Searching for the right hardware

---

Hello,
I‘m going to finish my home in the middle of the next year.
Now I‘m thinking over what hardware I will install…

I have normal shutters with wallswitches…
Because of I don’t want to give that lot money for the somfy system. (And can‘t connect it to pimatic)

Homematic is still not present in pimatic so that here is the question: what system does fit here?!

Also I will use some kind of smartlight…
Here I thought for Milight.
Because it‘s very open and here we have more bulbs than for example at hue…
Here I have to buy a controller, a WiFibridge and of course the bulbs right?!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Chris

Hello Chris,

for the shutters the user @OrTiN is satisfight with the wall switches from Rohrmotor24 see here

And @leader21 has a Ikea Tradfri light system for that it gives an Pimatic-Plugin and it can controll with Alexa.
An it is cheaper as hue

@chris said in Searching for the right hardware:

Also I will use some kind of smartlight…
Here I thought for Milight.
Because it‘s very open and here we have more bulbs than for example at hue…
Here I have to buy a controller, a WiFibridge and of course the bulbs right?!

If you opt for Milight, make sure to buy the new iBox controller and consider buying the new full color bulbs which additionally provide saturation and white temperature control. You should also have a look at at IKEA Tradfri which might be a competive alternative and one may expect IKEA will further enhance the eco system (with additional bulb types at least, but other type of devices like smart plug might also become available in the future). Another thing to look at is Yeelight WiFi bulbs. It is supported with pimatic-led-light, however, the driver is not rock solid yet.

It should also be said that chinese devices are suspected to have some backdoors. Most of them call back home, at least, regulary (a.k.a “cloud feature”, an option which you can turn off with Milight, for example, but I found some Milight controller are still calling back to the “cloud” which might be a firmware bug). The problem can be mitigated by implementing some network protection measures (e.g. restrict outbound traffic, implementing a “smart home” network zone as part of your home network. Some intersting articles on the matter can be found in articles published by the Heise C’t magazine.

Another thing to consider: If “finishing your home middle of next year” involves major renovation you should consider installing a cable-based smart home solution. In terms of “security” and “reliability” it is much better than wireless solutions and it should be relatively cheap if you have to install new power cables anyway.

EDIT: Unfortunately, cable-based smart home tends to be expensive if you look for solutions on the market and most of these involve a prorietary technology including a server. I know some users have implemented there own solutions for cable-base sensors and actuators in their home which connect directly to their pimatic server. It would be great if we can somehow share the knowledge and findings on thinks like supported cable-lenths, which cable-types are suitable, and how to connect that to an raspberry or arduino (pull-up versus pull-down, de-coupling, etc).

https://homepioneers.de/kabelgebundene-smart-home-systeme/

yes for the shutters i already found these devices.
But i thought 433MHz wouldn’t be the right architecture.

Are they working well?
I have some 433MHz plug implemented with pimatic-homeduino. And sometimes they are not switching… (really just sometimes)

Therefore i thought for homematic…

Ikea-Tradfi i will have a closer look at.

Yeah cable-based is the best way…
But also much more expensive.
I only wan’t to control some things of my new home.

For the shutters i will look at the Rohrmotor devices i think.
For some Bulbs - Ikea Tradfi
For some LED-Stripes - Yeelight/Milight
For the Groundheating (Floorheating with a geothermal pump) i found some hardware here:
Comtrone
It’s based on a RPi, yes i already asked for the software.
But they just sell it with the server(RPi3) However it has a open API, wich i can control with pimatic later i think…

So some other proposals?

the tradfri bulbs are working fine! am curious about the rgb bulbs that hopefully will come up soon.

for the shutters at my house i use intertechno cmr500 switches, they work on 433mhz. well, if you have the problem that they sometimes don’t switch depends on what’s up on the 433mhz frequency. i used to have some weather station sensors on 433mhz which were transmitting all 30seconds. so you can imagine what RF traffic came up ^^
so if you have trouble with the RF rangee in your house, you can use ESPimaticRF to extend the range. works perfectly.
regarding the shutter motors i use the standard jarolift ones
maybe you can also consider to use the TDEP ones since they have a automatic blocking detection

the only thing i complain are the 433mhz wall switches from intertechno. they are just plain white and not very stylish. the mentioned rohrmotor24 switches look very fine!

maybe you should consider to wire your lamps and switches with 4 or 5-core wires to have more possibilities (maybe not now but later ^^).

and if you like to have some led stripes i recommend the milight system. having it too at the kitchen and living room.

@leader21 said in Searching for the right hardware:

the tradfri bulbs are working fine! am curious about the rgb bulbs that hopefully will come up soon.

I was yesterday by Ikea and they have the RGB-Bulbs, I think they cost about 39€

Wow … 39 is really expensive compared to the common white bulbs for 10 euro. Allright, let’s see when I can get my hands on it 😁