I just installed Home Assistant Core on Raspbian (Raspberry PI OS) with a Zigbee CC2531 setup and I am quite happy that I got it working without too much of a hassle. Everything is running without containers and I find the footprint quite minimal so-far.
However, I deviated notably from the wide-spread tutorials which usually use zigbee2mqtt. While I got that running as well, I noticed that it does not seem to be required, since I could already connect my (so-far only) Zigbee device.
I first tried the MQTT integration, but in addition to flashing the CC2531 adapter, I only had to install the mosquitto broker and setup the “Zigbee” integration to achieve that. Latter integration I discovered more by accident.
Now I am wondering why the online tutorials are based on zigbee2mqtt which I am not running anymore. Is there any additional benefit in using that or is it just an unnecessary complication with the current version of HA? Also, I would not have been able to actually follow the tutorials since they are based on a Zigbee2mqtt plugin I do not have since I am using HA Core.
Thanks and apologies if, being newbie, I happen to miss any requirements for posts.
Better device support. I understand. So there is no way to run zigbee2mqtt natively (and use its separate frontend for device configuration) and integrating it with, e.g., MQTT in HA? That would force me to use another installation method with Docker presumably.
Because Zigbee2MQTT is another piece of software, used by a lot of people. Not everything revolves around Home Assistant
Historically if you wanted Zigbee in HA your main choices were deCONZ or Zigbee2MQTT, both of which have a larger user-base outside of HA than in it. ZHA at the time wasn’t very mature. Things have changed a lot since then and the main two choices are now Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA.
Personally, just use whatever works for you. Neither ZHA or Z2M are fundamentally better (or worse) then the other.
Oh, and that Zigbee stick is good for maybe a dozen devices before you start running into problems. Too many devices, or just ones that are chatty, and it’ll lock up until you remove it from the computer and put it back again.
Thanks for your comments! I got myself a few further Zigbee devices now and found that they work with ZHA so-far.
I was aware of the limitations of the Zigbee stick CC2531 and also found that, although equipped with antenna, it has a rather short reach in my apartment (which is perhaps too small to justify a router). So I wonder now if there is a better drop-in replacement for the stick. I seem to understand that I could use the then spare CC2531 as a Zigbee router as well.
Regarding the coordinator I found some info online, but I am unsure which stick will do in my setup on the raspberry. I would also appreciate a solution that comes with an opensource firmware similar to the one I use now. Since you seem to have experience with it you may be able to comment.
