Okay, so I did a small experiment at home recently. Mosquitoes have always been an issue, and we usually keep those liquid repellents plugged in 24x7. Realized the bottle was emptying every 5-6 days. Crazy inefficient, right?

So I bought a cheap ₹700 smart plug. Scheduled it to run exactly one hour at sunrise and sunset—basically peak mosquito time. Result?

• Repellent now lasts almost 20 days instead of 5 days.
• The house no longer smells like a chemical factory 24/7.

But here’s something interesting that happened: my parents, who usually aren't impressed by any "tech stuff," actually got curious about this setup. Mom asked me yesterday, "Beta, can this kind of thing also automatically switch off the geyser? We always forget and leave it on."

Funny how small tech experiments spark bigger family discussions.

Curious if others here have tried similar "unusual" automations at home? And did it lead to unexpected conversations or solutions?

Does anyone ever wish they could find a friend (in person, not online) that is passionate about Home Automation? Or some kind of local club?

Like to help program/install cool setups for each other, and just show things off.
It's such a niche thing that no one, including my partner or my friends working in IT really care about it.

Hi...Wondering if there are any electricians in the Calgary, Alberta area that are familiar with Shelly devices and are willing to work through some different scenarios I am interested in completing? I have contacted a number and none specifically have familiarity with them. Thanks!

I'm not sure what exactly I need to look for in terms of the type of light they're putting out for seeds/vegitation/flowers or whatever, I only recently became aware that items like this exist, which appear to be a 2835 style 24v strip, but there's a wide variety of actual color temperatures available for those strips, so think I need some more specific guidance. I have controllers, I can solder, I just need to know an actual good strip that I can get for cheap as chips of ali express to make my wife happy.

Hello, recently i purchased a sliding gate and got like 2 remotes with it, and now i would like to smartify it so i could possibly open it through an app and home assistant. The main thing thats giving me issues is that it only has a place to connect a button, not a switch, but a button, and it sends some really small load, so when i connect the 2 button pins on the board, they need to be connected for literally a button press time, so like 1 second or less, and i dont know which smart device would help me with that.

I was looking at the shelly 1 mini gen 3 since i saw that it has sepparate Input and Output for the device, unlike the tuya/zigbee relays that i have which can only send 220V. Can anyone tell me if its possible to use the shelly 1 mini gen 3 as a button click instead of a switch/lever type mechanism? Or if not, which device i could. Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I have a Comelit 6701 intercom system, and I'm looking to automate it in a way similar to how devices like the Nuki Opener or Ring Intercom work. However, these solutions aren’t compatible with my system. My current smart home hub is Homebridge, and I primarily use Aqara and Shelly products.

Before proceeding, I'm concerned about ensuring the electrical compatibility and maintaining the safety and integrity of the existing intercom system. Does anyone have experience with integrating the Comelit 6701 or similar systems? I'm open to change the whole intercom on my appartment, but can't do anything with the building one. Any advice, documentation references, or alternative solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Hi, I (total newbie) just bought ZBridge-P and Sonoff motion sensor SNZB-03P and SNZB-06P... Plan to automate my room light when I wake up at night to pee.

However I'm struggling to find any sonoff zigbee bulb... I can only find the WiFi version.

Im a bit hesitate to buy other brand zigbee bulb as I read somewhere here that even though it's zigbee, but if different brand it won't pair.

And what's the point of releasing a gateway that support zigbee, but then only limit it to only support zigbee of sonoff brand. Atleast make zigbee bulb if u really wanna limit it to only support your own brand..

Im planning to use the ewelink app.

I’ve got a Panasonic system with their CZ-RTC4 controller, and 4 zone split. I’m looking to convert these both to a single smart controller, that can integrate with Home Assistant over LAN. I’d also ideally want some kind of additional sensors that can drive automations. What do people recommend to go for / avoid?

Hi all, trying to make my mind up between these 3 - Tapo D235, Eufy E340, Ring Peephole cam.

I need a video doorbell mainly for 2 way talk and to keep an eye on parcels. I am disabled and can sometimes take a long time to get to my door. At the moment I have no way of speaking to delivery drivers so can sometimes miss deliveries, parcels get delivered to neighbours, or at best they are left at my door. The first two are incredibly frustrating. I also sometimes need to leave parcels outside my door for couriers to collect, as again my slow speed of getting to the door means they sometimes just leave.

Motion sensing capability is not really of importance, I am focusing mainly on just something that I can speak to someone through when they are at my door. And if they leave a parcel there, just to be able to keep an eye between them leaving it and me being able to get to the door. Or if I need to leave a parcel out, to keep an eye til it's collected.

I live in a block of flats with fire doors, so bells need to be surface mounted using 3M type sticky pads, or peephole type. The Ring has this covered, the Tapo comes with a sticky pad, and Eufy I could use a suitable 3rd party one I've found. We cannot drill any holes for hard wiring either so they must be battery powered.

I like the Ring's much smaller size as the battery is mounted inside the door, it's more subtle and less likely to make neighbours potentially feel uncomfortable. I also like that it is the most physically secure given it is actually screwed together through the door peephole. But I massively resent that if I did want to record anything or use motion detection for a short time, that it would require a subscription. I also have seen video examples and the field of view is not wide enough to see parcels.

Between the Eufy and Tapo, the Eufy is lower profile and being fully black is more subtle against our dark blue doors. The main selling point for me is it has the separate camera for parcel monitoring. But perhaps the tapo's sensor is wide enough for genuine head to toe? A concern with the Tapo and Eufy is they could easily be removed by a bad actor, unlike the Ring.

Also an advantage to me of the Ring and Eufy is their removable battery. Although the Ring uses micro usb which I thought we'd all moved on from years ago!

I have a couple of echo pops and would like the doorbell to alert on these when someone rings the bell. Ideally I'd also like to be able to turn off any chime that happens on the doorbell itself, or be able to turn the volume of this right down.

Apologies that this is quite long and rambling but perhaps the good people of this sub might be able to help me make a decision!

Hi all.

Does anyone have any experience of wiring up a Shelly device and a Nice Robus gate motor please?

I would like to open my gate which has a nice Robus 600 motor attached to it.

I want to open it via the android auto Shelly app or via a google/ alexa voice command.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have this thermostat that I use to control my pool heater. It has an Ethernet cable. Can I control it remotely? Thanks!

I was replacing my old wired doorbell with a new one. I turned off the breaker before starting the installation. When I checked the wires with a non-contact voltage tester, it would briefly flash red and then go green without any sound. Before turning off the breaker, it was solid red and beeping.

While wiring the new doorbell, I accidentally touched the red and black wires together, which caused a small spark. After completing the setup, the new doorbell isn’t working. The non-contact voltage tester now shows solid green (no voltage), and the indoor chime isn’t working either.

I checked the breaker panel, and nothing appears to be tripped. What could be the issue?

Hi all. I've searched Google and come across a few, but unsure how to compare and if there is a go to brand. Something that works with Alexa and I can get to automatically open and shut depending on the time of day.

Hi guys, looking to get into some home automation for the master bedroom to prevent any rewiring/drywall work.

I currently have one main junction box that supplies power to two separate overhead lights that each weirdly have their own switches as well. I would just tie the two together at the box and call it a day, however one of the overhead lights is tied into some of the wall outlets.

I was wondering if I installed a Shelly on the left overhead light (not tied to outlets), if it would be able to relay a signal to another Shelly installed at the switch of the other overhead light (with constant voltage, to not drop out outlets). Not many videos that cover actual signal sharing over WiFi for the two relays, so just wanted to see if anyone had some experience!

Thanks!

Hey I resumed at a smarthome company a month ago and I already got my first project. I am done with majority of the preliminary tasks and my rack is near completion so it can be taken to site. I am thinking of creating automated experiences for my client so they can be blown off their seats ( also my bosses are pushing for this project to be beautiful). We use control 4 for our control system.

I am thinking of scenes, schedules and triggers.

I've been eyeing one of these for a while because I love the idea of saving water, preventing leaks, and monitoring water usage. It's on the Tuya app and supposedly works with Alexa and Google, which I have a few of each around the house. My question, two actually, has anyone used this and can give a review of it, and could I use my Govee water leak detectors to create a routine in Alexa to shut the valve off if a leak is detected. Seems like it would work, but I've never used the Govee stuff to trigger anything.

So I integrated the Aiper Scuba S1 into my smart home routine. I wasn’t expecting a revolution, just a bit of help with pool cleaning. It’s not like I get daily notifications, but I do appreciate being able to glance at my dashboard and see it running. Though sometimes it misses a few corners, it's worth the price anyway.

I have and older home in which I would like to automate a handful of ceiling fans. Unfortunately, the wiring is old and all I have is a hot wire passing through a switch to the fan. No neutrals.

I've seen some older posts with similar situations, but I'm hoping there may be newer/better options.

I need to control the light and fan separately, and ideally I could control the speed of the fan as well. I want to integrate this with home assistant.

Would prefer zigbee or z-wave over wifi, but understand options may be limited.

I see there are smart ceiling fans that would allow this, but I can only find ones with non-replaceable LEDs, which makes me uncomfortable. I'm unsure about their quality. Any thoughts on these?

