How to do the initial setup of your smart home sensors?

Question

Arduino

Now I'm working on home automation, a kind of "smart" home. For now, I'm making sensors on the ESP8266 that send information to the Raspberry PI. I have several questions:

1. I would like to do at least like Xiaomi Mi Home, i.e. the initial configuration of the sensors is required (connection to the WIFI network), i.e. plug&play system. How can this be done on ESP8266?
   
2. What data transfer technology is better to use? Now I use the MQTT protocol over WiFi, but many people use Z-Wave, ZigBee, etc.
   

Answer 1

1. Yes, but do you need it? If this is only for your home, then fill in custom data and don't worry.
2. MQTT over WiFi, but ZigBee is more convenient and faster on an apartment scale (and much more expensive)

Answer 2

plug&play in a smart home is in most cases [off-the-shelf solutions] a huge security hole (of course, the problems are not only due to plug&play). Manufacturers of such systems make a nod to hamsters who are not able and unwilling to configure anything, but they openly spit on the security of their systems.
https://habr.com/ru/company/kaspersky/blog/439880/
And you are doing it for yourself and for some reason want to step on the same rake.