I’m looking for recommendations on a good smart plug which doesn’t rely on vendor cloud for a garage light, ie something I can automate with a PIR and openhab.
ie I want switch it based on garage opening and movement.
i can do the first but not sure about wiring the PIR, are there smart switches with PIR?
I used wifi light bulbs that I flashed with tasmota.
Don’t get Tuya light bulbs as you cannot flash those easily anymore.
I am using mostly Zigbee devces now as they just work even if it has Tuya on the box.
Zigbee2mqtt works well.
I have Phillips Hue motion sensors and they are zigbee and also have temperature and lux sensors so you can program Openhab to turn on the lights only when it is a certain lux setting.
I’ve been using Xiaomi ZigBee motion sensors around the house. Battery powered. Haven’t had to replace any batteries from the motion sensors yet in 2+ years. Some sensors are for the hallway which gets a lot of traffic every day. It also has a lux sensor.
As for smart plugs… I haven’t had to buy one recently so not sure about the state of flashability. There’s this preflashed with either tasmota or esphome
https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/esphome-au-plug
I’ve been wanting to try an IKEA one (ZigBee)
Thanks for reply, I currently don’t have any zigbee support so preferably using wifi, are there any off the shelf PIR sensor or do I need to go down the DIY?
Wifi will need a power supply. I don’t know of an off the shelf product.
If you have an alarm system (DSC) you could use its motion sensors for automation.
Another idea is to use a camera and human detection.
ZigBee is nice though and I’d suggest you to get into the system with zigbee2mqtt. All you need is a $20 dongle from zonoff, shipped to Australia in a week or so.
I did buy an Aldi 240v sensor light bulb (dumb light) and it turned on even when it was daylight but what I did was set openhab to apply power to the bulb when the phase of the day was not daylight. It worked well. I had that as my outside front light. It was simple but worked.
Zigbee2mqtt is the way to go. Zigbee uses less power and also you don’t fill up your wifi router with devices. Some routers can only have up to 16/32 devices. I found that out when things stopped working. Zigbee limit is way more than that and it is also a mesh network.
I don’t buy wifi devices anymore. P.S I am in Australia as well.