The decision is made to build our own house. That, for me, means we can make an awesome automated home.
My idea is to use wireless switches (think hue switches or alike) Zigbee light bulbs, and a bunch of items that can be found on the zigbee2mqtt devices page to create a controlled environment
Now I could go with a zigbee2mqtt dongle, but i prefer something more all-round, just in case I come across something that is based on other hardware (433mhz, Z-wave, etc).
I looked at the Homey-Bridge and at the Homey-Pro from Athom. But i haven't been able to find a solution to connect those to a node-red device and for the Homey-Bridge, I don't want a 3 euro monthly subscription for the next 30 years and still have difficulty connecting it to node-red.
Does anyone here have a good alternative for a home hub that connects, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave, 433 Mhz and Infrared devices to Node-Red?
I don't like the idea of a USB dongle that connects several USB devices to a Raspberry Pi.
Seems to still be in beta so it may be that nobody has tried it yet. It also looks to be another proprietory environment? Homey apps, etc. Their own store. A dedicated mobile app.
Feels rather like the Tuya approach and we all know how open that is (not!).
Not aware of any really integrated open alternatives though and in any case, wireless standards tend to change over time. So I'd say stick with one standard for now - Zigbee seems to be the best supported at a good price, reliable, meshable, and easy to use. Then add other standards should you need to. But if you are building your own house, I doubt you will need more than Zigbee and Wi-Fi. BLE might be handy in a couple of cases (where it can detect distance) but mostly Zigee seems better, and more reliable.
IR is somewhat in a different class since you are most likely to need that somewhere near a specific legacy device (e.g. a DVD player, Hi-Fi, etc) and so most likely will need a more specific solution.
I should also say that I'm using Wi-Fi (mostly ESP stuff) and Zigbee. However, I also have 433MHz via n RFXtrx433E. So that's only 2 USB connections that I need since I run my server headless (actually I've moved from Pi to an old laptop which has a working screen and keyboard but I don't ever use them).
Zigbee will be the main network for most of it. Not only because of the sensors, lights, etc available for Zigbee, but also because the big boys from Matter (Chip) are going to use it.
But having a hub that can connect to almost everything, makes integration of others so much easier.
I mean, 433Mhz has been around for a while and works better on longer distances and wont have the interference issues like zigbee & wifi have on each other.
Now I got close to 35 zigbee nodes/routers (Hue lights, switches) and a bunch of wifi devices from which most are 2.4Ghz
Having home "inputs" on a different frequency might make things respond a bit faster.
I'm just gonna keep an eye out for a OS hub that can do all, otherwise I will take your route.
