ESPresense with ZHA

ESPHome
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1

Hello everyone

I have found various projects where you can use Home Assistant and ESPresence to see which room a device is in.

All of them referred to the following instructions: Home | ESPresense

The prerequisite here is an MQTT server. However, I use ZHA in my case. I have also read that ZHA and MQTT should not be used together.

Is it possible that I can somehow implement this with ZHA?

Many thanks

Greetings
Buhli

2

Is it possible you are getting some terminology mixed up here?
ZHA is a zigbee protocol.
Z2mqtt is another zigbee protocol
MQTT is a machine to machine protocol and needs a broker running on HA. This is referenced in the document.

I don’t use MQTT brokers for anything so I’m no expert, but I believe this is the reference that is different. ESP uses Bluetooth and wifi to talk, the MQTT would broker the communication between devices.

Hope someone else can jump in if I’m wrong. :smiling_face:

3

You can run a MQTT broker, no problem. Z2M requires one to run, but other than that there are no dependencies between Zigbee and MQTT.

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4

Can you cite this reference? I run both ZHA and MQTT and they seem to have no intrinsic relationship that would prevent them from being used in the same system.

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5

It’s probably a misunderstanding, likely that the reference is to Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA should not be used together (with a single coordinator).

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6

@mterry63 @Roxy @fleskefjes
Hello everyone, thank you very much for your quick replies. Yes you were right, I mixed a few things up. What I read referred to ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT. I didn’t realize that an MQTT server and Zigbee2MQTT are not the same thing.

So that means I can install an MQTT server (Mosquitto broker) and use this both technologies with a single coordinator (conbee 2 stick)?

Thanks and best regards
Buhli

7

Yes. MQTT has nothing to do with either Zigbee or your Conbee stick. Zigbee2MQTT however does.

8

@fleskefjes Thank you very much.

I have another question about the ESP32 microcontroller. I have seen that there are ESP32 microcontrollers from various manufacturers. In the projects they often refer to Amazon.

Here in Switzerland I can buy the follow controllers:

WaveShare NodeMCU-32 ESP32 WiFi Bluetooth Development Board CP2102 - digitec

jOY-iT Entwicklerboard NodeMCU ESP32 Tensilica LX6 (brack.ch)

Does it matter which one I use?

Thanks and best regards
Buhli

9

I buy mine from Aliexpress, usually cheaper. I use these.

10

@fleskefjes thank you very much. But after all, ESP32 is ESP32? No matter from which manufacturer? Thanks and best regards Buhli

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