SPDX-License-Identifier
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Throughout this document, H.A.
is used to abbreviate
Home Assistant
(web site here).
Our new home in Redmond, Washington, USA comes with, among other I.T. features, a Samsung SmartThings hub with a Z-Wave radio (and probably IEEE 802.15.4 Zigbee and 802.11 Wi-Fi, both in the 2.4GHz band). It controls three outside security lamps which are on per schedule in the evening. In our previous home we got good use from Z-Wave via an Aeon Labs Z-Stick and Home Assistant on a general purpose computer (VM) as the control software. I really liked Home Assistant, and I'm not looking forward to learning the idiosyncracies of the closed source Samsung hub. Plus, Zigbee/Matter is the way of the future while Z-Wave is from antiquity. So I want to make these replacements:
What do we want the home automation system to do for us? This index is in order by importance:
Redmond is at latitude
47.7° north, and the long winter nights are giving us seasonal affective
disorder (SAD). The well-known cure for this is artificial daylight, i.e.
not our wimpy warm white
2400°K evening light, but 5000°K to 5500°K.
Medical research has shown that an effective treatment is a bright panel
(10000 lux) within the patient's field of view at wake time. (You don't
have to stare at it continuously.) In addition to this we plan to replace
existing static LED lamps with hue adjustable ones, running them at 5000K
from sunset until twelve hours after sunrise, which around here in winter
is four to six hours after sunset. Then the color temperature can be
turned down.
Of course this means investing in a zillion new light bulbs with adjustable hue. Here's a list of how many light bulbs are in various zones. A star indicates that we're there a lot in the afternoon when artificial daylight is most needed, while the rest are less important for SAD resistance and could be converted later.
| 12 | * | Big room west |
| 12 | * | Big room east (counting kitchen hanging lamps) |
| 12 | Den, entry, laundry, bath D (southeast quadrant) | |
| 8 | Bedrooms east | |
| 13 | Bedrooms west | |
| 24 | * | Light bulbs most important for SAD resistance |
| 57 | Total light bulbs (expensive) |
The house in Los Angeles had a fairly complete set of security sensors: window and door open, glass breakage, and interior motion. How much of our L.A. paranoia should we export to the more bucolic atmosphere of Redmond?
Very helpful would be deadbolt sensors: the doors to the outside, are their deadbolts locked as they should be? But digging on Amazon turns up no dedicated devices. An improvised solution seen in forum posts is to glue a magnet to the deadbolt and locate a magnetic door/window open sensor so it triggers when the deadbolt is closed. Absence of the closed signal means either the deadbolt is open or the sensor is out of battery.
We currently have Ring cameras and a doorbell, having junked the Blink cameras that came with the house. Both communicate over Wi-Fi. Good features: the Ring cameras have excellent optical quality and low light performance (particularly compared with the old Blink ones). The user interface is comprehensible and does what we want (compared to Blink). Cloud storage of video is available at what we consider to be an acceptable price. Bad features: as far as I've seen on forums, Ring can't be integrated with a self-hosted security system; the closest you can come is to give Home Assistant your Ring password or API key and suck video off the cloud server. The present power-over-Ethernet interface has too many negative issues; we returned our first POE camera and went with a cockamamie mains power solution. We may convert that camera, plus the battery powered ones, to solar panels (expensive), because I'm not too spry any more and climbing a ladder to swap batteries may have been acceptable in the past but won't be in the future.
A major negative issue is, you have to store the video in the cloud, There's not much incriminating when a rabbit crosses our driveway or I take out the garbage bins, but this could change unexpectedly and without the possiblity of mitigation or defense in depth. A true self-hosted solution would much less excite our paranoia nerves. This is an advantage of the Blink cameras: half of them were able to use a local storage module.
On the other hand, motion detection is hard to get right, and the Ring cloud service has done a good job, I think, and I can't expect to do a satisfactory equivalent service locally.
The Ring system has earned its subscription price by helping us be aware of package deliveries and the like. It looks like the security camera system is one of the nasties where you can't satisfy all of the requirements at the same time: you have to give up something, to get the rest of the good parts.
We want the lamps to turn on and off per a schedule, like they do now. How much hassle is it to convert (i.e. replace) the lamps to Zigbee/Matter? Comparing to the hassle of supporting the obsolete wire protocol just for this function, and dealing with a future broken radio and/or lamps.
Conclusion: We'll keep the existing Z-Wave communication in phase 1, but probably replace the bulbs in phase 2, leaving just the door lock on Z-Wave.
