I hope that the connectivity aspect for a future replacement will be a focus.
I don’t want to have too many usb devices extra for zigbee, thread, bt, wifi, z-wave, knx , modbus, and knx and 433,800-900mhz range bidirectional radio via sdr sticks.
I do want to say: i would love to see on the product range more adapters for
existing devices where you have no official support but community projects.
Like a viessmann heater or heatpump where you need to build an esp32 based infrared interface to control the data locally instead of buying a 400€ official device to upload your data into the cloud.
Like a camera&ai&magnet based adapter that reads total usage and current usage from all kinds of gas and watermeters that do not natively measure the data digitally.
I love building this kind of things, but soldering and semi working results don’t make people happy when they just want things to work.
Other things i have yet to find a good tool are
window sensors that are small, could be powered &connected over existing copperwire in the frame and can detect the state of a double sash window in closed/open/tilted state without being big and clunky.
A future proof matter&thread compatible weather station with rain, wind, gust and uv sensors to be cloudfree and skip the rtl433 dongle to get the data into HA for automation
I’m glad to have purchased my Home Assistant Yellow PoE edition when I had. Yeah, it was difficult to source the CM4 module, but it’s now a different story. I just recently did a replacement of the CM4 module (Lite version) with a new CM5 8GB Lite version that I use in combination with a 1TB nVME SSD module. This way I don’t have to worry about a possible eMMC failure in the future and nVME SSD modules continue to drop in price.
Besides the internal Zigbee radio of the Yellow, I’d added the Zooz ZAC93 800 series Z-wave GPIO module. With the 800 LR support, I’ve no range issues. In fact, I’ve really stopped purchasing Zigbee switches and pretty much go with the Zooz Z-wave products now. Very solid.
Was disappointed to see the Zigbee/Thread multi-protocol get deprecated. Of course I really don’t have any Matter/Thread products, so perhaps the deprecation is not a big deal. Seems like Matter/Thread have sort of stalled.
The Zigbee sensors seem to be solid, so I use those for windows contacts, etc.
I’m pretty bummed up aboout this. I have Sonoff iHost, a nice low-power all in one device and was just planning to upgrade this December as support for it in HAOS will disappear due to movement to 64-bit architecture. I just wish you guys would have extended production until end of this year so I could get one.
Would be nice to see a piece of hardware that has enough horsepower to run an LLM natively (which might also require building out the software to run Ollama within HAOS and NPU support), or at the very least get the whisper times down. I saw others mention a network appliance for running an LLM for HAOS, which I would be happy to buy. I think the niche of thread/zigbee/etc needs to be filled too. I personally would rather not have a dongle.
I’d like to see the voice device upgraded with better sound and mics.
Dashboard screen devices that don’t require me to hack together used android tablets anymore. Could be your new devices is akin to an all-in-one PC.
Look at the Nvidia Jetson modules if you want a dedicated NPU. Before buying one, check what performance you would need and know that your main bottleneck will likely be memory.
However… Looking forward… What I’d love to see is a fairly simple backplane. Having.
CM5 connector
PoE powered. Providing (2.5Gbps?) ethernet.
A couple of USB-A’s
USB-C, including display port over USB-C (i.e. Thunderbolt 4 or 5)
As many M.2 slots as you can fit.
Wifi? M.2. Storage? M.2. Zigbee? Use a gateway, SM do a couple that are PoE powered.
Not having built-in wifi makes sense, because if you’re powered via PoE you’re likely connected to ethernet. And if not, an M.2 wifi is just a plug&play away. And a PoE injector takes no more space than an external power supply and 1 less connector on the board.
I second folks ask for more powerful hardware. I also see a place for more entry level hardware that allows new users to hit the ground running. Maybe even voice capabilities in an all in one unit.
I think you should have done a last run announcement instead of ending the production. It has not been in stock for months now in EU and I have patiently been waiting for one.
you couldn’t have predicted that raspberry Pi would tell us all to stop buying their products, and then run out of them, right as you were releasing this. either way the next version really needs to stay away from pi!
i think having the radios built-in is a great idea, it would be cool if Silicon labs could get a working multi-protocol chip too.
Aww, I’m just finding out about this now. My Dad and I have been working on trialling various boxes for HA at a number of remote locations, as HA was much easier to work with for power monitoring, lights, and one or two other sensors than a lot of commercial solutions.
The Green can work, but Yellow’s PoE support and upgradability/flexibility (e.g. ability to run a small Frigate instance if needed, or a tiny voice assistant on a CM5) was very enticing.
If there’s something else designed to replace it, it’d be great to still use a SoM and have replaceable/upgradable storage.
Thanks for finding this! I was just now in need of another system with similar capabilities to an HA Yellow!
@geerlingguy see the link that @memphi2 posted. After looking it over, I agree with them that it’s basically the same as the Yellow minus the built in Zigbee / Thread. I just ordered one for myself as I needed another “Yellow” like device to run HA on.
I’m interested in answers on that Q, too. I have a HA Connect ZBT-1 I’m using for Z2M, and the older HA Skyconnect (updated) recently repurposed as an Open Thread Border Router. Both appear to be working out very well for me. But it makes me wonder what makes the latest Sonoff dongles so popular.
My guess is that the Open Home Foundation and Nabu Casa will probably announce their upcoming new official Zigbee adapter called ”Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2” before the end of this year (and likley sooner rather than later), so recommend that you wait for that one if you can. There at at least many things that now point it to being released very soon → Frient joins Works with Home Assistant - #3 by Hedda
So for now maybe just get the ZBT-1 today and migrate to the ZBT-2 later, as migration will be super easy and you can then reuse the ZBT-1 as a Thread Border Router for the Matter integration instead, and that way you help sponsor the Home Assistant project → Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 - Home Assistant
FYI, the latest Open Home Foundation newsletter includes a statement that some new official hardware will be announced on the 19th of November via a livestream on YouTube → Drawing the line on privacy
By the way, will you be removing the picture and link to Home Assistant Yellow on the main webpage or add notice that has reached Hardware EOL (End-of-Life) and EOS (end of sale) in its product lifecycle but not yet EOD (End-of-Development) or EOSL (End-of-Service-Life)
Hardware End-of-Life means that the manufacturer stops producing, while end of sale is when a vendor stops selling it. (EOD and EOSL means that no further updates or enhancements are made to the product which is not the case here now).