Any suggestions on how best to go about this?

I have a couple Yale assure 2 locks that are having connectivity issues when I am offsite (i.e. I cannot access them through the app)

When I'm on site I can connect via Bluetooth and when I test the Wi-Fi signal it always comes back as good.

I have tried resetting the locks, resetting WiFi, connecting directly to the Comcast modem WiFi (as opposed to my Meraki device)

At this point I can only think that there is some configuration issue with the Comcast modem (not sure what that would be)

Has anyone else had these WiFi gremlins?

Hi folks. I'm in the US but have a European style door/lock on my house. I've been using the Yale Conexis L1 which fits perfectly but is getting a bit old. Looking for Zwave, Zigbee, BT, Matter or some other local smart home protocol. Open to Cloud option as a last resort. Thanks!

Hi all, recently I got interested in a diy ambilight setup for my smart tv. My plan is to have hyperion on a rpi control an rgb strip on the tv, with information sent from my plex server when watching something. I also have a homeassistant instance running if it can help

I looked everywhere but integrating these either uses outdated, abandoned, or discontinued software. Does anyone have a recent enough setup that could help me out?

Initially I thought of using rasplex with the old hyperion, the plex client works but I can't find any hyperion docs that are not for the new version. Then I discovered that you could send image information from the pc running plex server, but even there I'm at a loss :/

What I could do is have a second rpi which sends plex video output to an hdmi grabber, this way hyperion would work but I don't find this option too sexy.

I've moved into a new house and the old owners have a fibaro system hooked up including heat controllers on all the radiators. Their broadband was still up and running until yesterday (I didn't even notice it was there - all very integrated). When their broadband has stopped the signals have all went and now I can't control the radiator dials manually and we have no heating. Is there anything I can do to get the radiators on? 8.5 months pregnant.

I just purchased a Bond Bridge (not pro) to use for IR and RF remotes. All the instructions say I can program IR commands to the Bridge, but I see no such options in the ‘add device’ menu. I also see no option in Advanced Settings to switch from RF to IR. Under the add device menu, Remote is not one of the options as the instructions indicate.

Why would that be? What did I do wrong during setup? The installation seemed to go fine, the Bond shows up in the app, the firmware updated nicely. All seems good. But no option to add a remote. Only fans, lights, shades, etc. Nothing about a remote, or TV (which is the device I’m working on right now).

Any advice? If there is a more appropriate sub to ask these questions, please let me know. I didn’t see a Bond sub. Thanks!

Hello dear people of reddit

trying inhere as r/sonoff does not have as many members...

Issue at hand:

My family owns an small forrest-house in Sweden - and due to the location, cell service is "iffy" - going from Egde to 5G depending on weather and where you are in the house.

The problem relies in that the old way of ensuring that the house is warm over the winter has relied on a cell service to the relay the temp. from the system.

The vendor is shutting down the system and new solutions rely on "modern" cell service that is not available.

but as this being Sweden, there has now been installed fiber internet that is on a CGN (Carrier-Grade-Nat, no direct public IP) connection, connected to an Asus router, no ethernet cables anywhere but from fiber-box to the router.

The house is heated using electric radiators.

I want to create a new system for the house where heating can be controlled/maintained without internet if the connections fails. (to maintain 10+ degrees in the winter)

But when the connection is available, have an app where heating can be adjusted to 20 degrees before driving to the house.

I'm thinking of using:

SNZB-02D or SNZB-02P in each room to monitor the temp.

S60TPF on each radiator to turn on/off remotely.

all connected to a zb-bridge/zb-bridge pro

Perhaps a NSPanel - not sure about that on yet... might be an old iPad insted.

Outdoor temp. sensor? i have not been able to find any wireless from sonoff, i have a Hue montion sensor at home that works perfectly with temp also, but i don't think that the systems are compatible.

So, as I have not used eWelink i don't know if the following is possible when internet is offline:
Having set the temp to 20 degrees on the radiators, creating a link so if the temp. falls under 12 degrees, the radiator turns on and off again when the temp is 15 degrees.

Will that automation work without internet? and is it possible to create in the app?

next, if the internet is offline for more than 2 hours, restart the router (will also connected with a smart plug) - like "if this then that", but without an external source to push.

also when online, connect to the vendor cloud so that the app can be used remotely - as the connection is CGN, tunneling back is not that easy without some form of Pi or device running.

And last but not least - it bust be "elder friendly" as the main user is a non-tech 66 year old lady, and maintainable from the outside when internet is connected as I do not wish to drive 3 hours to reboot something.

I'd love to hear you inputs :-)