I have run deCONZ for the last 4-5 years but I have never used Z2M so I can’t give a relevant opinion. Some people are happy with deCONZ, other people are happy with Z2M. Over time people have migrated from deCONZ to Z2M or ZHA as they have matured, probably not as many people have also changed to deCONZ from the other systems. It’s so very user and device specific and perhaps even on a philosophical level based on how their architecture and what is backing each project up.
They’re all quite mature by now, all powered by people wanting to improve them
I personally think Zigbee2MQTT is a fantastic project and I have tried it for a period where I had devices not yet supported by Deconz.
I love that you can debug the communication by subscribing to the MQTT communication.
But there are one thing I like about Deconz. It is a stand alone Philips Hue hub equivalent. You can assign remotes to a zigbee light group and control lights even if Home Assistant is messed up. I like to have this fall back solution when needed. I have a few emergency remotes ready that just turn on and off most lights in the house in the case HA goes down.
Until revently only Deconz could handle true Zigbee light groups but I think Zigbee2MQTT can do this now also. This is a huge advantage for stable performance when you have many lights in a group.
This is exactly the reason I use deconz as well. It is a great standalone backup system. I have very basic things, like light turn on/off configured in deconz and more advanced automations in HA. It works great together.
Good news, but can someone tell me if it is possible to run both deConz and Z2M at the same time, in the same network with only one Conbee II as the coordinator?
Ok, I was afraid that would be the case.
So then, what is the best way to begin “experimenting” with Z2M ? I assume I need a second coordinator? Can it be a second Conbee II ? Can I use the same HA instance?
What I’m looking for is a step-by-step how-to transition from deConz to Z2M without having to do a breaking point. If a device works better with deConz, I’ll leave it there, otherwise I’ll move it to Z2M. Typically, finding the best result involves moving back-and-forth a few times. Can this easily be achieved?
Having multiple zigbee networks is generally not the best idea. And “finding the best result” highly depends on the strength of your full network, not individial devices.
That being said, this topic is about debugging deConz so better start (or find) another topic to discuss this.
You can run the two types with two sticks in parallel. But each zigbee device will have to be in one or the other.
Devices will only work as routers in the network they belong to. This means if you run deconz with 40 devices that have built up a solid strong mesh and you start moving a few to a zigbee2mqtt network then you may experience a poor performance if there is distance between device and the coordinator (usb stick). I ran deconz and a Philips hue in a transition period and experienced that. Once all are moved to the new network you get much better mesh with redundant paths.
If you run deconz, the major reason to move to zigbee2mqtt would be that you want to buy devices not supported by deconz. I do not know of any features you gain. Note that two of the same USB sticks on same computer will come up as ttyACM0 and ttyACM1 and they will often swap 0 and 1 at boot of the host machine. This can be handled by by using /dev/serial/by-id type device names. But as far as I know, the Deconz Home Assistant addon never got the bug fixed. So as always I recommend running Deconz on another machine. I have made multiple posting on this in the Deconz thread.
Thanks @KennethLavrsen for valuable info.
One last question; so with only one HA instance, tis means that one ConBee uses the deConz integration while the other becomes available through the MQTT Integration ?
Correct.
The Deconz integration would talk to the Deconz server (addon or another machine).
And the zigbee2mqtt server would be communicating with HA through MQTT.
Kenneth