When we are away on a trip we give H.A. a schedule on which to turn
on room lamps, to simulate presence of a live human (or dog). For several
brands of smart lamps the proprietary controller app can set lamps to turn
on and off randomly; this is called Away Mode
. In the likely case
that H.A. has a pseudo-integration of this kind, and if the pattern can be
made more alive-looking (vs. truly random), we ought to use that instead of
our fixed schedule.
Where do you suppose the intelligence
lies for the random
process? In independent and uncoordinated light bulbs? In the user's
cellphone which may be in an airplane flying over Greenland? In the
vendor's cloud server? Security, privacy and aliveness can be done much
better by self-hosted H.A.
Our front door has a Schlage smart lock, powered by expendable batteries (4x AA cells). It has a physical key (normal Schlage) plus the possibility of setting multiple entry combinations, to be given to workers or guests and wiped when they're gone. Customer reports about other brands are not as quantitative as I would iike, but I estimate they are reporting about 1000 open-close cycles on one set of batteries. I think it's important that the door lock should open the door autonomously even if Home Assistant is unavailable, e.g. power failed.
This lock has a Z-Wave radio and currently it is connected to the Samsung SmartThings hub. Here's a list of things the integrated lock can do, and how much we value them.
The main hassle of a smart door lock (not yet encountered by us) is knowing when to replace the batteries proactively, so the lock doesn't die when we're in a hurry to leave or enter the house. Battery awareness is a big plus for the integrated lock. Otherwise, we need to hope that the unlock motor has a recognizable change in sound when the battery gets low.
The integrated lock can trigger an automation (such as turning on lights or activating the furnace) when anyone, or a specific person, unlocks it. We don't have in mind any such automations that we want.
The integrated lock can be opened using the home automation user interface, not requiring us to be at the door, nor even near the house. We would use this feature very rarely, if at all.
On the other hand, when we want to get in, we could use the home automation user interface if it's more convenient than the button group on the lock. I can imagine a widget on the lock screen of a cellphone or smart watch that unlocks the door, of course without authentication. We should think very carefully whether this kind of thing reduces security more than is wise.
On this topic, the door from the garage into the house has a normal keyed lock, and I do wish sometimes that I didn't have to dig out my key to open it, particularly in cold weather with gloves on my hands. In other words, I'm thinking about replacing it with another smart lock.
What about lockouts, when inevitably the smart lock breaks? We have three keyed locks including the smart lock, and we take our physical key whenever leaving the house (even to toss trash), so we think we have defense in depth against lockouts. Some smart locks have an exterior connector for a 9V battery, if you delay too long to replace or recharge the main battery. (One forum poster keeps one in his car.) But I think this feature is an invitation to vandalism and I would try to avoid it.
Currently it's a Nest device. Ben (our son) wasn't happy with his Nest and replaced with an Ecobee that can interface with Home Assistant, and we aren't enthusiastic about the Nest also, due to a difficult user interface. The bedroom areas and office are kept comfortably warm since the furnace is at their geometric center, but the big room is inadequately heated. Improving hot air flow from the furnace isn't going to happen, but it would be nice to put a temperature sensor in the big room as an aid to our complaining.
Ben has an Ecobee thermostat (what model?) and likes it. Many forum posters have and like Ecobee. Honeywell thermostats are also praised, and my wife liked the Honeywell thermostat in our previous home. But with home automation, a lot of smart controls are better handled by H.A. Here's a starting point for picking a thermostat:
Honeywell Home Smart Thermostat, X2S
$79.98, sold and fulfilled by Amazon.
Heat pump compatible, or separate furnace (2 stage) and air
conditioning (1 stage). Energy Star certified. Requires 'C' wire. Matter
over Wi-Fi communication. Set up and control from the front panel or the
app. Has autonomous scheduling. Autonomously switches between heating and
cooling. Monitors indoor humidity. Good reviews: 5* 73%; 4* 10%;
lower 17%.
We have one or maybe two sump pumps under the house; the ground in the Pacific Northwest is a lot wetter than in L.A. There is also a leak sensor on the water heater, which as far as we know is not integrated with the Samsung SmartThings system. Many if not all of our neighbors also have sump pumps and we see them (and us) discharging water occasionally. It would be a nice addition to let Home Assistant keep a record of water detection.
A nice addition, which we sort of need, is a home weather station, at least an outdoor thermometer, humidity sensor and rain gauge. The EVA product also has a barometer, which is useful.
The house is equipped, per building code, with mains powered fire and CO detectors. They aren't integrated with the SmartThings, and they have a loud and annoying chirping behavior, usually starting at midnight, when at end of life. Is it worthwhile to bring them into the home automation system? Particularly appreciated would be advance warning that they need to be replaced.
