First the layout. My garage is setup similar to this one, although mine is attached, has three light fixtures, and my driveway is 4 cars wide.
The wife wants me to replace the three basic on / off fixtures that we have (they’re getting rusty) and keep them all matching. If I’m going to do this I want to add a camera to the setup.
Functionally I’d like the lights to have or work like they have dual bright capability where they come on full bright at sunset then after a couple of hours they dim down unless they detect motion. If they detect motion then they come back to full bright for a period of time then dim back down again. They do this for a set period of hours, say 4, then they turn off completely unless they detect motion.
My current lights are already automated for on / off (but not dimming or motion) through the use of HA and a z-wave switch.
Where I’m getting stuck is that I can see at least three ways to do this but none of them are perfect.
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Replace my dumb carriage fixtures with new dumb fixtures then change the switch to a dimming version plus add a motion sensor and camera out front. Then setup HA for the functionality I want. The upside of doing it this way is that it’s very easy to get matching fixtures. The downside is that the motion sensor and camera will not be well integrated visually.
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Replace my dumb fixtures with ones that have dual bright built in. It’s easy to do, and I could even keep the HA Automation I have setup now, but again the camera setup is not going to integrate well visually. I’m also concerned that three motion sensors controlling three lights will cause trouble for the camera (or each other) because they will react to different things and turn themselves on and off independently.
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Replace my dumb fixtures with smarter ones. In the center position I’d use one that has an integrated motion sensor and camera. This Reolink seems like it would work pretty well. However RL doesn’t make any fixtures that match it, which means my center fixture would look different than the other two.
I may just have to deal with mismatched fixtures but does anyone have any suggestions? Am I missing an option?
I use the brightest ikea smart bulbs in mine, I just leave the switches on (they are on three separate swithches in various locations) and control everything in home assistant. Motion sensors are phillips hue outdoor sensors, they work well and double as my outdoor temperature sensors and light sensors. I’d mount the camera and sensor up under the roof, that makes them less prominent and puts them out of easy reach of anyone with bad intentions.
That reolink camera is fucking ugly! No way I’d put that on my wall…
Fair comment. I’ll skip the Hue sensor though because off their recent shenanigans. What do you use for a camera?
I don’t have a camera, no need for one.
Guess I’ll have to look into what phillips has been up to… Edit: The usual idiotic cloud crap i see… Good thing we are on the home assistant forum, where not needing the stupid hubs is half the point ;)
I punted my SmartThings hub earlier this year and am now “hub free”. It’s going to stay that way too because I don’t trust any of these companies to leave my things and data alone.