Wireless setup for roll shutters, lights, etc

Hello,
I am going to order roll shutters (probably Somfy Tahoma) and lights (probably Philips Hue). And later some AC units. I would like to control these devices with Openhab. All devices are yet to be ordered. Do I need to know something important before ordering any of these? Do I need also some sort of bridges for each of the device? For example Philips Hue have their Bridge for lights. Somfy has their own Bridge too for roll shutters. Do I also need to buy all of these bridges so Openhab is compatible with it? I have seen there are OH addons available to Hue and Somfy.
So far I only have experience with GPIO wired setup for reading sensor values and switching power sockets on and off. Garage things.

  • Platform information:
    • Hardware: Raspberry Pi 4
    • OS: openHABian

Read the docs for each add-on. It will make it clear whether or not a bridge is required. Almost always the bridge is required because these devices do not speak WiFi but some other radio frequency and protocol and there needs to be hardware to send/receive on that.

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Yes you would need all the bridges. Unless they add significant benefit to you - roller shutters and most lights arenā€™t mission critical -, Iā€™d rather consider going for different systems such Wi-Fi based Shelly actuators or a mesh based on ZigBee or ZWave.

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Thanks for ideas. I will consider Shelly 2.5 wifi relays for my window shutters since it does not require bridge.
Regarding lightning, I found this openHAB Hue Emulation Service maybe it is the way how to avoid Philips bridge.
I will have to look into it somewhat deeper.

No, thatā€™s a way to make Items in openHAB appear to other systems (e.g. Alexa) as Hue devices. It doesnā€™t let you avoid a Hue Hub.

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Hello again,
I have already ordered one of the Shelly wifi relay to experiment with it. I like the idea it works without the ā€œbridgeā€ and it seems it has some sort of cloud API.
Now I am thinking to do same thing with the lights. Instead buying Philips Hue set with bridge I can use smart wifi light bulbs/strips. Many of them do not require dedicated bridge and can somehow connect to home wifi network using existing wifi router (at leas this is my understanding). They are controlled or programmed with appropriate mobile app. But market is full of these smart light bulbs for example NEDIS, TP-Link, Niceboy ION, Blight, Vocolinc, NiteBird, Moesā€¦ What parameter should I look for in order to be able to control given device using OpenHAB? Should I look for if they offer API documentation (like Shelly) or something else?

It has, but you donā€˜t need it. Shelly binding works completely local, no internet connection needed.

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For zigbee and zvawe devices you donā€™t realy need the bridge from the manufacturer, but you will for sure need some device that can talk that protocol. Usualy those protocol devices are ina USB stick form, and you could use single USB stick to control and monitor devices from different manufacturers simultaneously.

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I also work with Shelly 2.5 relays with 17 roller shutters. I have no issues at all after nearly 1 year of experience. They work like a charme. I have a dual setup with openHAB and homebridge (yeah, sometimes plug-and-play is also nice :smiley:) and in both systems I have no issues at all. The Shellys are decoupled from the internet, everything happens here on my local environment.

The only thing to pay attention to: Only 2,4 GHz Wifi is supported but this should not be a drawback I think.

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