Our team is always on the lookout to expand the smart home products and solutions we provide, and we’d love to hear from this knowledgeable community about your preferences and setups. Your input will directly influence the technologies we prioritise, so please take a moment to share your insights!
Here’s what we’re curious about:
Protocols: What communication standards do you rely on most?
Pain Points: What frustrations do you face with current devices (e.g., reliability, setup complexity, integration)?
Dream Device: If you could buy a smart home product that solves a problem in your life, what features or compatibility would it have?
Favourite Brands/Products: Any specific devices or brands you swear by?
Whether you’re a tinkerer flashing custom firmware, a Home Assistant power user, or someone who prefers out-of-the-box simplicity, we want to hear from you! Your feedback will help us meet our goal of stocking products that truly meet your needs.
Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise — we’re excited to read your responses and build something awesome together!
I’m an avid HomeAssistant user. Most of my stuff runs on Tasmota, but I might give ESPHome a whirl soon, it looks cool and powerful too.
My main pain point is devices that lose the Wi-Fi connection and doesn’t reconnect. Official Sonoff devices are mostly immune to that. I have one Sonoff device that loses the Wifi. I have one knock-off two-gang touch switch in the kitchen that loses it weekly. All of them run Tasmota, so there does appear to be some hardware involvement.
The Sonoff touch-switches are rock solid. Never had a problem.
With all that said, my Victron EV charger (which runs an ESP32 chip) also occasionally loses the Wifi connection. Very rare, but it does happen. So I definitely also have some kind Wifi issue… but I cannot pinpoint it yet.
Protocols: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Cat 5 UTP for “mission critical” devices.
Firmware/Platforms: Adding NodeRED and never be “forced” to connect to a web server, run Local by default.
Pain Points: Setup/integration - make it all plug and play like Shelly did.
Dream Device: Link to the Cerbo, have menu dropdowns for devices, with menu options to configure each, with manual override for more complex instructions.
Favourite Brands/Products: Victron Venus/Cerbo with NodeRED with devices like i.e. with Shelly like simplicity.
… offer an affordable service to login locally to users device, quickly configure the basics, then let user take over with menu’s. The time it takes to get shiite going, stable, is sometimes not worth the automation.
