It’s seems that nowdays, people who want to add zigbee support to their HA instances face a lot of dillema.
We’ve got at least four different, universal Zigbee components (not counting Hue bridge, etc): conbee, zigbee2mqtt, zigbee and zha components. On the top of that, new USB<->Zigbee adapters are getting more and more popular: Zigate, devices based on CC2530, CC2630.
What’s the best solution for Zigbee in terms of stability, features and amount of supported hardware right now?
It’s really hard to make a choice, especially that i havent found any comparisons between those systems (and devices).
I looked all over and chose Conbee, it has worked with everything me and my friend have thrown at it (Philips, IKEA, Xiaomi stuff so far) and stability is excellent. Dresden-Elektronik.de seem to have discontinued the Conbee stick just now (I got mine a week ago), but it should still be available at Amazon. Besides bulbs, we have tried door/window sensors, water sensors, temp/humidity/motion sensors, etc.
Also, Deconz is an amazing piece of software, which in my opinion works much better for Zigbee than OZWCP does for ZWave in HA.
what’s the real life signal range with Conbee? Will Deconz work with any other devices (Zigate)?
I live in an apartment, so range is not an issue, do you plan on installing the very first “hop” well away from your Conbee server? Otherwise it should be fine…At least with the Philips bulbs, the Conbee worked thru 10m and a wall in my apartment (no other hop involved).
I also use a conbee with deCONZ. I have a medium sized house with allot of xiaomi sensors. Before I added my hue and innr lamps to the network, the network was unstable. But now the lamps are added, it works great. The lamps function as routers for all the sensors in my home, so the more lamps I add, the better my stability and range.
@johnflorin where did you get the impression that the conbee would be discontinued?
@dinth Zigbee is a mesh network, talking about real signal range is not relevant since all mains powered devices help extend the network. Zigate is another usb stick right? So it would not be supported by deconz.
I have a two story house with deconz and 30-40 lights and 15-20 sensors connected to it and it works great so far.
@Robban, because the shop link from the web page: https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/funktechnik/solutions/wireless-light-control/gateways/conbee/?L=1&cHash=c9c902ccdb43164696acccf81b62b2bd leads to this page, which since Friday no longer works: https://shop.dresden-elektronik.de/funk-1/solutions/raspbee-gateway-1/conbee.html
Also, all their dev sticks on this page: https://shop.dresden-elektronik.de/wireless/radiosticks/developmentsticks.html are marked as being discontinued…
Ok. Clicked around a bit and indeed other sticks are discontinued, but couldn’t find any issues with conbee, also there where still a store item for conbee. Maybe just updated paths?
I guess updated paths, as browsing through the website I was still able to buy it.
You’re right, this is the correct shop link: https://shop.dresden-elektronik.de/conbee.html - and it is not marked as discontinued, so yay 