Constructing a Smart Home
Early notes for a smart home that works without the cloud: Home Assistant, MQTT, Zigbee and ESPHome, and how my network door opener fits in.
Open in the interactive Digital Garden
After the Network Door Opener and the note about the Privacy of Smart Devices, the next step is obvious: a smart home that keeps working when the Internet – or the manufacturer – goes away. This is still a seed, so for now these are mostly my notes and plans.
The Idea
- Local first. A light switch should not need a server in another country.
- One centre: Home Assistant on a small server, with Mosquitto as the MQTT broker.
- Devices that talk locally: Zigbee sensors through Zigbee2MQTT, my own ESP32 boards with ESPHome, and plugs flashed with Tasmota.
- Everything still works by hand – the switch on the wall must always win.
What I Want to Cover
- A short history: from X10 in the 1970s to Zigbee, Z-Wave and the new Matter standard.
- How MQTT works and why it's so good for small devices.
- Example: Home Assistant with one Zigbee temperature sensor and one plug.
- Example: an automation that turns the lights off when nobody is home – without a cloud account.
- Security: a separate network (VLAN) for smart devices, and no ports open to the Internet.
Tools I'm collecting for this are in my Home Automation & Monitoring resources.