Need help consolidating smart devices into one app

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In hindsight I know I should’ve tried to go with as much from a single manufacturer as I could but I didn’t and here we are.

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This is not your fault. There is no manufacturer that covers the full spectrum, and they don't interoperate intentionally in most cases.

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Unfortunately, there is no one-stop-shop app that can do this right now...

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Uhhhhh, yea there is

Kork already mentioned it, Home Assistant

But I'm with you OP, wish I would have gone full zigbee integration from the get go, but that would be a pricey endeavor after already investing in other hardware. Thankfully it all plays nicely with HA, just have to do the initial setup through the devices default app

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You want Home Assistant.

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He does, but he should at least read a but about it before diving in. Two quick reasons:


1) Nest requires you to spend like $5 to integrate into HA (single fee. And not common with most HA integrations. But true of Nest thermostats specifically. It’s actually why I am lazily letting mine into HomeKit via Homebridge still instead of HA (started with Homebridge (my wife requires HomeKit simplicity and Siri integration) and too lazy to continue migration of functioning stuff)
2) if he JUST purchased MyQ, they’ve intentionally been breaking all their 3rd party products and quit selling 3rd party bridges, and as of last week, the HA community recommends a 3rd party additional contact closure for garage door support right now. I have a Meross opener. Works fine. It’s WiFi. I think you can get GlobalCaché stuff if you require Ethernet (and they even have a PoE version. But they’re fairly expensive, and I’m not promising integration with HA, I just think I’ve seen it)

Other than that, I’ve read complaints about HA Green vs putting it on a NUC or something similar. At home, I have HA virtualized on a Proxmox instance on a mini-itx Dell machine with an 8500T (locked to 1 core though). I see zero performance difference and have implemented HA Green at my father and FIL’s places. For a beginner who doesn’t have a spare computer, I’d argue it is a decent $100 purchase for a very-near plug and play solution. If you’ve got a tinkering bone in your body and don’t mind buying a used “business class” computer, you’ll have a ton more horsepower. But you need very of it to run HA effectively.

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Home Assistant is a very complex and hard-to-understand software for people lacking basic computer knowledge

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It really isn't. You can design complex environments, but general use is actually quite simple

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Don’t necessarily need them voice controlled, but would be nice. I have nest thermostats, Govee lights, cloudy bay lights, alarm.com panel, ring doorbells, blink cameras (being replaced soon), just installed a chamberlain smart garage door opener with Myq. In hindsight I know I should’ve tried to go with as much from a single manufacturer as I could but I didn’t and here we are. If we go on vacation and I want to check on things I have 6-7 apps to look at. I’m also looking at getting some smart deadbolts and I need to update our security cameras soon (leaning towards reolink).

I’m not a huge fan of Alexa interface and MyQ doesn’t have a skill for it anyway. Help me out. What should I look into? TIA

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this is why the internet-of-things/smart home trend went to COMPLETE shite.

competing standards, 'bubble' hubs that got a TON of HYPE (Wink, smart things) relied on their CLOUD and once that went down, so did all your doohickeys.

then of course, the real killers were amazon, apple and google and none of them felt the need to support all the shite zwave and zigbee crap everyone had already bought and apple went one step further and decided to force everyone into a rigid 'partner program' where many devices already on the market simply couldn't meet without coming out with a whole new piece of hardware & software...

then you have the shitbirds like Chamberlain who for some INEXPLICABLE reason decided the ability to turn your garage door ON and OFF required a monthly subscription in addition to buying a $50-$100 piece of hardware that you had to install yourself and IFTTT frickers decided their website was just a little TOO useful and started charging people as well...


its shite its all shite and those of us who invested time and effort into it did it for the love of the game and basically home assistant and hubitat are the only 'hobbyist' hubs still hanging on..if you're willing to still play ball.


eta i miss the days of having an IFTTT script that would scan my local craigslist for SONOS deals using an API to get those notifications before the ad even appeared on the website and flash my HUE lights blue so I knew there was a 'blue light special' ready for me to scoop up.

frick EVERYONE IN THIS INDUSTRY

"local control" is a myth.

:cad takes a minute to wipe the spit off his computer screen: