I’ve been running Home Assistant for awhile. I had some Phillips Hue bulbs I’d bought and wanted to make everything ‘smarter’. Plus the fact it was on Linux and its something I’m always messing around with. My first Zwave device was one of the Zooz S2 Motion sensor. It worked pretty well so then I got one of the Zooz 4 in 1 next. Almost as good but a little annoying that you have to make custom binary sensors to get the motion detection. All along I’ve been using this Aeotez Z-Stick for all my Z-Wave devices. But I’ve wanted everything to be on my cloud and not anyone else’s. And so the Hue hub always bothered me that I had to use it. Just a few days ago I found the usbzb-1 and its changed everything for me. Getting it working was super simple this posting helped me initially. And there was also this rather random reddit thread that helped me get it set so it doesn’t change between reboot
How did I add it? Just Integrations -> ZHA (along with the config tweaks noted above for Zwave). Also, I followed the directions here to make all my Zooz devices show up at least properly. I found this step to be crucial in regards to Zwave devices showing up correctly.
Adding everything back in via Zwave was nice and simple and it all just works. Then I started in with my Hue bulbs. After a bit of reading it seems like the short and simple way is to just delete them one by one off my Hue app, and then go into Configuration -> ZHA -> Add device. Nothing short of amazing. Also, I was able to remove my Hue motion sensor and re-add it back in as well and now I’ve got the battery and luminance without any added tweaks like before! Very very pleased.
And, if it wasn’t enough that I’m able to toss my phillips hue bridge, I was also able to add back in a motion detector that never worked quite right before. I posted awhile back about an issue with the Xiaomi Mijia IR motion sensor and having nothing but trouble with the Aqara gateway. I had to fiddle with the senor and keep resetting it while trying to add it. But after a few times it added! No Aqara gateway!! Problem solved
Now I have all my Zwave devices and Zigbee devices available and no gateway needed at all except for my Pi and USB stick. Most gateway’s cost around 20-50$ and this stick is only $35 (at least right now on Amazon). Quite amazing and now I’m looking forward to adding more devices and not having to use anyone else’s gateway. I’m not an expert but if anyone else is looking to go the same route I can probably help