this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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How to get lights to turn on when we enter a room? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 11 months ago by sleepyvoid@lemmy.ml to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world
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Hey guys, I'm thinking about setting up HA. A big positive would be if our bedroom lights (Feit brand) turned on when we enter the room.

Or similarly in my office, I have an LED light that plugs in to a power strip, so I could use a motion sensor + a Wemo power switch I already have to trigger my office light to turn on.

What motion sensor works and isn't expensive?

Sidebar: also, is it possible to link a wifi connected light switch to operate our Feit bulbs? The lamp is plugged in to a socket that doesn't connect to the only light switch in the room and it gets old having to tell Google home every time we enter or leave the room.

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[–] Lifebandit666 2 points 11 months ago

I use Aqara motion sensors. They are cheap (Ali express), battery operated (can put them anywhere) and have always worked for me.

They are ZigBee, so the caveat is that you will need a dongle to use them. Mine is a Zig Ah Zig Ah from ElectroLlama and cosy under £20.

The reason I moved from WIFI to ZigBee is for reliability. WiFi just isn't reliable. Any mains powered ZigBee device (bulbs, switches) are also usually routers, so the signal can be bunny hopped between nodes in the ZigBee network, unlike WiFi.

Also yes, one of the beautiful things about HA is that it is the middle man between many many different manufacturers of smart home appliances, so if you automate your main lights you should be able to add in a plugged in lamp to the automation.