Woah really? I love learning such simple facts - thank you!

My favorite is Kalamata olives and pepperoni, but your post reminded me that fennel and sausage is easily a close second - did not expect to like that flavor combination at all (really just not a fennel fan). Everyone should try it if they get the chance!

I started with ZHA, but moved to Z2M because there was an automation blueprint I needed that was only coded for z2m.

Gotta say, I’m a much bigger fan of the z2m interface. There’s nothing wrong with ZHA but unless something major changes, I don’t see the need to ever switch back.

RatGDO can do this without the need for a magnetic switch. It’s a simple ESP32 board with easy-to-terminate wire terminals. It also lets you control the lights on your opener, see the current status of the door, and even open the door to an exact in-between position (if your door supports it).

You can program your own ESP32 if you like, or buy one from the guy that made it directly for ~$40.

Still - props to you for making your own solution! I know it’s extra satisfying when you can homebrew your own smart home solutions from scratch - just wanted to share another solution for people who don’t have the same skills.

I’ve never dug into this personally but can’t you set certain dashboards to be admin only? That way you can hide those entities on a dashboard only you have access to.

I assume this wouldn’t prevent someone from going into the full list of entities in the settings menu though.

This was a surprisingly well thought out and educational article - thank you! Was expecting a super basic article for the masses, but this had a number of quality suggestions, pros and cons of the different options, and even the authors personal opinion on preference of Z2M in case the reader wanted a real suggestion.

Thanks so much for this!

Only thing I think I noticed that could be corrected is OTA updates are no longer exclusive to Z2M - ZHA recently added this too, though I haven’t tried it yet and don’t see a reason to ever switch back from Z2M.

FYI- I received an email the other day that sonos officially added voice control for Spotify!

lol I like that pause button idea!

Agreed to not overdo it. I’m trying to coach my SO on every automation so she can appreciate the added convenience too, which means keeping the automations logical and simple.

My one exception to this is two light switches that will turn all lights in the house on or off with a quadruple press, in case I’m on my way out the door or to bed and want to make sure I turn off any lights I forgot about. That one I figure has to be hard enough to press that someone can’t accidentally turn on the bedroom lights in the middle of the night.

The only thing inovelli is missing is presence detection. I have two of their upcoming mmWave switches on preorder that should take care of that though!

Fingers crossed! I know one YouTuber I follow mentioned it in his “2024 predictions” - wasn’t sure if he was pulling ideas out of his butt or if there had been actual commitment to this idea. Your comment gives me hope it’s the latter!

This is what I went with and god they are amazing. Automations can be made for pressing up, down, and the configure buttons for a hold, single, double, triple, quadruple, or event quintuple press.

The only challenge is remembering what all of your automations are! But I use the double press automation daily to save me from running downstairs to turn off the lights and could not be happier with this product!

I don’t have an answer for you, but this comment reminds me how badly home assistant needs to add subfolders for organizing and grouping our automations

I never thought I’d be the kind of person to use voice commands, but it is so nice to tell it to turn on the radio while I’m cooking dinner!

I had something similar (although probably unrelated) happen last week. All of a sudden my router went offline and nothing was getting an internet connection. Sonoff coordinator lost connection with all zigbee devices went unavailable at the same time. Tried rebooting my home assistant pc, router, unplugging sonoff antenna, switching Ethernet ports, etc without luck.

Power cycling my Ethernet switches fixed it immediately. No idea why that did the trick. This has never happened before. I’m on Verizon fios if that matters.

Posting here in case it helps someone identify a common thread/root cause for OP and me, because I thought it was bizarre that an Ethernet switch would ever need to be power cycled!

Can confirm timer works - set a 5 minute timer for playing music in the family room).

Spotify does work with Sonos now (I don’t use it but I have my account set up with it), but voice control does not work with Spotify.

Ok - agree to disagree! Just wanted to share my experience with the community on a quality local voice control that’s available today while the home assistant community works on these exciting developments.

I think an important correction here is that they say they will only commit to a minimum of 5 years of software updates after they stop selling a particular model.

Even then, there is no reason the speaker wouldn’t still work. To me, that sounds perfectly reasonable. There’s posts about a 15 year old play 5 speaker getting a firmware update within the last year even, so I think Sonos deserves credit where credit is due. They have a proven track record so far, but no doubt it’s something to keep an eye on going forward.

I don’t think Sonos gets enough credit for their local voice control capability. It can’t be integrated into home assistant to do anything beyond controlling the Sonos speakers, but I have been ABSOLUTELY blown away by how responsive the voice commands have been. Literally a 100% success rate after using it for a couple months now. It correctly interprets if you want to start/stop playing, can find music by the artist I want from Apple Music (not sure about other streaming services), and will correctly adjust playing status for a specific speaker if you say to adjust music on that speaker only - even if you command it from another room.

The best part - no bullshit worst responses about “by the way….” Like on Alexa. At most, you get a short response like “good choice” or “ok”.

Sonos isn’t cheap, but I would 100% buy them again every time because it just works.

Thanks for confirming you had no issues (along with everyone else’s responses!). I took the plunge and updated yesterday and so far no issues apart from my inovelli switch triggers still missing. Luckily someone made an automation blueprint that circumvents this issue but it would still be nice to have that back! And to be fair, idk if that’s an MQTT issue or an issue with the 2.15 firmware on the switch.

Seems like a big update - do most Z2M updates include this many fixes/additions? I’m new to Z2M and am hesitant about updating unless I see a fix that will directly affect me positively.

Can anyone here report if they’re having any issues after updating? Looking at the comments, a number of people are reporting their devices not working shortly after updating, but idk if10 or so people posting is a large or small percentage of the user base.

Adding another vote on the inovelli blues. Zigbee network has been rock solid for me. Integration with homeassistant has been flawless too - could not be happier with my purchase. It also helps that the company has a great track record with transparency and working with the community to improve their product.

One detail I don’t see mentioned often is the zigbee switches are a little smaller than the zwaves, making them easier to fit into the junction box. My house is old and has very small boxes - not sure these would have fit in some places if they were any bigger!!