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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

I have been using home assistance for a few years now, having migrated from the SmartThings eco system.

Over all I am happy with it, but it is increasingly harder to find devices that are not cloud encumbered, even some things that have integrations with HA are basically HA interacting with the OEM cloud API, which not local control.

I prefer zigbee, but I fear the migration from Zigbee to "Matter" is going in the wrong direction, as Amazon and Google are really pushing cloud based control over Local Control...

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I use Shelly relays installed behind all my switches to automate every single light in the house: https://shelly.cloud. As a perk you retain the functionality of the existing light switch.

They are reasonably priced, are built with local control as the primary feature and there's not even a hint of Silicon Valley/VC/"growth & engagement" smell.

It probably helps that they're based in Bulgaria.

And you can also reflash them with Tasmota/ESPHome for fully local control.

> I use Shelly relays installed behind all my switches [...]

> As a perk you retain the functionality of the existing light switch

This sounds super interesting, so both the control from shelly/HA and the physical light switch can be used?

Do you have any pictures/blog/something about how to set that up? I briefly looked into this in the past, but it seemed impossible with the existing wiring (only the live wire is behind the physical switch, no neutral).

Here are some wiring diagrams that should make it obvious: https://shelly.cloud/knowledge-base/devices/shelly-1l/#tab_6...

Basically the switch becomes a simple boolean input to the Shelly - the actual module is always powered. This allows you to turn it on via the network and turn off at the switch if you wanted to, or completely detach the switch from the actual light and only use it as an input to your home automation controller (maybe you want to use it to toggle a different light than the one it's connected to?).

For no-neutral operation they sell bypass resistors that you can put in parallel with your light to pass through enough current to keep the Shelly powered on.

But my understanding is that Matter is conceptually just porting Zigbee to run on IPv6, and no longer being tied to the special Zigbee variation of IEEE 802.15.4.

Matter re-uses the Zigbee Cluster library for actual device control. It can operate over any layer 1 and 2 solutions that support ipv6, but the blessed implementations seem to be Ethernet, Wifi, Thread, and Bluetooth.

It will remain local control, on Apple's insistence. Apple is pretty stubborn, in that the only cloud server allowed to be involved in its home automation systems is iCloud, which is basically only used to let Siri on your phone control your home when away from home.

But that is the thing. The special 802.15.4 is what made zigbee attractive to people like me. How have their own custom zigbee hub and uses a variety of devices from several manufacturers that have all of them report to the zigbee hub that I control

Moving it to just standard wifi, Ethernet, etc will allow device manufacturers to lock out people like me

Others in the community seem excited for it however anytime you have Amazon, Google, and Apple all working together I can never see how that results in good things for users as each are open hostile to user control in various ways.

> some things that have integrations with HA are basically HA interacting with the OEM cloud API, which [is] not local control.

That's surprising+disappointing to hear. I wonder if there's some sort of list of devices that rely on this ? Would be good to avoid them.

I've actually found it easier to find zigbee devices at reasonable prices lately due to Amazon including ZigBee in their recent hubs.

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