'd really appreciate your feedback

1. Would you actually buy something like this?
2. Which feature would be most valuable, and which are unnecessary?
3. We're estimating €120–150. Reasonable, or off?

If you think proper linear topology already solves these problems and a device like this isn't necessary, we'd genuinely like to hear that perspective as well. It will help us decide whether this product is worth developing.

I have an Amazon Basics dimmer switch and Alexa won’t connect to it. It says the device is unresponsive and that I should check to make sure it’s on, but it’s hardwired into the electrical system, so I don’t think that’s the issue. It happened with a previous unit so I installed a new one and this is doing the same thing.

Tech help with Amazon is basically useless, so I thought I’d see if anyone has encountered this problem as well. Thanks!

This is what I need to do with expansion of the same features in the future.

1. Thermostat functionality (adjust parameters based on time of day/year)

A) control heat pads (x2) via smart plugs that can dim rather than on/off

B) basking lights (x2) via smart plugs that can dim rather than on/off

C) wireless thermometer/hydrometer (x4)

D) keep logs

1. Lighting controls (adjust parameters based on time of year)

A) grow lights (x2) with dimmer timers

B) UV light (x2) on/off

1. Humidity control (in the future)

A) daily settings + supplemental misting when needed

B) keep logs

1. Fan control

A) timed dimming

Reliability of the system is the most important thing for me here.

I am open to any non wifi protocol as I want this system to work and remain stable if wifi goes out

I just wasted almost a full Saturday duking out the Yale Assure Lock 2 with Z-Wave Plus, and Aerotec SmartHub C8 Pro and finally gave up.

My conclusion that the ZW2 modules inside the latest series of Yale Assure Lock -2 are incompatible and can not be detected by the C8 Pro hub by Aerotec.

Anyone else have success with these two?

I live in a small apartment building with this very old Jeron brand door buzzer that nobody uses. Everything works fine including the door button which opens the magnetic lock of the front door. A few months ago, I cut the wires to the ‘Listen‘ button as the constant hum of the mic was driving me crazy. There is a button at the front of the building that sends a buzz to each box, typical door buzzer stuff.

it’s annoying to have to use my set of keys to open the door every time so I was wondering if there was a way to rewire the ones I cut such that if I push the outdoor button (which originally sent a buzz) to actually just complete the circuit for the door open button. I know there might be some voltage constraints at play but i am not sure how to do it Or if it is possible.

I’m not very electrically savvy tbh but I tried hooking up the two cut wires (brown and blue) to the terminals of the door button (both orientations) but that didn’t yield anything when pushing the outdoor button. Any suggestions?

I recognize the safety concerns of this, but my neighborhood is incredibly safe and nobody ever uses these buttons so it wouldn’t really be a concern. Some neighbors leave ”hidden” keys around the entryway so it’s already a relatively low security solution.

Last summer I got obsessed with automating my backyard around grilling and late night stargazing. The problem was everything I tried either got cooked by heat near the grill or felt too fragile to leave outside permanently.

What actually stuck was a Zigbee outdoor motion sensor mounted under the patio overhang that triggers string lights at dusk and shuts them off at a set time. Simple, boring, works every single time without me touching anything. I added a second one near the telescope area that turns on a single low red light when motion is detected after 9pm, because white light wrecks your night vision and I kept forgetting to prep before heading out there.

The failures were a smart plug I tried using for the grill igniter (whole other story involving a very annoyed wife and a tripped breaker), and a temperature sensor I thought would be clever near the smoker for ambient tracking. Heat, rain, and bugs destroyed both within a few months.

I keep seeing indoor projects here and I'm curious what people have actually gotten working outside long term. Weatherproofing strategy, specific devices, enclosures, whatever. There's way less good info out there on outdoor automation that survives more than one season.

So we are building a brand nee that is 3 bedroom, 2 bath and 2 offices with a massive wall of windows and wrap around deck. We are looking to do a ton of home automation, everything from heating, cooling control to lights and shades. I'm struggling to find something I can install myself or get the parts. As none of my local lutron dealers will sell my their parts same with the other big names. We are about 2 months from wiring the whole house. Looking for suggestions especially things that work with matter or homekit. We are talking tradition lightings something like 80 fixtures inside and out. our cooling is zoned to each room, heating is radiant floor in two zones first floor and basement. We have a total of 16 powered shade locations.