Commercially packaged security systems rarely or never come with
integrated fire and CO sensors; they instead have a listener
which
will do some automation, like setting off the main siren, when the sensor
gives its audio alarm.
From New York Times Wirecutter: The Best Smart Smoke Alarm by Roy Furchgott, 2025-11-xx: Their favorite is the Kidde Smart Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm, $72 on Amazon. It's hardwired, like the existing non-smart sensors. Not much tech-level detail here, and H.A. forums have few mentions of Kidde integrations and several of those are bad testimonials. On H.A. forums, a lot of people use X-sense products and like them, except short battery life. Several posts have this core message: put a listener next to a dumb sensor. That way you can get a wider selection of sensors, you can get the smart features you want like the air protocol (Zigbee/Matter not Wi-Fi), and you won't get design glitches that make the fire and CO sensing less reliable. But you don't get pre-warnings at end of life.
This is probably not worth entangling with the home automation, but all the bathroom fans run for a fixed half hour, and I would like to replace them with ones that can run for a variable time.
The only home automation software that we're considering is Home Assistant. Open source competitors like Domoticz and OpenHab are too old and are withering. Proprietary hub software is generally restricted to a particular vendor's ecosystem, like Apple Homekit or Samsung SmartThings. I like Home Assistant and am familiar with programming it, and it has a good WAF (wife acceptance factor) as well, all of which count for a lot.
We have three options for the hardware to run Home Assistant.
A virtual machine (KVM) called Raccoon on the master site, an Intel
NUC called Jacinth. This is how we host it now. Jacinth has plenty
of resources to run H.A. But Jacinth is getting old, and it is a
single point of failure that could kill a lot of home functions at
once. In fact, in early 2025-12-xx its rotating disc died, resulting
in a frantic scramble to restore everything from backups onto a
different disc. I don't say new disc
because the replacement
is about as old as the one that failed.
For phase 1 of deployment, I'm going to continue to use the existing Raccoon, to try to reduce the number of new features I have to deal with at once. But I'll seriously consider moving Raccoon to its own hardware, in phase 2.
A new Jacinth (and SSD) is in the cards but that's not part of this project.
A new general purpose host such as a Raspberry Pi 5.
Home Assistant Green by Nabu Casa (hardware vendor). $159 MSRP. Model number NC-GREEN-1175, made in PRC (hiss, boo). It's powered by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module-4, and it has all the relevant ports for hosting Home Assistant. Forum posters frequently report it as their hub hardware.
In any of these cases, the host will reside in the wiring cabinet, and a new Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 by Nabu Casa ($49 MSRP) will be connected outside the cabinet. This is a glorified dongle for Zigbee which has a lot of good features for resisting EMI (electromagnetic interference). Forum posters like it.
I'll end up with a lot of devices: 57 interior lamps, at least 6 exterior
lamps, and at least ten miscellaneous devices. They need systematic names.
On the dashboard they will have more human friendly names like driveway
camera
.
Lamps: 'L-' (for lamp), the room name (abbreviated), hyphen, distance in integer meters east of the west wall, hyphen, distance north of the south wall. Example: L-big-6-5
Plugs: 'P-', the room name, hyphen, N,E,S,W for which wall it's on, hyphen, and the distance from the south or east end of the wall. Example: P-big-N-5
Miscellaneous devices: 'M-', the room name, hyphen, and an abbreviated description. Example: M-sys-zstick
Exterior devices will have an 'X' prefixed to the room name, otherwise in the same pattern as interior plugs, Example: C-Xgar-E-1 for the security camera outside the southeast corner of the garage.
My first Amazon order will include these devices.
ThirdRealityFBA. Its main use is as a repeater, as well as for testing.
Phase 2 of course can't be decided until phase 1 succeeds, but here is a quick selection of devices likely to be picked in this phase.
IEEE 802.15.4 specifies the physical layer and media access control for the Zigbee and Thread upper layers. It emphasizes inexpensive, low power, modest bandwidth channel stations; the basic channel will provide 250 kbit/sec. The maximum range between communicating 802.15.4 devices depends on a lot of factors: the longest range I've seen claimed is 300 meters outdoors, unobstructed line of sight, without trees or walls or competing devices or other interference sources. The shortest range I've seen complained about is 5 meters, indoors with all of the above troublesome aspects. The official documents claim 10 to 100 meters depending on circumstances. This blog post: Zigbee Range: You Must Know The Truth by Yucy (2024-06-26) has more extensive discussion of the range of Zigbee communication (and 802.15.4 in general).
