Avoiding Pitfalls in HA Smart Hardware Procurement: Wifi Edition

Avoiding Pitfalls in HA Smart Hardware Procurement: Wifi Edition

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This article is one of the series in the forum, authored by riceball. Thank you! (The copyright of the article belongs to the original author and does not represent the views of this site.)

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2. Use Wifi Devices as Supplement

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(Continuing from the previous article: 1. Use Zigbee Devices as Main)

Wifi Characteristics:

  1. Good wall penetration (compared to Zigbee and Bluetooth)

  2. High bandwidth (compared to Zigbee and Bluetooth)

  3. Wifi modules are cheap

  4. Need to consider the router’s device capacity, generally, home routers have limited capacity

  5. It is best to choose Wifi devices that are powered directly (not battery-operated) to avoid the hassle of frequent battery replacements

The low power consumption of Zigbee2MQTT comes from its low speed, but some scenarios require high bandwidth, such as IP cameras. For IP cameras, supporting the ONVIF (Open Network Video Interface Forum) protocol is essential. Any device that does not support this protocol is misleading users. For example: the private protocol of Ezviz seems to connect to HA, but you do not know that all controls have to go through their company’s cloud, which is designed to invade your home. They abandoned the universally supported ONVIF to create their private protocol, allowing authorized personnel from their company to watch scenes or even adult films anytime and anywhere, which is quite devious.

Moreover, even if the merchant tells you that it supports ONVIF, do not let your guard down, as ONVIF can be shallow or deep. The shallow level only allows you to choose a resolution and control recording, while the deep level allows you to control the PTZ, microphone voice, and trigger motion events, etc. Lechange claims to support ONVIF, but surprisingly removed the web management interface! This means that if you want to use Wifi, you cannot change the device password, only the fixed initial security code (is this really safe?). If you want to change the password, you can only do so after a reset, by connecting via Ethernet and using Dahua’s IP configuration tool, and then configuring Wifi becomes impossible, leaving you with only wired network options. Also, their NTP time service configuration is useless, using a ghost service on their own port 10000, which, if blocked, will cause the time to fail, and the recorded video time and Lechange logo cannot be removed.

Other Wifi devices should preferably be ones that can flash ESPHome or Tasmota firmware, allowing you to fully control the device:
  1. List of devices supported by ESPHome (link to the original forum post)
  2. List of devices supported by Tasmota (link to the original forum post)
Devices I have purchased:
  1. Lechange (IMou TP7S-4M) IP camera: a poor product, barely usable unless at half price (supports ONVIF PTZ control), returned it. The so-called AI face recognition and tracking are all online services unrelated to the product. Not recommended.
  2. Of course, even worse is Ezviz, which does not support ONVIF. Hikvision does not dare to deceive enterprises and governments, so they established Ezviz to deceive ordinary consumers, while Lechange was specifically set up by Dahua to deceive.
  3. SONOFF (EasyLink NSPanel) smart panel, with temperature, small speaker, two relays, two physical buttons, and a touchscreen, has been flashed with open-source ESPHome, recommended.
  4. Guide to flashing ESPHome firmware on EasyLink SONOFF NSPanel to connect to HA
  5. Broadlink RM Pro universal remote: supports infrared and RF315/433, bought long ago.
  6. Broadlink SPMini3 Wi-Fi socket (10A) bought long ago.
  7. Xiaomi Router CR6608 (custom version by China Mobile): flashed with open-source OpenWRT firmware.
  8. Raspberry Pi Zero/w BCM2835 1GHz, ARM11 32-bit single-core, 512MB DDR2.
  9. Banana PI BPI-M2 Zero Allwinner H2+, 32-bit Quad-core Cortex-A7 1.2GHz, Mali400 MP2 @600MHz, 512MB DDR3 SDRAM.
  10. Lichee RV 86 Panel based on the Allwinner Xuantie C906 processor, 1GHz, 512MB DDR3 memory.
  11. RockPi S With PoE Hat Rockchip RK3308 512MB DDR3, 4G NAND.
  12. NanoPi R4S
  13. HK1 Box
  14. NanoPC T4 Box
    15. CubieTruck Box
  15. And several ESP32/ESP8266 boards.

    With a month and a half of usage experience, it is still far from enough, welcome to add more.

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Next: Avoiding Pitfalls in HA Smart Hardware Procurement: Bluetooth Edition

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Related posts:

  1. Avoiding Pitfalls in HA Smart Hardware Procurement (Part Four): HA Box vs. PC
  2. Evaluating the Inclusion of Loongson, Shenwei, and Phytium CPUs in Central Government Procurement List
  3. Guide to Avoiding Misleading Information on Phone Screens: An Analysis of the Advantages and Disadvantages of LCD and OLED Screens

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