In regard to ‘ready implementations’ are you referring to products like Home Assistant / Google Home ? (or something different ?). Neither would be applicable to my needs. Let me explain :
I have an Observatory at ‘home’ which I use for automated astronomical observing, which is controlled by my own VB.Net application. I click a button at dusk and it runs all night and collects images from different targets with automated control of Dome/Telescope/Camera/Focusers, dealing with changing weather conditions as appropriate. My original need started with a pair of smart plugs that I could remotely power reset devices which happened to developed a glitch and which needed to be restarted (as there occurrence is a showstopper). I originally used a HUE app from my IPAD to do this (to avoid a trip to the observatory). I had to go to kitchen to do this as I still needed to be in range of the Observatory and of course this needed to have happened before I went to bed. (zigbee/deconz has better range by the way than the simple HUE app).
But for full automation I need my VB.Net control program to make its own executive decision to power reset a suspected device and carefully resume the night’s observing schedule. Not a task that ‘ready implementations’ can do as it needs to include data not in the zigbee mesh network itself.
I also use my application to control a Smart Plug enabled dehumidifier. In theory this could probably be controlled by ready implementations (with reference to shutter (window), door, humidity and temperature sensors ) but at the moment I use external (non-mesh) sensors for Temp/Humidity, I haven’t acquired a zigbee Temp/Humidity sensor as yet.
Whilst my dome’s driver informs my system whether the shutter of the dome is open or closed, I have just introduced a zigbee open/close sensor which my application can use as additional assurance that the shutter has fully closed when it gets cloudy or starts to rain.
I’m getting a 4-button remote control as I want to experiment with using it to make quick simple communication to my observatory control program. The controller + zigbee network offers the possibility of doing specific tasks without needing to log on to a PC / IPAD and then open a vnc connection to the observatory). I’m not sure what functions I want it ultimately perform that’s part of the learning experience.
The following picture shows what I have in my zigbee mesh network at the moment:
