Hello, I’m totally new to HA. I’m waiting for my HA5 to arrive and I’ve been ordering some Sonoff hardware to use with it. I thought I’d ordered a couple of ZBMINI-L2 switches but they sent me instead eWeLink Advanced cards I assume to sign up for
some Cloud functionality.
Do I need to use eWeLink at all? I was planning to use the cloud services from Nabu Casa. I believe I will use Zigbee exclusively and I probably will not use voice control.
Welcome to the forum, Avinunca 
As for Sonoff’s Zigbee based products you don’t need eWeLink. For i.e. the ZBMINI-L2 switches (I use a few of them too) just pair/connect them to HA through Zigbee2MQTT. No eWeLink at all. But obviously you’ll need a suitable Zigbee coordinator like the Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle plus. Don’t forget to order an USB extension cable with at least 1.5 meter in length to connect the dongle to your HA hardware!
This is different with Sonoff’s WiFi based products. With their WiFi based products you’ll need the eWeLink App for the initial setup (pairing the devices to your WLAN). After the pairing is done you can use something like SonoffLAN to integrate and control those devices through HA.
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Thank you Tamsy. That is exactly the information I needed. I will be exclusively using Zigbee. I’ve ordered the extension cable already.
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