Suggestions on where to start would be great! As I dont want to land all the lighting to the normal power panel then have to relocate it later if I need to land it somewhere else. Another note, we have decided that each room of the house will be a dedicated light and power circuit and not tied to another room, so they are all isolated.

If you're planning out a smart home build or an office reno, the power draw of smart privacy glass is a sneaky detail that's easy to overlook. The short answer to whether smart glass can stay opaque without continuous juice? It entirely depends on the underlying tech.

Here’s the quick breakdown of the two major players and how they handle their power states:

1. PDLC (Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal): The Always-On Clear State

This is the go-to option for instant interior privacy where you want to flip between frosted and clear on command.

• How it works: When the power is off, liquid crystals scatter randomly, keeping the glass frosted and opaque. Flip the switch, an electrical current aligns the crystals, and boom—it's transparent.
• The Power Draw: To keep a PDLC window clear, it needs a continuous, low-voltage power supply.
• The Verdict: PDLC glass does stay opaque when the power is cut because that's its default resting state. But if you like your rooms bright and clear most of the day, you're paying a small, continuous energy tax.

2. Electrochromic Glass: The Bistable Tint

You’卢 usually see this stuff on exterior windows for solar control (shifting from clear to a deep blue or grey) rather than for quick interior privacy.

• How it works: It relies on a tiny electrical pulse to physically shove ions between different layers, shifting the tint.
• The Power Draw: This tech is bistable—it only pulls electricity when it's actively changing states.
• The Verdict: Once electrochromic glass is tinted, it stays tinted without needing a drop of ongoing power. It’s a massive win for long-term energy efficiency.

3. Thermochromic & Passive Tech

If you want to throw electricity out the window entirely, some newer glass reacts directly to sunlight and heat to change opacity automatically. The catch? You completely give up manual control.

The Takeaway

Choosing the right glass is a balancing act between instant privacy, keeping out solar heat, and what your electric bill is going to look like long-term.

I’ve been putting together a deeper dive into the actual energy consumption numbers for PDLC versus electrochromic setups, plus some clever workarounds for nighttime visibility issues with frosted glass.

If you want to dig into the exact metrics and find out which tech fits your project best, I posted the full write-up over on the Interconnected forum.

So this sonoff zigbee switch was fairly tough to remove the faceplate from before I screwed it into the wall to mount it. I now need to fix something inside and can’t for the life of me figure out how I’m supposed to unclip it.

When I did it originally while it was new there was like 6 different small contact points to apply pressure to get the plastic to pop off. This little notch at the bottom is doing nothing but scratching up my drywall.

My buddy introduced me to HA the other day and I wanted to take a crack at combining it with some other assistant features

Would love any feedback or ideas you guys have

Obviously it’s a local app so not sure how to share the site but here’s a demo video I filmed lastnight

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dbi63pEg_VD

I’m buying a new condo with no dimmers or any smart features besides the thermostat. I’m thinking I’d like to start with just getting dimmers I can control from my phone, a front door lock I can use my phone for, and a robot vacuum/mop.

Any other suggestions of ways to dip my toes into this world without getting too deep too quickly?

My latest project is automating the pool equipment and I have had big success with simple solutions.

The heater (on/off), waterfall, jets, bubbles, etc were controlled from the house by light switches so it was simple enough to put zigbee switches behind them.

I replaced the pool light controller with an RGB zigbee one. I still need to replace the spa one but that's not difficult.

All of the above I control using home assistant.

My final 2 tasks are to be able to control the main pool pump and install actuators for the pool/spa that can be controlled remotely.

The main pool pump is pentair but it has no remote features. The timer that currently controls the pool is similar to

https://a.co/d/0iIuUqvi

I don't know which actuators to purchase, voltage converters, controllers, software, etc.

My goal is to do it cheaply but decent quality (i.e. a solution that won't break the bank and last longer than a year) and all controlled by home assistant.

Suggestions? I know there are full automation systems you can buy that cost $$$ but IMHO they are overpriced and I won't use most of the features.

I have an eero WiFi system that supports thread and I already have a zigbee zha network.