Hi guys , I need 4 new door sensors battery operated. I don’t have a zigbee hub but I would like to take advance of the lower power consumption vs wifi devices.
Is the Aqara E1 fully integrable in homeassitant without cloud services? If not can you suggest me some alternatives?
My home assistant is on lower floor while the doors are on the upper just over the pc , do you know if the hub will be sufficient or I’ll need some more zigbee devices for a stronger mesh?
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The Aqara are probably the smallest and best value Zigbee door sensors you can get, you can couple these with a CC2531 USB dongle which would be a cheap way to get things setup.
If you have concerns about the mesh reaching other floors then you can use a Zigbee plug or lamp in between to act as a repeater.
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I’d second half of that advice. The Aqara sensors are great. The CC2531 is terrible.
Buy a CC2652 based stick instead.
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Probably better off with a Sonoff/Deconz/Nortek/etc USB stick.
Pretty sure E1 hub only looks like a USB stick and is basically a wifi gateway that is usb powered by a type A connector. See Aqara E1 USB Stick Hub - Configuration - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io).
Hard to beat the Sonoff Dongle Plus at $15. Much better performance than the less expensive CC2531 and can now be updated by software only without needing to open the case, press a button, or use a separate USB serial cable. Once you start with zigbee, you’ll likely think of many more uses for inexpensive sensors.
A single floor separation mostly vertically aligned will probably be fine. You can always add a smart plug or other mains device later if needed.
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I actually had the Sonoff Zigbee stick right when it was released. I had nothing but problems with it. My Tradfri devices rapidly drained battery level and didn’t update (Fyrtur shades especially), devices dropped off regularly (Aqara switches mostly), etc. It was just the bad experience that actually led me just to invest in the official hubs, lol.
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The Sonoff 3.0 Dongle Plus has been solid for me, 100% trouble free. Got them in December, so may have had benefit of updated firmware over an early adopter.
I have replaced cc2531s and Nortek sticks across a few locations. The few sensors I had issues with before have all been solid since changing.
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I would go for Zigbee sensors due to their lower power-usage for sure. Plus sensors can be numerous, not sure you want them all on your wifi network. The one thing to keep in mind is that the Zigbee strength is a lot weaker and battery sensors are usually endpoints (so they do not extent your network). If you need to cross space (like from above to bellow) it cannot hurt to add a few Zigbee Smart-plugs or lamps that will act as routers.
I myself moved to Zigbee about 2 weeks ago for sensors and am quite happy with it. Getting a Sonoff 3.0 Dongle Plus as others also recommended here. Combined with Aqara sensors, an Aqara Smart Plug and a few Hue Plugs I had laying around. I did notice that the Hue signal strengh is beter then Aqara, but in terms of functioning (response times) no difference. Kicked out my few Wifi Sensors and it actually feels like being way more in control and it being separated from my Wifi network, and no batteries that drain so quickly. In HA it all works perfectly together.
It was quite easy to setup Zigbee2mqqt and add Aqara devices. If you already have mqqt I would for sure go that route. ZHA also works good. One of the things I like about Zigbee2mqtt that it can even do some firmware updates on devices (I updated an old Hue switch, it saw it had outdated firmware and offered to update it) and setting the Zigbee channel I found more straight forward in Zigbee2mqtt. It can also be done in ZHA, but I missed any kind of conformation that it actually changed.
When you get a Sonoff dongle, the older ones you may have to flash to get it uptodate. But even out of the box it worked for me (HA will think its a Zwave dongle, but it can just be added as a Zigbee dongle in both ZHA and Zigbee2mqtt).
I would also recommend getitng a USB extentioncord of about 1m to make sure the dongle is slightly away from your HA.
If your not familair with it. This is a good read for Signal strengths and Zigbee and Wifi coexistence
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Thank you all for all your great suggestions, I am going to jump in the Zigbee world:-)
I am using a shelly plug which has proven a good and reliable device, can you suggest me a safe Zigbee counterpart? ( Italy based)
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Shouldn’'t be the case any more. More recent shipments of the hardware now have a proper ID configured, and I think I saw HA has been updated to properly recognize the older versions as well.
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I think with shipments its a bit of a matter of what you may get. I bought it a few weeks ago and it was outdated, a friend of mine a week later and it was not. Both from Amazon (Dutch). This was before the latest updates of HA. It works well regardless I noticed (and I later flashed mine).
The Aqara Smartplug works fine, and has a power-measurement you can feed into your Energy Dashboard. If you don’t mind removing them from the Hue Bridge if your a Hue user, the Hue Smart Plug also works well. Bit pricey however if you have to buy them new. I would go for Aqara then.
Not sure where you are.
In the US, I’ve been pleased with Sengled E1C-NB7 plugs. They have power monitoring.
Have a couple Sonoff S31 lites as well. They are fine, but lack power monitoring.
Thank you I am from Italy, I don’t need power consumption monitoring on this plug. My planned use is to cut all tv / pc in my house when I am away. I calculate about 150 W power consumption only for standby devices
- Which sonoff zigbee stick? I believe sonoff has 2 (or 3?) now. And have you updated the firmware of the sonoff stick?
- Also which Tradfri devices? I mean was it the battery in the control buttons or in the shades (or both, or something else)?
Oh and have you updated the firmware of those Tradfri devices? - Also was that ZHA or zigbee2mqtt (or something else) in your setup? This does make a difference when it comes to Tradfri, it seems.
I am interested in this similar setup, and recent reports in this forum indicated good results from the combination of sonoff zigbee usb dongle plus + Tradfri shortcut botton + zigbee2mqtt.
… Hence the ask.
EDIT - adding references:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/tradfri-shortcut-button-zigbee2mqtt-pair-update/394411
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/sonoff-zigbee-usb-dongle-not-working-with-ikea-tradfri-buttons/385878/8
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ikea-tradfri-batteries-in-the-remote-controls-are-quickly-discharged/109185/298
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ikea-tradfri-remotes-battery-drain/390125/2
Just for completeness, the Shelly battery operated WiFi sensors use almost no power at all, due to a design where the unit is in low-power mode with only the sensors being active at all times.
When an event is triggered, it quickly powers up WiFi, communicates what needs to be communicated, and goes back to low power.
This way, the batteries easily last for a year or three.
Hey there, I had the Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus from Itead.
My issues were with Aqara temperature/humidity sensors, motion sensors, and buttons dropping off the network, IKEA Tradfri Fyrtur blinds becoming completely unresponsive, and Tradfri shortcut buttons completely draining battery within 1-2 days.
I was using ZHA (and several signal repeaters), and never tried Z2M. Hope this helps!
I have the Sonoff USB dongle (firmware updated) and just linked two IKEA Shortcut Buttons, using zigbee2mqtt.
It’s only a few days but so far they work well. One button is still at 100% battery even after a firmware update that took 2.5 hours. The other one is down at 87%, but that is largely due to me playing with it and stuffing up the first couple of attempts at an OTA update.