The Jimmerness - Adventures in Home Automation

The project: "I need a button for the bedroom, so I can get your attention when you're downstairs." I looked for a button that was inexpensive and could link up to my existing home assistant setup. Sadly, it took awhile to get a Tradfri - they were frequently low or out of stock at the IKEA 60 minutes away. I eventually just mail-ordered two when they got in stock. Nice size. Good weight. Uses Zigbee. Did not come with real instructions (probably supposed to install the app). Zigbee pairing modes for Home assistant and IKEA Tradfri Configuration > Integrations > HubZ Smart Home Controller (add it if you don't) > Configure. To have Home Assistant go into pairing mode, click on "ADD DEVICE" in the lower-right corner.  Eventually I figured out you needed to click the button next to the battery 5 times in succession to be in discovery mode. A small red LED will blink through the front case when it starts trying to pair. First Roadblock I use a Nortek HU...

Purchased online for $50, the Nortek Z-Wave/Zigbee USB dongle seems like the easy way to add Z-Wave and Zigbee functionality to Home Assistant.  What is Z-Wave? It uses radio wave frequencies to connect to each other, in the 800-900 MHz range. This means it's not going to interfere/be interfered with, from your wi-fi network (running either on 2.4 or 5GHz). The Z-Wave devices can (but not all do) repeat signals, creating a Z-Wave mesh. It's limited to 232 devices, which is plenty for my purposes, but allegedly opening up to more as time goes on. What is Zigbee? It is similar, but uses the 2.4GHz range. Zigbee devices can also create a mesh, but due to a multitude of different implementations, one Zigbee device may not link to another brand's Zigbee device. Zigbee send messages faster, and can have 65,000 devices on the network...which seems like overkill. To Choose, or Not to Choose Rather than pick one, and be limited to one type of device - the USB dongle seems like a fai...