While not computer illiterate, I am somewhat of a dinosaur with today’s hardware/software. Is there anyone in the Ft. Myers/Cape Coral/Naples Florida area with in-depth knowledge of Home Assistant? I would very much like to learn much more than I do about it.
Thanks,
John Vowell
Ft. Myers, FL
you could always ask your questions here. that’s kind of the point of the forum.
I understand, but there are times when it really helps to have a live person to talk with. I am on the downhill side of 80 and my knowledge of today’s technology is limited. If you want to know how to make IBM’s OS sing songs, I’m your man.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
Some truisms I have observed with passage of time and osmosis of wisdom which you may recognise:
IBM vs HomeAssistant? Same stuff - hardware running software. Garbage in, garbage out. At the end of the day the code is either linear or a big loop. Punchcard vs voice input - it all ends as bytes stored somewhere. Use reliable, well known solutions. Start small and grow as your knowledge expands. Read the vendor documentation. Avoid self aggrandisement upstarts - this includes most forms of so called ‘artificial intelligence’ which will lead you astray. Define your specifications closely and your goals. Your futzing time is free if nobody else is paying for it. There are no shortcuts. Not everybody has your vested interests as their highest priority. Not everybody is an expert, and those you encounter here are volunteers with varying levels of expertise and experience. Still, standing on the shoulders of giants can make things go far better (until something goes wrong and you have to revert to bare basics).
Everybody loves a battler. Show us what you are trying to do and we can offer suggestions.
I’m 63 and I’m the tech guy in my family even for my 30 something kids. Just because they know how to use facebook and an iphone doesn’t mean they understand technology. So age doesn’t mean as much as some people think except that your synapses are less malleable and it takes more effort to learn new things - be that HA or learning how to play the guitar.
Even the evolution of HA is a testament to that as well. HA is in the process of kind of “dumbing things down” for new users (translated as young people) who can’t understand anything more than the phone that’s connected to their hand 90% of the day and think that Apple Homekit or Alexa are true home automation platforms.
IOW don’t sell yourself short
So ask your first question and let’s see how it goes.
I am trying to migrate from ZHA to Zigbee2MQTT. So far I have managed to disable all my existing Zigbee devices but have not successfully installed Z2M. It would appear that the problem is that ZHA refuses to go away. I can see that ZHA is still online, but there is no way to delete or uninstall it. I have tried deleting all ZHA’s entities, but every device has two entities that cannot be deleted. The Zigbee integration no longer shows up in Devices and services, but if I tap Zigbee in the sidebar, I get the following screen:
There should be no devices attached, remove those first.
Then in the top line where it describe the coordinator, use delete (in the 3 dots).
Then after a restart the integration should be gone.
Now you can see why I would like a person to come to my house and see what is happening. I will repeat these things one more time.
I hope I have adequately described the difficulties I have been encountering in trying to retrieve access to my Zigbee devices and the frustration at having no one seeming to have experienced the same problems or are misunderstanding what is happening to me. I am sure all of you are thinking, “What a moron! Anyone with the brains God gave a goose should be able to follow these directions.” Possibly, in my case, the good Lord chose the wrong goose.
I’ve responded to you in the other topic you have on this issue, can you check if my guess is right? I believe the integration you are showing is not ZHA but coordinator related. Can you confirm? What coordinator is this?
Nobody thinks you are a moron, we all started as new users in the HA journey 
There are two things related to zigbee in HA - the adapter/coordinator/radio and the ZHA integration. Well I guess technically three things if you include zigbee2mqtt but that is an add-on provided by a third party and not built-in to HA
The coordinator is the hardware part. That’s what allows your zigbee devices to communicate back to the host. That host can either use the ZHA integration or the zigbee2mqtt add-on. But only one of those things can access the coordinator at any time. Once one of those binds to the coordinator then the other one is blocked from binding to it. It essentially gets locked to the ZHA integration or the zigbee2mqtt add-on until you unlock it.
You don’t want to delete the coordinator entry from the zigbee section of the settings menu. That is simply telling you that HA found a coordinator connected to you system.
If the ZHA integration is nowhere in your system (no longer in the integrations section of settings) then you should just be able to reboot your HA machine to unbind the coordinator from ZHA. (if your system auto-discovers your coordinator and tries to re-bind it to the ZHA integration you should just be able to ignore it and not configure the ZHA integration).
Then you can install the zigbee2mqtt add-on and configure it to use your (now free) zigbee coordinator.
Just an FYI add-ons are now called apps so don’t let the name change confuse you.
I have deleted all Zigbee devices. Neither Zigbee nor ZHA appears anywhere. I still am unable to install Zigbee2MQTT. Any ideas?
Thanks for your help. This is incredibly frustrating.
PS. I have also rebooted the computer I am using.
What does unable to install mean? Any error messages or where are you stuck?
Semantics and perhaps a silly question, but did you reboot the HA server (and maybe the host) or did you reboot the computer you are using to access the HA UI?
What is your installation? Are you using HAOS? Are you running a VM?
The computer IS the host. I replaced Windows with Home Assistant using Ubuntu.
I’m also wondering what you mean by “I still am unable to install Zigbee2MQTT”?
how are you trying to install it?
I have reached the point where there is a Zigbee2MQTT entry on my sidebar. Clicking that displays the Onboard screen. No matter how I fill out the form, it does not complete. It gives the error “Unable to start Zigbee herdsman. Here is the log output.
The log says that z2m can’t connect to the adapter. I think that’s the ultimate issue.
usually that means that the adapter is bound to another service - usually in this case that would be ZHA or at least HA in some way. But you say you don’t have ZHA anywhere in your system so then I don’t know how that’s possible.
How did you install z2m? I assume it was thru the HA add-on/app?
Do you only have one z2m installed? look at your add-on page to see if you see anything there that could have previously bound to your zigbee adapter.
My ability to help is getting more limited since I don’t use z2m (I use ZHA), add-ons or HAOS (i run HA in a regular docker container).
maybe it would be better to use the z2m thread in the forum or go directly to the z2m website/github to get more specific z2m help.
Why do you need to use z2m instead of ZHA?
Just thought it would be good to be using all the best capabilities of Home Assistant. I read that Z2M allows udi g more options on some Zigbee devices. Somehow, through no action on my part, ZHA has reappeared on my hub, so no harm no foul. Unless you count the expense of the new devices I bought because I had no Zigbee.
Maybe that’s true but I don’t feel I’m missing anything just using ZHA and I’ve got 58 devices from several different manufacturers.
So it just may be easier to go the ZHA route instead of fighting to get Z2m.