For satisfactory operation you really need a mesh network overlayer, so distant communicating devices can relay their packets through one or more routers or repeaters that are not so far apart.
Compliant 802.15.4 radios operate in these no-license bands: 868MHz in EU, 0.6MHz wide, 1 channel; 915MHz in North America and Australia, 8MHz wide, 30 channels; or 2400MHz worldwide, 83.5MHz wide, 16 wider channels. The standard has been amended with other national bands and various modulation methods. The framing layer has a MTU (maximum packet size) of 127 bytes for most modulations.
6LoWPAN is a higher layer which specifies packet fragmentation and header compression to squeeze IPv6 packets into multiple 802.15.4 packets. It is the foundation of the Thread and Zigbee network layers.
Thread is often mentioned, but for historical reasons the use of Thread is concentrated in the Apple ecosystem, which I don't have, and I am concentrating on the Zigbee overlayer. Like Zigbee, Thread specifies an application layer, but a lot of modern devices instead use the Matter application layer over the Thread network layer.
Zigbee adds to 802.15.4 a network layer which assigns devices to roles as end devices, routers, and one coordinator. Battery powered devices almost never do routing, while mains powered devices like light bulbs and plugs usually can, but not always. Read the product description. Routers can send packets to their destination in multiple hops with non-unique routes: it's a mesh network. Zigbee also specifies an application layer and many product offerings support it. Like Matter over Thread, it's possible to replace the Zigbee native application protocol with the Matter application protocol, but (in 2026) there are fewer Matter over Zigbee devices than Matter over Thread.
Matter is an application protocol intended for smart home devices and other members of the Internet of Things. Its main goals are to improve interoperability between different vendors' IOT devices, to define a security layer that interoperates, and to facilitate and promote controlling IOT devices from a user interface that is on the same net and communicates directly with the controlee, not going through an off-site cloud server. Matter uses the IPv6 network layer and can function on any under layer that supports IP, such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Zigbee and Thread.
Apple HomeKit is an application layer analogous to Matter, but older, and both of these can operate over both Thread and Zigbee. H.A. has an integration called the HomeKit Bridge which can talk to HomeKit devices.
Matter vs. Zigbee: What's Your Choice for New Smart Home Devices?
OP riiam Mo Riyami
(2024-11-xx). He got a lot of replies but one
subtopic stood out: In 2024-11-xx there were (and still are in 2026-01-xx)
a lot more Zigbee over Zigbee devices than Matter over Zigbee (referring to
the application layer being carried over the air protocol), and it's not a
problem to use both. Also, Matter over Wi-Fi is a lot more common (on Amazon)
than Matter over Zigbee, but home automation over Wi-Fi has too many negatives
and I want to avoid it.
What's wrong with Wi-Fi? (Compared to Zigbee or Thread.) It takes more smarts in the dongle, and it has to send keepalive packets to the access point in order to stay connected. These increase the power used and the price. For this reason, Wi-Fi is unsuitable for battery powered devices. Both you and your neighbors use it for high volume data transport like streaming audio and video, squeezing out the home automation traffic. It's not a mesh network and you may need to buy dedicated routers, called range extenders, or multiple access points. Access points have a limit on how many clients they can associate with: as few as 8 for an old AP that I used to have.
In Home Assistant an integration
is a piece of software or
middleware which can accept commands in H.A's API ontology, reformat them to
the ontology that the hardware entity expects, and send them on the air
interface; or in the other direction it can receive status reports from the
entity and reformat them in a form useful to H.A. Some of the more important
integrations involve daemon-like processes, particularly the wire or air
protocol integrations like Z-Wave and Zigbee.
Currently (2026) the H.A. docs describe two installation types:
Home Assistant Operating System (HA OS) is an image of Debian with just the packages needed to run H.A. It's intended to go on dedicated hardware or a virtual machine. It supports all H.A. features, specifically add-ons, which are daemons that have their own process. The integrations for Zigbee, Thread and Z-Wave, and likely some other air protocols, are in this category. This is the variant that I used in my previous installation, running it on an Intel virtual machine.
Home Assistant Container is intended to fit, of course, in a container. Docker is most often used but it will work in competitors. It can't deal with add-ons like Zigbee out of the box. However, old forum posts suggest putting each add-on in its own Docker container. But making the add-on available to the main process takes 1337 haX0r skills, and I needed to get a working product promptly rather than investing time in learning to do Docker and then to integrate a family of containers. So I chose HA OS.
And this time around, I'm also choosing HA OS for the same reasons.
