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.

  • @navydevildocEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    My lighting is all Lutron, which has local control. Then for other devices I use Zigbee, and cameras are all on BlueIris. Audio is Russound. Local control is a red line I won’t cross, if it requires some kind of cloud connectivity to work, chances are I won’t buy it.

    • Admiral PatrickOPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Local control is a red line I won’t cross, if it requires some kind of cloud connectivity to work, chances are I won’t buy it.

      Agreed.

      Cameras are next on the list, but one thing at a time. These periodic expansions/refreshes get expensive really quickly, so I’m trying to temper my desire to gut and replace everything at once. lol