Question

Anyone else got a wife getting tired of the smart home stuff the “next we need this” just to have the issue of slow responses due to how you’re setup? Lol! So I’ve finally been given the green light to go with something like Home Seer and I have some questions. 1. VLAN - Can someone explain this to me? From what I understand, you can create this within your router and connect all of your smart home devices to this? Is that right? I do have a really nice router with plenty of features to do pretty much whatever I need. I would assume this would relieve some congestion? 2. I have Philips Hue, MyQ, TP-Link HS200 smart switches, cameras and few various other things. These things would would be connected via the VLAN correct? 3. Home Seer hub - once these devices are connected via the VLAN, they are then “synced” to the HomeSeer hub? 4. Once connected to the hub, is now processes locally meaning, internet is no longer needed to have lights turn off and on via the app but would still be needed for voice control through Alexa? The plan is to make the purchase today before my wife has a chance to change her mind.  

Answer 1

Get a new wife

Comments

@bicentenary yeah ummm. no

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Do you always go with the most expensive option, Dan?  

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@butterball some times you gotta make tough decisions in life

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@butterball Might not be the most expensive option. I know I have a lot invested in home automation

Answer 2

Have you tried writing a homebridge plugin for your wife so you can turn her on with siri

Answer 3

What router and what switches do you have?  

Comments

@dru26735 I have a Netgear RAX80 router.  

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If it supports VLANs and (is it your only wireless)? And switches Amy other device connects to do as well. You can segment IoT traffic. There can be some issue figuring out what needs to connect to your LAN (like controlling on your phone). There are tutorials on YouTube and Reddit.  

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@dru26735 I haven’t had a need yet for any Ethernet switches. yet. I’m sure eventually I will. And yes it’s my only wireless. My house is only about 2k sq ft and this routers signal strength is very strong.  

Answer 4

I have my IoT stuff on a separate VLAN but I do it for security purposes. I use SmartThings, my network is all Ubiquiti.  

Comments

@goof3 I was just going to do this with the same equipment. Have any indies with an u devices once they were on the VLAN? someone told me the Echo Dots can be hit or miss?  

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@backstroke8943 all the Alexa devices work perfectly in my setup.  

Answer 5

What hub do you have now? The issue could be your devices have to go out to the internet to complete the command. You may want to look at home assistant which is local on your network to speed up response. That wouldn’t be an immediate fix as it has some leaning curve but would give you quicker response. I also don’t know how it does with Philips hue.  

Comments

@balzer Philips Hue is well supported in Home Assistant.  

Answer 6

Are you saying all of your smart devices are slowing the speed of the internet? If that’s the case, you may want to do some traffic monitoring to see what’s causing such congestion. Don’t forget some of these devices have vulnerabilities, and someone could be exploiting your device hogging all the bandwidth.  

Comments

@aerialist no not at all. Our speeds are great.  

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@salisbury awesome. I thought I might have misunderstood. Security guy here who’s a little paranoid about everything  

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@aerialist hahaha I hear you. I’ve never been that way before but for some odd reason I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately which is another reason I’m curious about VLAN and how to set it up.  

Answer 7

This is just something to expect with a platform like SmartThings. Homeseer sucks. You can have full locally controlled devices with Home Assistant. I've gone from Wink to ST to Home Assistant.  

Comments

HomeSeer sucks? care to expand? or just an opinion? I personally love it, but always interested in why something else would be better.  

Answer 8

HomeSeer is great. There will always be people who love something or hate something. Try out all options and see what works best for you.  

Answer 9

My WiFi mesh has an option for a guest network that I use for my IoT devices. Basically, a block of IP addresses are set up to not directly access any device outside of that block.  

Answer 10

@salisbury- Check out Rob's excellent 3-part video series. It's worth the 45-min time investment. He covers the whys and hows of VLANs in the 3rd segment.  https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=ptqa7JXbS5U https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=p3SfeQTaaxw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_6...WumsA

Answer 11

I put my wifi smarthome stuff on a physical wifi “subnet” isolated from the rest of my home network.  

Answer 12

Thanks for all of the help here guys. It’s really helped me out and got me going in the right direction now. So next question. IP address once I’ve got everything all separated out and reconfigured, do you all assign static IP address to literally everything your house, just your smart home things or do you mess with it at all?