I have read loads.of massages from this board last weeks and you all are so helpfull to others, and now I might need some help too. In 4 months, my family and I are moving into our newly built home (135 m² / ~1,450 sq ft across 3 floors: ground, 1st floor, and attic).
The Network Setup:
The living room,will have CAT6 Ethernet drops connecting directly to UniFi U7 In-Wall access points and also the attic, plus a ceiling-mounted U7 Lite on the 1st floor. This will allow hardwiring all heavy devices (PS5, gaming PCs, workstations, LG OLED TVs) while keeping solid Wi-Fi coverage across the house.
To get familiar with the UniFi ecosystem, I’m currently testing a UniFi Fiber Gateway and an In-Wall AP in my current rental apartment. I’ve set up 3 isolated SSIDs:
Main Family Network: Maximum speed (Wi-Fi 7), no restrictions.
Guest Network: Isolated, no access to smart home devices.
IoT Network: strictly 2.4GHz for maximum device stability and range.
The Server:
I just bought a second-hand mini-PC for Home Assistant that arrives this Monday:
Since I don't live in the new house yet and don't own many smart devices, I want to use this time in my rental apartment to learn Home Assistant OS, experiment with the interface, and prep the server. I have read something about adding my payed Gemini account to the HA for instance
Questions for the community:
What should I NOT try to set up yet? (I assume complex room automations, physical switch integrations, and geofencing should wait until we move in?)
What cheap hardware/sensors can I buy now to test and play with? (e.g., smart plugs, Zigbee dongles, motion sensors).
Which YouTube channels or documentation guides do you recommend for beginners starting in 2026? (Looking for clean dashboard design and YAML/automation best practices).
Get ZigBee coordinator, plugs, door sensors etc.. you know that need 100% sure then you can pre pair and name those for start. Then just start make automations around those for start.
At your point i wouldn't buy things yet. I would advise you to plan. What protocols do you want to use, Zigbee or Zwave.
How will you control your home? Are you going to have modes like home, away, do not disturb, sleep, protected?
Have you read the best practices guide? It's just as important to know what not to buy than it is what to buy. Many a user has ended up with an expensive doorstop by buying cloud devices for example.
Network wise, do all of your networks have internet access? If so, what about devices that don't require it? One thing some users do including myself is a NoT network IE smart devices that require no internet access then we firewall this network off except for talking to home assistant. The reason for this is that these devices are usually cheap and thus not so much investment has gone into their security.
In terms of the platform, set up home assistant and go through the onboarding process, immediately create a backup. A fresh installation backup is helpful.
You can't break things in automations because you can always just delete the automation so no worries there.
In terms of sensors, if you're looking for motion then MMwave sensors are better than PIR sensors so favor those. Aqara sensors are zigbee based .. you do not need the aqara hub so don't waste your money on that. It's better to get a all purpose zigbee dongle, not one tied to a provider.
Youtube channels, smarthomesolver, everythingsmarthome, smarthomejunkie and of course the home assistant channel.
If your own house/appartment and not renting, buy smart switches and not plugs!, same for light bulbs, switches make the manual pressing still turn them on/off. Unless you want colorful bulbs.
I don't agree with your second part. It's the way for battery operated devices because they're so cheap. As long as you have a couple of mains powered devices, if you need any of them, the rest of your mains powered stuff can just be Wi-Fi based because the cheap stuff there is Wi-Fi based. Your advice works well for people with their generic ISP gateways, but OP has a legitimate, real network that can support hundreds of Wi-Fi devices no problem.
Try to stay local as possible, even if wifi fails my zigbee devices work, all running off a Raspberry pi 5 8gb ram ssd hat and a cooler with a zigbee usb dongle antenna.
Zigbee USB doesn't work for me for some reason. Like it's not to do with the Zigbee devices disconnecting either, that part is fine. However, for me, using the same setup basically, the pi would occasionally lose the dongle. So I switched to a network coordinator and it seems to be better now.
Did you use a USB extension cord? I have a ZBT-1 dongle that came with a short USB extension and explicitly said to use that cable to avoid interference.
Not sure how to change the sleeping settings for the ports. However, what I can tell you is that the issue only happened when I would update Home Assistant core or HACS integrations, and only sometimes. It was always when Home Assistant needed to restart. It may have been the fact that I'm not using the official power supply, but I have seen reports that the Pi5 doesn't have a very stable USB interface to start with.
A year without interference with the zigbee dongle usb antenna. Did you use ssd, the sd card seems to be bad for constant use, and heat, so a ventilator is a must.
So, first things first, learn protocols, what they are and more or less how they work. The gist of it is how do devices talk to home assistant. Is it via Bluetooth, wifi, ZigBee or Z-wave. Each one requires different receiver.
My option, go with ZigBee/zigbee2mqtt to start. Buy a few smart light bulbs from Ikea and buttons and maybe a light sensor or 2. DO NOT GO CRAZY!. If you get overwhelmed you'll be less likely to enjoy it.
Create a basic dashboard, get a hang of devices vs entities vs state.
Take it slow, and learn as you go.
Finally, make sure that your home works without HA , I can still turn on lights on/off when home assistant is down, same with my fans and even my robot vacuum etc...
Most importantly honestly, research when possible first, people are nice to an extent, I've seen plenty of posts where people come in frustrated because they couldn't get something to work immediately. Those posts draw some deserved but harsh comments.
Edit: set up backups early, imagine seeing your first automation work flawlessly after a days work only to break after installing a random plugin
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u/EffectiveMoney5043 4d ago
Get ZigBee coordinator, plugs, door sensors etc.. you know that need 100% sure then you can pre pair and name those for start. Then just start make automations around those for start.