There used to be two other modes, now deprecated, which I tried and failed to get working: Home Assistant Core in a Python virtual environment, and Home Assistant Supervised which means manual installation of everything.
Should HA OS be installed on a virtual machine, or its own dedicated hardware? The VM is something I know how to do, and I've already hosted H.A. on a VM, so phase 1 will re-use this VM. But in phase 2 I'm strongly considering separate hardware for H.A. to reduce the amount of home net functions that would be brought down by the loss of any one physical computer.
For home automation the devices do their jobs, like shedding light, in specific locations, so there isn't much opportunity to move them around to optimize the network. Here are some key points I'll need to deal with:
The hub will be inside the metal wiring cabinet, particularly if it's hosted by a virtual machine on Jacinth, and I'll need to put both dongles (Zigbee and Z-Wave) outside the cabinet on extender cables so the signal can get into and out of the dongles.
The wiring cabinet is at almost the worst possible location, at the edge of the cloud of devices. I need redundant routers bridging it to the network core.
This long forum post gives invaluable information about avoiding EMI (electromagnetic interference): Zigbee Networks Optimization: a How-to Guide for Avoiding Interference and Adding Zigbee Routers… by Hedda (2024-09-xx). She could use a skilled editor but the content is important. Key points:
This guide talks about Zigbee specifically, but the issues are important for any low power low bandwidth mesh network like Z-Wave. It applies to any application layer: native Zigbee, Matter, Apple Homekit, Philips Hue, etc. etc.
In your radio band (2.4GHz ISM for most people) pick a Zigbee
channel that doesn't overlap other services like Wi-fi or neighbors'
Zigbee. If the Zigbee coordinator or the Wi-Fi access points shift
autonomously to the best
channel of the day, you get
day-to-day variations in net reliability that are very hard to debug,
so turn that feature off. (Channels are numbered differently for Wi-Fi
and Zigbee.)
USB-3 generates EMI (electromagnetic interference) in the 2.4GHz band, and cheaply designed computers, hubs and peripherals contain it poorly. Plug your Zigbee dongle into a USB-2 port if available. Use an extender cable to move the dongle away from the computer's EMI output. Use a shielded extender cable to keep out more EMI. If you have your own peripherals on USB-3 ports and using extender cables, get shielded ones to keep their interference inside.
How far can a Zigbee signal travel? See the link to a blog post by Yucy in the Network Layers section for a discussion, but in summary, official documents talk about 10 to 100 meters, with the longer range rarely achieved in the home. Normally packets are relayed from the coordinator (hub) to the destination through a sequence of repeater nodes under 10 meters apart. It's a mesh network, like a spider web: there should be several feasible paths between nodes that need to communnicate: usually but not always between the coordinator and an end node.
If communication with some end node is unreliable and it's far from any repeaters, it's often helpful to put in a Zigbee device, with repeater capability, between the orphan end node and distant but better connected repeaters. For example you could replace a dumb light bulb with a smart one, not because you wanted automated scheduled operation or color control, but because you wanted it to pass packets to the orphan end node. But be sure it stays powered; turn it on and off with your home automation software, not the wall switch, because devices without power can't repeat packets. Smart plugs are also good in this role. An extra Zigbee radio dongle with repeater firmware, powered by a disused phone charger, can be cost effective too.
Most but not all mains powered devices, like light bulbs and smart plugs, can do the repeater role; read the product description carefully. Most battery powered devices don't repeat: they do their job, like sensing if a window is open or if it's damp under your water heater, report it to the hub, and then go to sleep for a while, saving a lot of battery energy. So it's useless to expect them to repeat packets and they won't have repeater firmware.
Issues with the antenna for the coordinator or hub:
When you're pairing a new or particularly a used Zigbee device, and it behaves weirdly, try resetting it to factory defaults. (Z-Wave has a more formal procedure to un-pair a used device.)
Stay away from Philips Hue; it's a proprietary protocol, it requires their hub and their app for configuration, and it's overpriced. Except forum posters say you can integrate Hue bulbs on ZHA (H.A. Zigbee integration), but they're still overpriced.
One comment poster finds ThirdReality bulbs unreliable but cheaper Tuya bulbs have worked well for him. Other forum posts say the opposite for both opinions.
Favorite Zigbee Bulbs?, OP sstretchh (2025-05-xx). He has H.A. for Zigbee and Hubitat for Z-Wave. The Zigbee color bulbs that he's tested so far: ThirdReality, working well. Innr, on his other system so no opinion. Sengled, working well in his setup (jimc says: while a lot of other users complain about them). Eria, he can't update the firmware. What are you using? He wants to settle on one brand, for extending his network.
