Smart Home Tech That ACTUALLY WORKS! – 2 Year DIY Smart Home Update

It’s been a touch over two years since I started the DIY Smart Home series, and since I started installing and using smart home tech, so I thought I’d give you an update on what has been working well, what really hasn’t, and some extra advice when it comes to setting up your own smart kit. First, a quick recap of what stuff I have set up! Right now, the three main areas I have smart tech in are heating, lighting, and power. I have a custom smart heating system that uses temperature sensors in my office and bedroom to control a zigbee thermostat connected to my boiler. I have a few different smart lighting solutions, some Philips Hue Zigbee bulbs, and a Nanoleaf Matter bulb too. I’ve also got some Zigbee and Matter smart plugs that control my magic mirror display, monitor my fridge power usage – at least currently – and monitor my DIY solar power usage. I do have some Ubiquiti cameras, and soon a Reolink one too, but I’ll leave those out of this video.

So, what has worked? Well for starters, Home Assistant. Home Assistant has been amazing. I can’t remember a time where, over the last two years, something went wrong and it was Home Assistant’s fault. It can be a little tricky to work with at times, and due to the open source nature, it isn’t always easy to track down why something might be happening especially when it comes to third party addons and extensions, but on the whole, Home Assistant is a remarkably stable platform – at least for the stuff I’m using it for. It is getting progressively easier to use too, which I think helps make it more accessible.

As for hardware, the Philips Hue Dimmer Switch V2’s that I got last year to replace the dreadful Moes Zigbee smart switches have been rock solid. They are still Zigbee devices, but now don’t drop out, don’t need new batteries every three months – in fact in about a year they are still going strong – and are always quick to respond. I really like them. The Philips Hue Zigbee bulbs have also been pretty good too. The Matter devices – the Eve Smart Plug and Nanoleaf Matter bulb – have been great. Really quick to respond, reliable and especially now Home Assistant supports the EVE plug properly, I’m really happy with it. On the Zigbee power front, both the Samsung SmartThings plug and a much cheaper Innr one, both work really well. The Innr one actually works a little better, although the total power usage number is reported too high, by around 100 times. It reads as 5.5MWh right now, but I think it’s actually 55kWh instead. That’s not too bad though. 

Something that has started working well is the Nanoleaf Essentials light strip. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to connect that to Home Assistant, being Bluetooth or HomeKit (over Thread), but there have been some updates recently, and since I already have a Thread network running for the Matter devices, it was remarkably easy to add that to HASS and it now works reliably too! I’m really pleased that is working – I actually use the Hue Dimmer V2 to control that one too. 

So, what hasn’t worked? Well, I have had Matter dump out on me once or twice. I think that was mostly because I forgot to enable the Watchdog setting in HASS which restarts an addon if it crashes. Since enabling that I’ve had exactly zero problems and it has been as stable as a rock. Realistically most of my issues have ironed themselves out. For a while NodeRed had a bug that basically looped actions, but I fixed that in my code. The Aqara motion sensor I had just stopped working completely. It still flashes when you try to reconnect it, and I’ve tried a new battery, but it just never managed to stay connected to the Zigbee network. Interestingly a friend has a pretty similar setup and he hasn’t had any problems, so that might be my unit itself, my network, or something, but I can’t say I fully recommend this anymore. I’ve also had a bit of a mixed experience with the Sonoff Zigbee temperature sensors – one is still going strong, but one is outright dead. Nothing will seemingly bring it back to life. I’ve since swapped to an aqara temperature sensor and that’s been great. Anything battery based has been really hit or miss for me…

The other smart device that has been driving me up the bloody wall is the Nanoleaf Shapes panels – and specifically the controllers. I am currently on my FOURTH shapes controller, which is frankly insane. Nanoleaf knows these things are defective, they even have a really simple recall/replacement form I’ve been filling out every 9 months on average, but it is insane to me that a product that costs this much is STILL this broken. The controllers just brick themselves. No lights. No inputs. No resets. Nothing. Dead as a doornail. The problem I have is that, at some point, Nanoleaf are going to stop sending me new controllers. At some point they’ll just end-of-life the whole product line, and forget I – and everyone who actually bought this kit – exists. So, me being me, I’m planning on doing something about that. At some point soon I’m going to be reverse engineering how to control the panels, and all being well, I’ll make an open source project that anyone can make to revive their expensive three LED plastic panels. It goes without saying though, do not, under any circumstances, buy Nanoleaf Shapes panels. The essentials stuff is fine, but the shapes panels are terminally defective. 

If you want some recommendations for stuff you should buy, I highly recommend the Philips Hue Dimmer Switch V2 for an easy place anywhere smart remote. The Nanoleaf Matter stuff works great, and if you can get a Sonoff Dongle Plus V2 and get the Multiprotocol stuff working – as in run Zigbee and Thread (and therefore Matter) with just one radio dongle – I’d swing more towards Matter products where possible, although frankly the selection is still pretty small. If you just want to go all out on stuff now, Zigbee is still my preferred choice. 

Speaking of Matter devices, you’ll need to make sure that it is listed as Matter over Thread, rather than just “Matter” or “Thread”. Devices like this ONVIS HS2 switch do use Thread, and you might, maybe, be able to hook this up to Home Assistant if you have Bluetooth accessible from your Home Assistant instance, but I don’t so this isn’t something I can use right now. With an iPhone you might also be able to get it to work, but I don’t have any Apple devices, so again that’s a no-go. 

So, that’s a look at my smart home tech – what has worked well, and what hasn’t. I’d love to hear your experience with smart home tech in the comments below – what stuff has worked for you, and what hasn’t? Let me know in the comments down below!