You open the wall switch box to fit a smart relay and find two wires: the incoming live and the switched live that runs up to the lamp. No blue neutral. That is normal in many older installations, because a plain switch never needed one. A smart device does, or at least it needs some way to stay powered while the light is off.
Zigbee2MQTT 2.14.3 came out on 1 November 2026, a month after 2.14.2. Most of it is the usual monthly batch of new devices and fixes. The part that needs action is at the top of the notes: running Zigbee2MQTT on a 32-bit system is now deprecated, and support ends in April 2027.
NXP presented two new wireless microcontrollers on 27 October 2026: the MCX W70 for industrial and IoT products and the KW43 for cars. Both support Bluetooth Channel Sounding, the Bluetooth 6.0 feature that measures the distance between two devices. The MCX W70 is the one smart home makers will look at, because its radio also runs Zigbee, Thread fo
eWeLink published CUBE 2.15.0 on 29 October 2026. CUBE is the self-hosted, local version of the eWeLink platform behind Sonoff devices. It runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, in a virtual machine, on some NAS models, in Docker, and through one-click installers for Windows and Mac. It talks to Zigbee devices through a USB dongle and can expose them to ot
A smart radiator thermostat replaces the head on a radiator valve with a small battery-powered motor that opens and closes the valve on a schedule or on command. It is a simple way to give each room its own schedule, and some models are now very cheap: IKEA's Thread-based LILJEBAGGE already sells in Sweden for 199 kronor, and heise reports a German
Amazon announced five new Alexa devices on 28 October 2026: a new Echo Dot, Echo Studio with Home Camera, Echo Time, Alexa Photo Frame and a redesigned Echo Show 16. For smart home users the Dot is the interesting one, because it is the first Echo Dot with a built-in smart home hub.
ZHA groups are changing place in Home Assistant 2026.11. Until now every group entity, such as a light that controls a whole Zigbee group, was attached to the coordinator device. With a dozen groups, the coordinator page turned into a long list of lights and switches that had nothing to do with the USB stick itself. A pull request by TheJulianJES,
The boxes in the smart home aisle carry three logos that look like rivals: Zigbee, Thread and Matter. Only two of them compete. Zigbee and Thread are radio networks that move small messages between low-power devices. Matter is a language devices use to describe themselves and accept commands, and it runs on top of Thread, Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Once yo
A smart plug is the cheapest way to automate something and the easiest way to find out what a device really uses. It is also the product category where it is easiest to buy the wrong thing: a plug that only works through an app and a remote server, a relay too weak for a heater, or a metering chip that reports once a minute when you wanted live dat
