Think a large office space or industrial application with several hundred (or thousands) of hosts connected to the network. Some of them need to be isolated from the internet and/or rest of the network, some need only access to the internet, some need internet and local services and so on.

With that kind of setup you could just run separate cables and unmanaged switches for every different type of network you have and have the router manage where each of those can talk to. However, that would be pretty difficult to change or expand while being pretty expensive as you need a ton of hardware and cabling to do it. Instead you use VLANs which kinda-sorta split your single hardware switch into multiple virtual ones and you can still manage their access from a single router.

If you replace all the switches with routers they’re quite a bit more expensive and there’s not too many routers with 24 or 48 ports around. And additonally router configuration is more complex than just telling the switch that ‘ports 1-10 are on vlan id 5 and ports 15-20 are on id 8’. With dozens of switches that adds up pretty fast. And while you could run most routers as a switch you’ll just waste your money with that.

VLANs can be pretty useful in home environment too, but they’re mostly used in bigger environments.

I got HeatIT Z-Push for my Z-wave network recently and it has worked just fine for the short time I’ve been using it.

For wifi-enabled smart devices I created a separate VLAN where all IOT stuff is and that network doesn’t have access to the internet at all, but you could just assign static IP addresses to the devices and prevent them from accessing the internet on the firewall. That’s of course true only for devices you can control via LAN access as well, if your devices happen to work only with the cloud then that approach won’t work.

Our Gree heatpump only needed cloud access for a minute during setup and now it receives command via Home Assistant, but I can understand that even that can be too much information to leak out of the network. At least they got my public IP address and location data from my phone (setup was only possible with an mobile app which required some permissions to work at all), so better approach would’ve been to check these things before purchase.

If you want to wander more on the DIY side of things with ESPHome you can design what ever kind of button array you wish, but that’s a bit more complex route and if you’re just looking for a simple wall mounted switch that might not be the best option out there.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. –Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981

Initial assumption that it’s faster to sneakernet couple hundred GB’s is a bit dated (as are other measurements, you can fit a lot more data in a milk jug on sd cards today), but theory remains the same.

Whatever came with that kit, so the quality is certainly superb, specs are nowhere to be found. I tried to use 100ohm resistor and even attempted to use it without resistor as there’s plenty of schematics around the web without one. I know that’s not ideal, but with 50% duty cycle and short pulses it shouldn’t cause problems.

And then you can’t easily cut power from the fixture if you need to replace the bulb or change the whole lamp altogether. I wouldn’t recommend doing this, especially if you don’t have a socket on the ceiling to remove the fixture.

This is my preferred solution. I like the option that I can use the switch as normal and still get benefits of automations. Switches should outlast any bulb on the market and with other family members around there’s no way to guarantee that they stay in place. Plus with that I can change the lamp itself to self-contained LED without bulb or something else and it’ll still be ‘smart’.

But if I absolutely had to go that route I’d get white tape (assuming the faceplate is white) and use that to hold rockers in place. It’s still easy to switch off if needed but that would give a pretty strong indication that it shouldn’t be operated normally. Preventing access to a switch or jamming them with something doesn’t seem like an safe option and it may be against the code depending on where you live.

I see you can only buy as B2B?

Hm… I’ve also purchased everything from them as B2B, but I’m pretty sure you can checkout without retail login, just add stuff to the cart and checkout with paypal.

I’m a very much beginner on this and I’m just upgrading an old(ish, latest big remodel is from 90-91) house, so for me it’s important to have an solution which can extend on the existing wiring. I have couple of HeatIt Z-DIM2 dimmers and couple switches from TechniSat (altough these are pretty much impossible to get from Finland which would be nice for warranty and such). The best part for me is that you’ll still have the actual light switch, and on my case even the same rockers and covers from old ones, so you can either rely on automations with movement and light sensors and you still have the option to interact with lights by physically pushing buttons and turning knobs.

I also recently switched one of our floor heating thermostats to z-wave one (HeatIt Z-TRM3) with the same principle. It functions just the same than old one, so you can interact with it physically and then there’s the option to run as complex automations as you wish on the background. Personally I don’t like to rely only on (local) server and interface on my phone/tablet, since it’s often more convenient just to push a switch on a wall than open my phone and find an app on it (but the option to control stuff via app is nice).

Z-Wave has european store (shop.zwave.eu) and I’m pretty happy doing business with them. Couple of B-stock (customer returns and things like that) got RMA’d but beyond that they’ve been pretty reliable and warranties seem to work. Zigbee is something I’m planning to add, but for me they’re not a priority as there’s a lot to do for optimizing electricity consumption with existing hardware.

For DIY side of things I have couple of ESP32 based chinese knockoffs I’m planning to use with DHT22 sensors and potentially some LED strips, but that’s somewhere in the future. I also tinkered a bit with MySensors (mysensors.org) but NRF24L01+ transreceivers I got from ebay (dirt cheap, less than 1€ each) are apparently some counterfeits or factory rejects, as I didn’t get them to work reliably at all even from one end of the desk to another. Specially from ebay the price point of those is really tempting to add a ton of sensors to the system, but in my experience cheaping out on these is just a waste of money. I’m not that experienced with electronics tho, so maybe someone more experienced can give a more educated answer on these.

For smart plugs I have two POPE700397 to plug in random things. I got them to control car engine/indoor heaters and for that they’ve been really nice. I just need to work with home assistant addons a bit to get the scedule management to work properly with a smart phone. The stock timer on HA is a pain in the rear to manage with a touch screen, with keyboard and mouse it works just fine, but I don’t want to open a computer whenever I need to adjust times for those.

For whatever reason formatting broke, it looked fine with preview before posting, but it’s now fixed.

Your configuration works just fine, thank you for that, I modified it for my sensor, but it would be nice to know why the previous attempt didn’t work.

And as they’ll use mobile app, potentially a metric shit ton of more. Location, contacts, usage patterns, make/model of phone, other connected devices on your wifi and the list goes on and on. I’m not sure if they actually get everything they can like tiktok, but atleat theoretical possibility exists.

If I wanted high security I would be re-enforcing my ground level window first.

That’s absolutely the correct answer, but personally I still wouldn’t leave an option to enter and leave the house without leaving a trace of breaking in. And some of those “security” locks are faster to bypass with a magnet or a paper clip than it’s to actually open them the way they are intended.

I have assa-abloy classics on my doors and while they can be picked it’s not something your average home robber will pick, it’s far easier to smash the window right next to the door and open the door from inside. Difference is that broken window is a clear evidence, opening a lock without any traces or suspicious sounds can be an issue with insurance and/or police.

You are of course correct, the lock alone won’t do much if someone really wants to come in but I would make sure that I’m not helping malicious people by using poor quality locks.

I don’t know about models you should look for, but if Lock Picking Lawyer has taught me anything it’s that smart device manufacturers tend to be quite bad at making locks. No matter how strong encryption it has or how many other buzzwords they have on the website if the whole thing is bypassed with a magnet in 5 seconds.

What’s your plan on tablet going to sleep? Just force it to stay on 24/7 or is there some kiosk-manager or something which actually works and doesn’t break the whole experience every now and then?