About the vendor and its products

Aeotec is a substantial supplier of products for smart homes. They don’t, however, as far as I can tell, no products that are Apple Home compatible so in our home we have only installed one device; a door sensor. Aeotec has chosen Z-Wave as the primary communication protocol and our door sensor was perhaps more a test of integration of Z-Wave products via Homebridge. If you are starting out with Z-Wave, their Aeotec USB Z-Stick seems to be the least inexpensive way to set up a Z-Wave base station. And having gotten that in place, a new world of products opens up, with Aeotec supplying many such. Some examples of interesting products are:

• Sensors, like the Door / Window Sensor 6, Water Sensor 6, MultiSensor 6, and some others

• Control devices/switches, like the Garage Door Controller, WallMote, and other types of switches/relays

• Alarm components, like Siren 6

• Smarte light bulbs, including some E27 versions for European lamps

• Smart LED Strip

As far as I can tell, Aeotec offers no app of its own, but relies on the components being controlled via the chosen base station and app/ecosystem for this. There is a Homey app and many of the products can be integrated with Samsung SmartThings.

Our experiences

See more specific experiences in the table below. I also made a go at establishing a Z-Wave base station using an Aeotec USB Z-Stick via our Synology NAS. Encountering various problems, however, I gave up and went with Samsung SmartThings.

Notice that on phones, the table might only display in landscape mode