A lot of good real life exp and info here, thanks TS.

Just wondering if Terncy can integrate with Home Assistant? If not I think i will have to go for Sonoff route. Ultimately I want a smart home to decide and everything for me, no more touching of switch, be it on the wall or on the phone. (ideally)

Just went to look up information on terncy. Looks solid, but the price damn solid. On Taobao, it's about RM180 for the wall switch. definitely not a cheap solution, imagine replacing for the whole house wow.

@kokhoong0624 what's your take? do you feel it's worth the money so far?

The pros is that it's all zigbee 3.0, which technically should be completely open, so with a HA + Mqtt2Zigbee + the CC2531 USB zigbee stick, technically you can already integrate everything into HA. Only issue is that Terncy or Xiaoyan is not officially recognised / listed within the zigbee alliance. And the certified product page in Zigbee alliance also didnt have any item for terncy / xiaoyan.

Nice to know that they are responsive. Now just need to wait for house to be ready, of coz that depend on the MCO.

You can search "86型暗盒" in taobao, or go to this link: https://s.taobao.com/search?q=86%E5%9E%8B%E...0200514&ie=utf8

BULL/公牛 is one of the biggest company in China selling switch related product. I think should be quite reputable. Just make sure you get from the official store if possible.

Just chatted with their sales support via Taobao
1. confirmed that it's not zigbee 3 certified, and it will be limited to xiaoyan/terncy ecosystem
2. they are not developing any integration to HA

Not sure if this sales too lazy to ask the relevant department or what, but somehow we got very diff answer for the same question.

I think they really need to train their customer service, they way their CS answer me really dont give me any confidence. Good thing is my house CCC is affected by MCO, so still got a few months to go before CCC and defect checking, if by then xiaoyan can get the Homeassistant sorted out then i will probably opt for xiaoyan brand for blinds and switch.

But again, see the price still a bit hati sakit.

Also can i trouble you to list down all the switches you use in your house? breakdown by rooms. The terncy look like pretty good price to buy now, but im not sure how many i need for the terrace house, will like to ref your set up and plus / minus according to my needs.

Get the one with neutral wires right?

Also got the number of gang im a bit puzzled, for normal switch 1-4 gang related to the number of switch on the plate itself, but this product seems to only have the 4 switch design, meaning 1 gang = 4 switch on the plate that does 1 thing only? or is it they have diff switch for diff gang count?

Ok noted, so basically just get the 4 gangs whenever possible? since i can just not connect the wires and program the button instead, one last thing, without internet those i connected with wires will still work like a normal switch right?

Lucky it's gonna be a new house, so i'll make sure everything point is connected to neutral.

took the plunge and bought 22 hope i get more than enough.

the shopee customer support is way way way way way better than the one from taobao. really helpful and answered a lot of questions. Like you said, they are already testing the HA integration now, to be released soon. now just waiting for their item to be on discount.

managed to get a free home center from them. Hope they really deliver.

Anyway, thanks for posting your experience here, really helpful, and also thanks for answering all the questions i had This switch really fit what i'm looking for in terms of looks and functions. just the money is really burn a hole in my pocket. only missing item now is 20A switch from them. Told the CS about this, hopefully they will feedback to their team. I guess for them to create a 20A switch shouldn't be too troublesome, is just whether they think got the market or not.

Their 16A switch is scheduled for this year release. That's what i get from their customer support. That is also if you are not in a rush to replace / use.

Possible definitely yes, just matter of how troublesome and how much.

1. answered by kiding
2. I believe you are asking for switches that have lesser gang vs the physical button, like terncy switch have 4 buttons but they are sold in 1 to 4 gangs. If you buy switch with 4 buttons with 1 gang, means you can have 1 button connect to wires. So that 1 gang will work as per normal dumb switch without any setup. The other 3 buttons is call programmable buttons, they are useless button if you never set up any automation. If budget allowed, buy full gang switch, at least for terncy's switch, say i buy 4 gang, only 2 connected to wires, 2 more empty gang can be used as programmable buttons.
3. That's my intended strategy, but based on my research, not a lot of the appliances is homekit enabled. Im ok with this route, mainly because im using terncy for all my switch, at the worst case scenario, i have a "universal" remote control version of "dump" smart home. Yes, can add more devices via homebridge, but again, not everything is straight forward to install and set up. At the very least a lot of the xiaomi stuff required more effort to get the token required to add to homebridge. Plus, i will set up home assistant as well to have a "more smart" smart home in long run.

