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Thermostats compatible with selfhosted Home Assistant (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi! I am running Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4 and I have "Home Assistant" installed in it, I oly have some smart lights connected to it. I would like to integrate a Thermostat with HA. But I am a bit overwhelmed with the different types of connections (Z-wave, Zigbee, Wifi, ...)

Do you guys have any kind of recommendation, what connection is better? I would like to keep it local (or connecting remotely via Tailscale) but I would like to avoid any cloud or third-party server solution.

What thermostat hardware can I buy?

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[–] 3 points 8 months ago (5 children)

If you're just starting to build out, what about using thread instead of zigbee or zwave?

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Well Thread allows devices to require internet connectivity to pair. It also allows devices to fetch firmware updates from the manufacturer. And it allows features to be locked to their specific app. Thread and Matter are more complex to setup self-hosted style; it makes no difference when you use official hubs though. Thread doesn't have many device types and manufacturers available.

    Zigbee does not require or work over the internet, no trust required. It is very easy to setup self-hosted. There is a Zigbee everything made by everyone from large companies to random brandless places.

    Zigbee is my preference as a result of the internet connectivity requirement. I do not trust random manufacturers to not brick my devices when they go out of business or choose to release a competing product.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    Well that leaves me with mixed feelings.

    Thread itself doesn't need Internet connectivity, but thread seems to almost always be paired with matter, which does (during provisioning).

    I like that matter provisioning requires verification of their certificate, but I don't like that certificates can expire or the certificate authority can shut down. Although maybe that's all taken care of by the DCL? In which case that'd be fine.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    In theory, Home Assistant could also give users the option to ignore certificate checks.

    I also haven't seen specific details on whether Home Assistant's implementation allows sensors to contact the internet by default or what setting changes this.

    It's just foggier and less user focused by design in my opinion. But as one would expect when Google and other large corporations were the ones to develop it,

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I like that matter provisioning requires verification of their certificate, but I don’t like that certificates can expire or the certificate authority can shut down. Although maybe that’s all taken care of by the DCL? In which case that’d be fine.

    It's also pretty obnoxious that it requires an Android phone with Google play services enabled (and even a Google login IIRC) or an iOS phone. There are ways around this, but they are pretty complex and not well documented.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    My understanding is that that is because Google and Apple want to onboard it to their own home automation platforms, and HomeAssistant just piggybacked on that because it was easier, and it hasn't been a priority to rewrite it. But this is based on a few old threads I just looked up, I'm not exactly an expert.
    I think there was some talk about Bluetooth onboarding, but that'd require the devices to have a Bluetooth radio, which is more expensive that a QR code sticker. Idk if anyone uses it.
    Having something like a WEP button would certainly be nice though.

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