Home Assistant Green & Zigbee connectivity / usage

Configuration Zigbee
1

Hi guys,

Just new to the community and still a total noob so hope you guys can forgive me for the potentially stupid questions I’m about to ask. :slight_smile:

I just bought the Home Assistant Green and set it up successfully. I have some automation like Hue and Eufy that I want to integrate but also want to be less dependent on e.g. Hue. What I want to do is to buy a Zigbee dongle and get for example an Ikea button. Before I ‘invest’ in that, I want to ensure I’m heading in the right direction:

  1. Getting a Zigbee dongle like Sonoff, plug it in the Home Assistant Green and connect e.g. an Ikea button to it, do I need to take anything else into consideration?
  2. I currently have my HA Green in my office, which is 20 metres (65 feet) to my house. If I have Zigbee resources connected in my house, will they function without any issues looking at the distance/walls?
  3. Optional question: I’ve read the Sonoff dongle is good but there are two options, the E or P-variant. Can I take the E-variant as this is newer technology or will it potentially give issues?

Again, sorry for my noob-ish questions, still in a learning curve here. :smiley:
Thank you in advance!

Take care,
Jos

2

Hello,

I am currently going through exactly the same thing and wanted to ask the same questions. If by any chance you have answers to these questions now It would be awesome if you can help

Best,
Aboulenain

3

Aboulenain

I am a little further down the ha road but no expert however, let me see if I can explain a little from my limited experience.

Any compatible Zigbee hardware should simply work with the appropriate Zigbee dongle. Here is a list of devices that are known to be compatible with various dongles: Database of Zigbee devices compatible with ZHA, Tasmota, Zigbee2MQTT, deCONZ, ZiGate and ioBroker

You may find this discussion about ZHA vs Zigbee2Mqtt useful: ZHA vs Zigbee2Mqtt - which is the most stable? - #30 by steph_gre

Some Zigbee devices are also repeaters (ie they will pass on Zigbee messages). To improve you Zigbee mesh add some repeaters: Zigbee range and how to improve

Personally in my small flat I use HA Green with ZHA and a few repeaters and have found it very reliable.