This post has been edited by hungrygodzilla: May 5 2021, 06:05 PM

It is supposingly and ideally a universal language, but company built the wall around their product to suck you into their eco system.

A "smart home" is not much different from a "normal home". Since you are re-building or renovating, a few things you can do to get your house a bit more "smart-ready".

1. Add neutral wire to every single point
2. Plan your ethernet ports properly, so that all your mesh router can be connected via ethernet cables, you can also kinda future proof your house by using better ethernet cables like cat 6, 7 or well if you have budget, 8? Anything other than the good old 5e will do
3. Add more power points, i cannot stress this enough

that's all. really.

Most of the smart "devices" are mostly wireless, like sensors, even alarm system can be fully wireless, so not much cables involved. Additional things you can consider:

- position of your router and smart home hub, again, you need to ensure ethernet cable as much as possible, also power points, you cannot underestimate number of power points you need to connect all those hubs, devices, and stuff.
- touching on previous point, the position, it will kinda make sense to have everything in your store room, your fibre point is most probably there, plus ample room for storage, so by right it should make sense right? just that on long run, when communicating with wireless devices, esp thru protocol like zwave, zigbee, blutooth, they all have limited range, plus, further limited by number of walls they need to penetrate, having the hub and server in store room means you have to penetrate the store room walls.
- Find a hub or system or ecosystem whatever your call that, that can support all if not most of the devices you gonna use, it's extremely painful to have 2000000 apps to control everything in your house, oh you wanna start the vacumm? let me open xiaomi app, oh you wanna turn on lights? let me use xxx app... and so on
- Visualize your ideal smart home, this is very tricky because a lot of people are just not familiar with the term "smart home", and there's a lot of videos out there introducing their view of smart home, a lot of these example, looks good on their demo video, but does it really make sense in real life? Most probably not. A simple example, turn on living room lights when you open door... on first glance like cool right? return home no need to turn on lights, but what if you family off most lights to enjoy netflix, then you open door, bang! lights! lights! lights! thanks for ruining the mood, not to mention if you wife taking a nap and you just awoken a tiger. good luck.

For me, before i start everything, my goal is simple:
1. since im a long time iphone user, so i wish more devices to work with homekit and siri.
2. i have programming background, so i m mostly ok to DIY
3. related to point 2, i want total control over my automation, i need the ability to configure more complex automation conditions and reactions so i can customized fully to my family's usage habit
4. most devices should be "local" as much as possible, i hate the lag time waiting for response from oversea servers, and our internet is not the best
5. everything should function without smart home, supposed i remove all smart hub and stuff, my lights still have to be able to turn on
5. my order of automation type: sensor triggered > voice control > app control > manual control. Best automation to me is it just happen without you doing anything to control, 2nd is voice control, tbh voice control can be tricky, because not all the time the machine understand what you want, and there's a noticeable lag between voice command and action, you always wonder, is it successful? or will siri reply, "i dont know...", 3rd is finding the app and open the app, wait for it to load, sometime they will kick you out of the login sessions, so you need to login again, then load again, then control what you want, then wait for result. Last of coz is manual control, no need to explain.

so consolidate all my requirements and research, home assistant is what im looking for, and im really kinda enjoying most of my automation now. so when you decide on the main system, first decide what is your requirements and goals first.

Your point #3, contractor not keen, my personal guess is that it's out of their scope, they know nth about smart home, new tech and etc, and mostly, they are just not willing to pick up new knowledge, especially now that it's still not the common trend yet, be it lazy or stubborn or even ego problem. working with things they dont know, 1 they need more time to learn / try, 2 they are responsible for something new, and if anything done wrong, they are responsible, 3, waste time waste energy, just wanna complete 1 project move to another

This post has been edited by hungrygodzilla: Oct 24 2021, 02:45 PM