Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Definitely Zigbee or Z-wave instead of wifi. Once you start to build out more devices you will be glad to not have gone down the wifi route.
I went with Zigbee and have Sonoff SNZB-02 temperature and humidity sensors in each room that have been absolutely flawless since the day I installed them, and they last about two years on a single battery!
I would obviously recommend them but I don't have any experience of other thermostats or of Z-wave.
I did also install smart Zigbee TRVs on each radiator but I don't rely on the internal thermostats of them as they don't accurately represents the overall room temperature.
+1 for ZigBee - if cost is a factor you can get really cheap ZigBee devices from AliExpress and the like - $10 or less per temperature sensor. Z-wave requires certification for all devices supporting it, so they tend to be more expensive and more limited in variety.
Blakadder's ZigBee Repository is a great resource for verifying device compatibility with your chosen ZigBee integration - ZHA or Zigbee2mqtt. This might depend on your coordinator choice, as some (such as the Home Assistant Gen 1 usb-drive ones) only support ZHA, for example.
For a coordinator, the Home Assistant brand ones are reportedly quite good, especially the second gen one. I personally use a SMLight SLZB-06, reasonably priced and supports power over Ethernet, so I have it wall mounted centrally. I also have my home assistant instance running in a separate building, so something that works over IP was a must.
I probably would have gone with zwave or thread but zigbee is always way cheaper. Maybe someday the others will come down in price.
If you're just starting to build out, what about using thread instead of zigbee or zwave?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
I second that solution. I've built the same setup for my home last Christmas, even tried different brands of TRVs to see which one I like. Works perfectly well with a Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant. The only issues I ran into were my lack of experience.