Reply #1: He's using basically the same brands.
Reply #2: Some Sengled bulbs won't stay connected [for him]. The only color bulbs he uses are ThirdReality and he's happy with them.
Reply #3: Check out the
Smart
Light Database. Includes light quality
which is otherwise hard
to discover.
Reply #4: He's using some old Sylvania Zigbee color bulbs; they just work [for him].
(Lots of other discussion.) The OP decided to standardize on ThirdReality color bulbs. Beware, pick a Zigbee channel that avoids interference, e.g. from your Wi-Fi or from neighbors. Jimc intends to provide only 5.8GHz Wi-Fi, reserving 2.4GHz for Zigbee.
One of the participants who went 100% to expensive Hue lamps used this strategy for manual control backup: Replace the original dumb switches with Inovelli 2-1 Zigbee switches. Associate them with a Zigbee group (created in HE = Hubitat Elevation hub hardware) which controls the lamps supposed to be controlled by that switch. This kind of switch can then turn on-off or dim the lights whether or not the HE hub is running. If the hub fails the smart house will revert to a dumb house, not to the stone age.
Conclusion: My first batch of hue controllable lamps will be:
ThirdReality Smart Color Bulb ZB3, 650 lumens, BR30/E26 Flood Light, RGB Full Color…
1x $16.99 or 4x $39.99, SB "Third Reality Inc" FBA
Shape: BR30 flood light, fits in 5in or 6in cans, 3.75in diam,
5in long. Base E16 normal light bulb. Hue control: RGB 3x8bit so they
say, or pseudo-blackbody color temperature, or just brightness.
Zigbee-3.0 (2.4GHz) air and application protocol. Is a repeater.
Operating temperature range: -20C to 40C. Has OTA firmware upgrades.
52 reviews, 5* 67%, 4* 15%, lower 18%. A few reviews:
Now the plugs:
ThirdReality Smart Plug Gen3…
$15, SB ThirdReality
FBA.
They offer generation 1,2,3 and maybe 4; make sure you get the one you
intended. Functions as a repeater. They currently (2026-01-03) have a bug
(for which generation?) in which several users report that they unplugged
the plug and when plugged in again it wouldn't rejoin the net; they had to
factory reset and reconfigure to bring it back. But several gen2 users
gave 5* reviews and didn't report the power return issue. You can set it to
be off or on when power returns, and jimc wonders if the default is to go
catatonic. This uses the Zigbee air protocol (good) but the description
doesn't mention Matter. This generation has a power meter (some don't).
One reviewer mentions that they actually update their firmware, which other
vendors aren't so good at. People successfully use these plugs via both
ZHA and
Zigbee2MQTT integrations on H.A. with little hassle. One reviewer (5*)
says, I'e tried quite a few brands of smart plugs, WiFi and
Zigbee. These and the Innr brand are the only two that I've tried that
work flawlessly.
The others don't look promising. I think at least my first plug will be the ThirdReality product.
From
New York Times Wirecutter by Thom Dunn, 2005-03-06. This review
concentrates on dimmable normal
hue bulbs, i.e. what you would
use to replace incandescent bulbs. His brand favorite is Feit
Electric: best color spectrum, most reliable, and smoothest dimming, so
he says. I've also had good luck with Feit products.
A normal round light bulb has base E26 and shape A19. The small
candelabra bulbs have base E12 and shape B10 (or C9 or C15 for the
flame-tip variant). In color temperature, soft white
generally
means 2700K. Noon sunlight is 5000K to 5500K. Color rendering index
refers to how well the bulb's spectrum imitates a blackbody, therefore
showing targets in their proper colors as if illuminated by an
incandescent bulb of the advertised color temperature. The CRI runs
from 0 to 100, and according to this author, the best bulbs score 90
and up while cheap bulbs score 80 to 90. 60 watt equivalent is 800
lumens; 40 watt equivalent is 540 lumens by multiplication, but
customarily 450 lumens is said to be equivalent to 40 watts. Beware,
some bulbs are more isotropic than others; often intensity (lux) toward
the sides is significantly less than out the top (the symmetry axis).
From New York Times Wirecutter: Best Smart Led Light Bulbs by Megan Wollerton, 2026-01-21. They give first place to the WiZ 60W A19 Color LED bulb ($11 on Amazon), and for office lighting the GE Cync Full Color Direct Connect Smart Bulb was their favorite. (But it's A21 shape, a bit larger than A19.) The WiZ bulb can change color temperature on a schedule. (This may be an automation in the app.)
