It’s been 15 years since I got into home automation, starting with EEdomus, moving through Jeedom and ending up, like many, on Home Assistant (HA).
I’m 63 and retired from IT, more specifically systems and networks.
Today, I’m discovering Gladys — I haven’t installed or tested it, I’m still on Home Assistant (HA) on a NUC running 24/7 that works pretty well, so you might ask, what am I doing here?
Actually, I’m always on the lookout for something new; I’m not fundamentally attached to HA — some aspects annoy me a little, the frequent updates, YAML programming which is a real pain, and many things of that sort.
I’d therefore like to move to something new, not that I’m expecting a revolution but perhaps a bit more serenity…
That said, I use several different technologies: Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, RFX plus different camera systems, not to mention Philips Hue, Alexa, etc., and I’m a bit afraid of taking the plunge without breaking everything and having to start from scratch.
Has any of you already taken the plunge and how did it go overall?
Okay, I’ll stop my rambling and eagerly await your (kind) replies.
so I’m a tad younger than you (I didn’t say you were older ) and I also started a little over 10 years ago in home automation.
I have a path pretty similar to yours: first a Zipabox (Z-Wave and RF433 control), then Jeedom (French), a look at Gladys at the start of V4 but it was missing quite a few things (Z-Wave, if/then/else in scenes, RF433, problems understanding the project).
And then about 2 years ago I think, I told myself that my new devices would be Zigbee (Z-Wave is good but expensive) and that Gladys would manage them.
I had looked at HA (Home Assistant), lots of plugins, but a complete mess when it came to programming anything whereas I was looking for more simplicity compared to Jeedom. On top of that my Jeedom database gave me headaches with a lot of corruption because I had started on an RPi 1B and the SD card didn’t make things any easier In short, my scripts and data were increasingly a mess.
I’m finally getting to my conclusion!
I started with Gladys for Zigbee. Then I saw the zwave-js integration which I could share from Jeedom as well as the teleinformation (lixee raildin), and MQTT for data sharing too with Jeedom but also HA for a particular plugin (Wallbow tesla).
Since I’ve been on Gladys, if I don’t have what I want: either I « transfer » certain info that Jeedom still manages via MQTT (very, very little), I use a few very specific HA plugins by « transferring » them via MQTT again, and finally I go through Node-RED which Gladys can handle.
In short, Gladys has become the main UI of my home automation, the primary manager for scenes and actions (and I hope to remove the rest soon).
So to answer your question about multiprotocol:
Zigbee: no problem, native with the Zigbee2MQTT (z2m) integration, you just need to declare an external z2m and probably an external MQTT broker (your current one)
Z-Wave: hoping you’re on zwave-js then you point to that server, otherwise you’ll need to upgrade your OpenZWave (I think) to zwave-js
Matter: native in Gladys, you just need to share your devices and integrate them into Gladys (as they say in English: Dead Simple )
RFX: you’ll have to either share via your HA, or do Node-RED
Camera: I don’t have any but it’s normally native in Gladys (just be careful with the http/rtsp/etc. stream)
Hue: Gladys integration
Alexa: Gladys integration BUT you need to go through Gladys Plus (paid of course but it supports the project)
etc.: well, etc.
For the conclusion of the conclusion (yes it exists )
You can, without too much trouble, have Gladys as the main UI as well as for certain plugins (all those that touch MQTT and Matter), and « share » from your HA (and maybe Jeedom still) your devices/plugins via MQTT that are not compatible/supported by Gladys.
Of course, you’ll need to rework the scenes part to move from your current systems to Gladys, no conversion possible unfortunately.
There you go, I hope I wasn’t too soporific
In any case if you have other questions, don’t hesitate to open a thread on the forum!
) and I also started a little over 10 years ago in home automation.
In short, my scripts and data were increasingly a mess.
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