Might be worth looking into LoRa for longer range, it’s got quite cheap to play with now.

It’s a real step up for managing Home Assistant. I was using it earlier to find some devices to reconfigure and it’s a lot faster. The xtra panels in the UI feel a little cramped on smaller screens though.

I wish they would implement a proper permissions system next, the lack of control is the other admin bugbear of mine with Home Assistant.

I always keep Home Assistant as up to date as possible. Home Assistant keeps improving a lot. Month to month each update goes fairly seamlessly if HA is kept up to date, but the further it falls behind the harder it is to catch back up. Recent optimisation improvements have also made the update process faster.

If you can make the time it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to “start over” somewhat there is probably a lot you have learned since that you can use to improve your setup.

Is it common for apartments to have shared extractor ducts? I’ve never heard of a setup like this before, and it sounds like both a pain in the arse and a potential safety issue.

Controlling the kitchen fan is probably the easier bit. Depending on the design of the hood, you might be able to control it with a smart outlet or relay. Turn the hood’s switch to always on and control it with the relay. The difficult bit would be sensing when to turn it on.

Cooking will often produce VOCs, and VOC sensors are easy to obtain, but they are also have other sources that are likely in your own apartment. Maybe try using temperature and humidity sensors int the duct to activate the fan when there is elevated temperature and humidity inside the duct?

Frigate seems fairly popular among Home Assistant users for security cameras.

I think ZoneMinder is still going too which used to be the go to Linux option for that.

There are some Zigbee dimming relays/modules which should work with your Zigbee stack of choice. I haven’t used them myself as I use Zigbee dimmer switches instead, but I’ve seen others recommend them. There’s a few different brands depending on your country.

I can also second the recommendation for the Shelly Dimmer 2. Works out of the box with the HA Shelly integration, and can also be flashed with ESPHome or Tasmota if you really want. It can also be used in detached mode to work with smart lights I believe too. My home is mostly Zigbee but I have a few Shelly devices and they have all been solid.

I also have an oil boiler, and a tank in the garden. The tank was fitting with an Apollo Ultrasonic oil level sensor, which sends a signal to base station with a very basic LCD display in the house via 433Mhz radio.

I use an RTL-SDR USB radio dongle, a cheap 433MHz antenna and the rtl_433 software to monitor the signals from the ultrasonic sensor, which transits roughly once an hour. The level measurement transmitted is a fairly accurate centimetre value (I compared it with manual measurements with a dip stick for a few months).

The base station only showed a vague level indication with 10 bars, but now I have more a more precise smart display of the tank level, without any extra modification to the tank system.

I have a similar setup but with an ultrasonic sensor instead of a float sensor. rtl_433 had support for the sensor, and I could get a good signal reception with an RTL-SDR and cheap 433MHz antenna. I can even pick up signals from a neighbours tank that is some distance away.

Once I had devices that replaced entities with new ones with a different ID after a firmware update. It happened to some ESPHome devices I had after upgrading the firmware. Have you checked the device the entity belongs to?

It might be worth keeping purge_keep_days configured to less than the default 10 days to keep the database size small and speed up backups etc, especially in setups running on low power hosts like a Pi and with large amounts of sensors.

The new climate cards have configurable features. Edit the dashboard and climate card, and buttons similar the old ones can be added back the card. I was confused by this at first when I updated and the on and off buttons for my heating disappeared. It feels like the modes buttons should be added by default.

Personally I prefer using smart switches, or smart relay modules in between the switch and bulb. However that’s maybe not best for you if you are already invested in smart bulbs.

The “neatest” options would be to fit a switch cover over the switch, or remove the switch and replace with a blanking plate. A smart button can be fitted onto the cover or plate to provide the functionality of a switch, there are devices with multiple buttons and even rotary knobs.

Depending on the style of light switch used in your country there may be commercially made switch covers available if you can’t 3D print them. There are also several 3D printing services online that can be fairly affordable, I’ve had decent service from Treatstock.

I also favour smart switches instead of smart bulbs. It avoids the problems of accidentally turning off the smart bulb with the dumb switch, and provides a fallback control method if part of the smart home stack is not working.

The main downside to this method is not being able to change the light colour and temperature of the bulbs. I have seen there are some smart switches and bulbs that can work combined but I haven’t tried them myself.

There are a variety of Zigbee switches and relay dukes that support “no neutral” wiring. SONOFF and Aqara both make them, there are even a few generic/Tuya ones I’ve seen.

They often don’t function as Zigbee routers, only end devices though despite being mains powered.

Anything that will run ESPHome or Tasmota is a safe bet. The ESPHome website has a list of supported devices here, and there is a Tasmota devices repository on the Blakadder website similar to the Zigbee one.

If it’s cheap enough it’s worth a go. For anyone new to Zigbee, always check the Zigbee device database to check compatibility with your platform.

I use mostly Sonoff, Aqara and Ikea, but I have a variety of other brands as well.

Sonoff is cheap and reliable, a few of their sensors have a the odd quirk but have worked well overall.

Aqara have more features and a more elegant physical design, but can be bit more expensive - although still cheaper than some other brands. I have a lot of their temperature/humidty and contact sensors and they look nice on my walls and windows.

The one problem with Aqara devices is they don’t properly follow the Zigbee standard, and don’t play well with some other brands, leading to constant disconnections. They do work fine with Ikea devices however. I had a lot of problems until I split my Zigbee network into 2, one with only Aqara and Ikea devices, and one with all the rest.

I’m also using a few devices from Samotech and Aurora, who have some good UK specific Zigbee devices such as rotary dimmer switches and smart sockets.

I have a few of the Aqara leak detectors and they have worked well.

They also have screw terminals that you can attach wires onto to extend the detection area/range. I’ve also seen people attach contact or pressure sensors to them, they are nifty devices.

I have a Broadlink RM4 Mini, it only does IR but it has worked well so far. The hardware is discreet and compact, so can easily placed somewhere discreet while still keeping line of sight. It has worked very reliably m.

Setting it up in Home Assistant is a bit cumbersome, it’s a bit time consuming to get all of the IR codes programmed. But once I had mine set up it’s worked fine with my TV, stereo, satellite box, and some IR remote controlled lights.

It can also be run fully locally. I have mine on a VLAN with no internet access and it runs without issue. There is also a Python program that can do initial setup to avoid the Broadlink app.

Flashing the Sonoff RF bridge can be tricky. There are different hardware revisions of the bridge, and not all can be flashed.

Both the WiFi chip and RF chip need to be flashed for full functionality. The newest version can’t be flashed, and the older version I have I could set up Tasmota but could not find any working way to flash the RF firmware.

Others have had no issues at all though, so results vary.