Here's a list of bulbs that I've noticed in Amazon searches, which were tested for prior editions of this guide but which are no longer recommended because current models are better and/or cheaper. Cree Lighting Connected Max Tunable White + Color Bulb; GE Cync Direct Connect Smart Bulb; Kasa Smart Light Bulb KL125 and KL130; LIFX Color A19 Wi-Fi Smart Bulb; IKEA's Trådfri Smart LED Bulb; Tapo Smart Light Bulb L530E; three Sylvania Smart+ bulbs.
From New York Times Wirecutter: The Best Smart Plugs by Kathryn Rath, 2026-01-13. The TP-Link Kasa product line swept all 3 places. Which surprises jimc because I've had a lot of trouble with TP-Link networking accessories. Their favorites:
TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug Slim (EP25), $37 on Amazon for a pack of 4 (2-pack also available). Air protocol: Wi-Fi. Has energy monitoring (power meter). Has a manual on-off button.
TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini (EP10), $14 (pack of 2) on Amazon. Air protocol: Wi-Fi. Its selling point is smaller dimensions for cramped locations. It records on-time but not power drawn.
TP-Link Tapo TP25 Outdoor Plug, $20 on Amazon. IP65 intrusion
rating (rain resistance). It has a NEMA 5-15P on about 6in flying
lead, and two 5-15S sockets on the body, independently controllable,
with closable covers if unused. They say the P400M is identical but
Amazon exclusive
. Has on-off buttons for each socket.
It's Matter enabled. It records on-time but not power drawn.
TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Power Strip (HS300), $50 on Amazon.
It has six NEMA 5-15S, independently controllable, normal
spacing for svelte wall warts, blades crosswise to the axis (good).
About 1M cord ending in an angled(?) 5-15P. Also has 3 USB charging
ports (always on). Includes power meters on the sockets. Includes
a manual on-off button for each socket. Watch for the Tapo P316M which
is similar to this one but has Matter support. Its surge protection
is not as strong as the author would like.
TP-Link Tapo P306 Smart Wi-Fi Outlet Extender, $30 from Amazon. Covers a 2 outlet plug and provides (on the parallel-to-wall face) three always-on NEMA 5-15P's, three individually controllable ones, and 3 USB charging ports (2x type A, 1x type C), controllable as a group. Records run time (not power) on the controllable sockets and the USB ports. Has manual on-off buttons on the controllable sockets. It has a dimmable night light shining out the bottom, and an ambient light sensor that can be configured to turn it on in darkness.
Here are some of the smart plugs that they tested in the past but dismissed this time around: GE Cync Indoor Smart Plug; Amazon-exclusive models are more expensive than similar non-Amazon models and have functional restrictions to the Amazon ecosystem.
TP-Link Kasa plugs with Matter (M suffix on the model number)
worked decently
but are more expensive than their top pick, and
the author had a lot of trouble getting Matter set up on smart-home
platforms.
This list is to give me an idea what devices I might want to add in phase 2
or 3, not committing to Third Reality for every device class. These are from
ThirdReality's store
on Amazon; prices are on Amazon as of 2026-01-xx.
All are Zigbee except as noted; some may be Matter over Zigbee.
The Smart Bridge MZ1 translates native Zigbee packets to equivalent Matter (Matter over Thread?) application protocol material. Native Matter devices incude: Smart Switch MT1. It looks like they're not going all-in for Matter.
Motion sensor R1, $30
Motion sensor (stick style, pet friendly), $20
Garage door tilt (open) sensor, $20
Temperature and humidity sensor (indoor), $20
Vibration sensor (what price, is it available?) Use it on your washing machine, or your pet's food dish.
Door and window open sensor, magnetic, $20
Up to 16mm gap between magnet and switch.
Water leak and drip sensor, $20
Multi function night light, $30
The 3 functions are illumination sensor, motion sensor, lamp.
Soil moisture sensor, $20
Reports soil humidity and temperature. One AA battery lasts
2 years. Indoor or outdoor.
Smart bulbs in shape BR30 (floodlight) and A19 (normal round), base E26.
Smart Switch Gen3 (price?)
Smart Watering Kit, $35
Indoor plant watering system. Sucks water from a big bottle
(customer provided) and pumps it out one tube that can be forked among
multiple plant pots; there's an emitter at the end for pressure
balance.
Smart button, $20
A dedicated button; press it to tell your
hub to run an automation (customer created) such as turning off all
lights. Colors: white, red, yellow, blue. It can distinguish among
single press, double press, and long press.
