How to make "smart" outdoor marine led lights

ok, it makes sense… thank you heaps

@rossko57 sorry for the question… just thought about your answer below:

I do not have any “connected plug” yet… would you recommend to keep one standard (for consistency) or multiple standards to prevent “multiple failure”?

e.g. if I need to buy 4 Sonoff Basic R3, shoudl I buy all of them ZigBee or two ZigBee and two Wifi? (this will help in case one of the network fail… BUT at the same time it will make the management more complex… no?)

Sorry if the question is “silly”… :slight_smile:

That’s right. You need to assess the relative risks and consequences.
Is your router more likely to blow up than a Zigbee dongle?
If you have both, you’ve doubled your chance of something blowing up.
Is it more likely I will mess up a setting myself?
If there are two different sets of settings to meddle with, am I more likely to make a mistake?
If half my things are lost, what are the chances that includes the one really important thing?
Can you even get Zigbee TV controls? Or WiFi door switches?

Why didn’t I design my system so that things can still work, e.g. by getting up and pressing a button, so that network or server loss isn’t the end of the world?

And you’ll need to balance all that against cost.

Don’t agonize over this stuff - buy something, make it work. Change your mind, add some more. Replace what you don’t like.
This is what openHAB is for.

I absolutely agree! I started with Samsung SmartThings. I used the Samsung branded sensors and plugs for a while, then I started to buy some more readily available zwave things like fibaro, aeon labs etc. I have since downsized my smartthings steup, removed devices and added them to openhab.

Personally I like zwave because the sheer number of devices out there is huge. I have tended to lean towards this one rather than zigbee - but this is my own preference and opinion! Im sure you will get your own once you get a little more into it.
I have started to look into a few wifi devices.
I ended up buying a Xiaomi hub with some sensors.
Ive set up an MQTT server and have now written my own scripts on arduino boards to control relays and read temperature sensors and pass this data to the MQTT binding.
I have Philips hue set up and linked for my lights (which use zigbee but you dont get to play with this as they all link to the hub).
So as you can see, its all about getting lots of different systems and integrating them to openhab and using that as your central operating system.