Which hardware please

General
1

Good afternoon
I wonder if any of you would be kind enough to offer a bit of advice.
I currently have a Fibaro HC2 with numerous switches and sensors.
I am despondent with their reliability and the lack of support.
What plug in type plug in mains switches (UK) would you recommend that can be controlled directly from node-red using mqtt or HTTP. I need to turn on/off and be able to get the current state.

Thank you in anticipation

Andrew

2

Partly depends on what wireless networking you already have.

I think that a lot of us have moved from WiFi switches to Zigbee. Partly thanks to the low-cost switches and bulbs introduced by Ikea. Of course, it does mean that you need a Zigbee dongle to act as a master hub and Zigbee2MQTT running on your server. But these are relatively low cost and easy enough to configure.

So yes, the Ikea Zigbee switches and bulbs work well. I think that Sonoff have introduced some as well though I've not tried them myself as yet.

3

+1 for Zigbee. There are numerous switches and sensors available and I have found it very reliable.

I use a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus plugged into one of my PIs as the Coordinator.

1 Like
4

+2 for zigbee. I use zigbee2mqtt which makes the whole process simples

5

+3 for Zigbee .. you can buy cheap ones from Aliexpress .. I had no issues with em :wink:

I use this zigbee node to communicate with zigbee2mqtt

6

Personally I prefer just to use the standard MQTT nodes, I don't feel that the zigbee node adds much.

I also note that there are a number of unaddressed issues against the node.

1 Like
7

I also use standard MQTT nodes. I found that zigbee2mqtt works fine with them.

8

Yes, zigbee2mqtt just publishes to MQTT. It doesn't care how you subscribe to the topics, whether through the standard mqtt nodes, or the zigbee nodes, or not using node-red at all.

9

Many thanks for your input it is most helpful

10

Thank you for your prompt response I shall investigate

11

Thank you

12

Thank you for your help