Hassio on RPi with Zigbee hub or zigbee2mqtt?

Hardware
1

Hey,
I’m thinking about getting into the whole smart home thing.
After a LOT of research I am sure I want to run Hassio on a RPi (which I still don’t fully understand how to do, but I’ll figure that out somehow). But now I ask myself the question: Should I use a regular Zigbee Hub (if so I would go for the Tuya Zigbee Hub) or should I try my luck with a zigbee2mqtt USB stick like the cc2531?
Does anyone have any experience with either of the two?
I know that the cc2531 would be able to support many more products than the Tuya Hub.
What I couldn’t finde out tho if the Tuya hub would be able to connect to Wifi devices such as Wifi sockets, Wifi light bulbs, Wifi light switches etc. all of witch stress the router.
If the Tuya Hub were able to connect to those Wifi products that would be the obvious choice right? because you wouldn’t have to care about how many Wifi devices you use around the house as they wouldn’t use the Wifi router directly but the Tuya hub.
Is this feature supported by the Tuya Hub? If not by any other Zigbee Hub?
Or is it even possible?

I know I am asking a lot but I’m just very confused by all of the different options on the market and the different types of technology.
Thank you for your answers in advance.

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Zigbee uses 2.4 Mhz. All home automation Wifi devices I know of use 2.4 Mhz. But Zigbee and Wifi are totally different protocols, so you can’t use a zigbee hub to control wifi devices or vice versa. You need an intermediary like the Tuya app or of course Home Assistant.

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I have not heard of that tuya hub, so I am unable to tell you if it will work. Do you have a link?

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I think he talks about this one :

The picture shows a connection to a Wifi router.

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@demi

I would suggest, seen the things you write about not fully understanding RPi and Hassio yet, I would recommend you to look into the following setup:

Hass.IO + RPi + ConBee II stick or Hass.IO + RPi + RaspBee Premium. (I run the second setup myself)

then enable the deCONZ add-on in your Hass.IO. This add-on makes things so much easier for you. The zigbee2mqtt needs to be flashed with the right image. Requires you to purchase a ccdebugger and a downloader etc to get the stick to work. (Unless you get a pre-flashed stick…) And then also quite some more complicated ways to configure the software and the way to add new devices is not really that intuitive.

Start out easy, do ensure it’s not all that overwhelming. Get used to the whole home automating thing and expand when you feel more comfortable with the setup en config etc.

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First of all thank you for all of your answers!
@Vasco do you have a setup link for either or both alternatives?

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Yes that’s the hub i meant.
Since it only works with Zifbee products would you recommend a Hub over a stick?
I believe the stick would support many more devices that the hub doesn’t.

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It’s actually very straight forward:

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What makes you think the tuya hub works with Home Assistant?

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Because it says so on the home assistant website. If you search through all of the devices that are supported the tuya hub is listed.

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The problem I encounter after flashing is that my device (Mac) doesn’t recognize the sd-card so I am unable to edit the config file…
If I flash Homebridge on it for example I am still able to access and edit all the files.
Is that a problem only I encounter or does that have something to do with the MacOS?

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And also where can I find a list of supported devices for this method?

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After flasing, Remove the SD card, plug it back in. Ignore the format errors, find the mounted drive and there you should see some files, and among those files a config.txt file

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Thats the problem. After plugging back in I still can’t access the sd card. I get an error message which I keep ignoring but the card doesn’t show up anywhere. I’ve tried flashing it again too but with the same results…

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Weird question maybe. But what software do you use on your mac to flash rhe MicroSD cards?

Also have a look at this post: SD Card Full / Out of Disk Space - Proper Fix?

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I think you are misunderstanding. It may work, but the word “hub” here is not referring to that device.

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For zigbee I use zigbee2mqtt myself.

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I have some IKEA lights and sensors and buttons and remotes and sockets. Some are connected through the IKEA gateway, some are connected through zigbee2mqtt that I got from @h4nc.

My IKEA gateway is connected to home assistant as well using tradfri integration, and is connected to Google Home. I only use the tradfri app for pairing new devices.

I also have some teckin esp8266 wifi sockets and some esp32 (lolin d32) to act as bridges for xiaomi bluetooth temperature sensors.

And I have some nest cameras and protect sensors and thermostat and speakers and Chromecasts, and I’m using Google home.

The cc2531 works well with zigbee2mqtt, lots of options, fine grained control and logging, automation is easy/trivial/great, but I find that WAF is higher with Google Home. OEM product hubs/gateways are easier to integrate with Google Home or Alexa for voice control and routines.

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Yes but this is not the google home or alexa forum. Many of us don’t give a fig about google or whoever owns alexa. Especially so since the nest debacle.

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