Smart blinds: motorize your existing blinds or curtains, or get new ones that include the motor and Zigbee controller.
Smart Plug Gen2, $13; dual socket plugs also available.
There are some expansion devices for the Amazon Echo product line.
Moths are very important to our urban ecosystem. Presented with an artificial lamp or a candle, they tend to circle around it, orienting with their backs toward the brightest light source they see. So they use up resources, fail to feed (and pollinate), expose themselves to predators, and burn their wings. But this behavior is color dependent. Use a hue adjustable lamp and turn the blue channel all the way down, and you will do a big favor to the moths.
This memorandum discusses a lot of points in cyber security, of which zero trust is a major one. There's a good discussion of what it requires agencies to do, in Meeting FISMA (M-24-04) Requirements with a Unified Attack Surface Management Strategy by Chris McManus, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Qualys (2025-05-14).
The cost for Qualys' attack surface management product is $17.25 per IP address up to 500 IPs, down to $5 per IP for a big network.
A major issue is, you should have an inventory (list) of
all hosts on your network including IoT devices. An illustration in a
non-government white paper shows
an iceberg labelled your hosts
. The upper part has I.T. staff
closely watching it, but the bottom, labelled IoT, is decorated with
hackers, zombie bots, etc. The list should have these fields (from
memory): manufacturer, model number, serial number, firmware installed,
owner, physical location, fixed IP (if used), DUID (if DHCP), wild side
IP address (if any), what it's
for, rating for ease of being hacked, badness rating if it's compromised,
contact address where higher level monitors can report problems.
We aren't a federal agency, but it would be best practice to keep track of IoT devices in this way.
It's a man in the middle attack on SSH. See also the project's website. Discovered in late 2023. There's a vulnerability scanner. It was plugged in OpenSSH v9.6 (2023-12-18). I remember installing that patch. We currently have v10.0p2. Terrapin attacks (sic) are mentioned in the introduction to OMB M-24-04.
Steffi (2025-12-xx) says someone put in a lot of home automation without physical switches. Then sold the house. The new owner is having a hard time sorting things out. Moral: install the physical switches, leave them on, and do your H.A. thing, but the new owner can use the physical switches until he figures out the automation.
This is for phase 1. Here are Ben's comments (summarized) on reading this document:
(Ben) SAD treatments involve very bright white light, see this light box on Amazon at 10k lux. So, I would not try to make that a goal of the home automation/new bulbs.
(Jimc) Good point there; a literature review identifies circadian rhythm shifts induced by morning bright artificial daylight as the most likely mechanism of improving SAD. But I think we do need the afternoon artificial daylight for making us feel better about winter.
For HVAC, he had an Ecobee thermostat and liked it.
(Jimc) A lot of forum posters, including HVAC installers, like their Ecobee thermostats. Several attractive features, like regulating the average temperature over several sensors or pausing the furnace or A/C if a door or window is open, appear to be handled by a cloud service, but would more smartly be handled by home automation software like H.A.
For fire and CO sensors, don't bother connecting them to home automation. Wait until the first one fails, then replace all of them with the Kidde models that are wired, with 10yr battery backup.
Switches: He's started using the Inovelli switches mentioned elsewhere. One good feature: they have a kill switch so you can power cycle them without flipping the breaker.
Protocols: The ZBT-2 dongle/antenna can't simultaneously do native Zigbee and Matter over Thread. Since he has an Apple ecosystem he has been using Matter over Thread a lot, but he thinks native Zigbee will be better for Jimc because there's a big selection of devices and the protocol is mature. He runs the Apple HomeKit bridge (software integration) on H.A. so he (and potentially Alice) could use HomeKit on his iPhone to control devices, but we could think about setting this up later.
(Jimc) What is your recommendation for hosting H.A.? Continue with the existing VM, buy a Nabu Casa Home Assistant Green (immediately? Or in phase 2?), buy a generic computer such as a Raspberry Pi 5.
(Ben) He hosts H.A. on a VM which is hosted on a Raspberry Pi 5. No problem importing USB devices (Thread and Bluetooth dongles) to the VM, but he wasn't able to import the Raspberry Pi's native Bluetooth NIC. He recommends against buying new hardware right now since markets are disrupted, availability is low and prices are high. If you keep the VM on Jacinth you avoid increasing the number of machines you have to maintain. For the future, look for a CPU with a mix of performance cores and efficiency cores, like the RPi-5 has. Also try for a motherboard (or add-on dongle) that has 2Gb or 2.5Gb Ethernet, which Ziply's ONT can make useful.