Hi. I’m new to HA, and am looking for physical button recommendations. I got tasmota smart plugs, and those just needed HA’s mqtt add-on and tasmota integration. They work like a charm. Now I want to get a physical button (wired or battery) that I can use to toggle the smart switches. I also would like to do this in the most private way possible. I noticed that the smart plugs only connect to npt.org, which is perfect. Is there a similar option for buttons? I dont have ZigBee or Zwave products or anything, but that is an option.
I found this button and it uses ZigBee. Is this the best option.
I got HeatIT Z-Push for my Z-wave network recently and it has worked just fine for the short time I’ve been using it.
For wifi-enabled smart devices I created a separate VLAN where all IOT stuff is and that network doesn’t have access to the internet at all, but you could just assign static IP addresses to the devices and prevent them from accessing the internet on the firewall. That’s of course true only for devices you can control via LAN access as well, if your devices happen to work only with the cloud then that approach won’t work.
Our Gree heatpump only needed cloud access for a minute during setup and now it receives command via Home Assistant, but I can understand that even that can be too much information to leak out of the network. At least they got my public IP address and location data from my phone (setup was only possible with an mobile app which required some permissions to work at all), so better approach would’ve been to check these things before purchase.
If you want to wander more on the DIY side of things with ESPHome you can design what ever kind of button array you wish, but that’s a bit more complex route and if you’re just looking for a simple wall mounted switch that might not be the best option out there.