I’ve been running Home Assistant for a while now on an Intel NUC with Proxmox, with HA in a dedicated VM (5GB RAM). Overall I’m pretty happy with it, and I want to be clear upfront: HA core itself is solid. It almost never gives me trouble. The core is not the problem here.
The problem is the integration with wireless protocols — and that’s what I’d love to hear your experience with.
Zigbee (via Zigbee2MQTT) is my main headache. About once a month the connection gets flaky — devices stop responding, the mesh becomes unreliable. Sometimes restarting the Zigbee2MQTT add-on fixes it, but often it doesn’t and I end up having to restart the entire host VM to get things back to normal.
Matter has been even worse for me. I find it really unreliable. I frequently have to restart the bridge devices themselves (like the IKEA hub) to get things working again. For a protocol that was supposed to unify and simplify smart home connectivity, it’s been a frustrating experience.
On the other hand, ESPHome devices have been rock solid. Some of mine have been running for years without a single issue. It’s honestly my most reliable platform by far.
Here’s what bugs me: I’ve deliberately tried to keep my setup lean. I run a minimal number of platforms, and I specifically chose protocols that are supposed to be mature and well-tested — Zigbee and Matter. And yet these are the ones giving me the most trouble, while the DIY option (ESPHome) just works.
So my question is: is it realistic to expect a full year of stable operation without having to manually restart things? And if you’ve achieved that kind of stability, especially with Zigbee or Matter, what does your setup look like?
I’d love to hear about things like:
Which Zigbee coordinator are you using? Any specific Zigbee2MQTT settings that help?
Has anyone gotten Matter to be truly reliable long-term?
Any scheduled restart strategies, or is that just admitting defeat?
General tips for long-term wireless protocol stability?
Or maybe the answer is “ESPHome everything and call it a day” — and I’m starting to think that might not be a bad idea.
This sounds like RF interference to me.
Maybe the dongle is not on an extension cable and away from other RF sources, or you are on a channel that is busy with WIFI interference, or something like that.
I have 3 zigbee networks, 2 in one house, and I don’t see any of that. The Home Assistant Cookbook - Index
I update HA and z2m (via add-on/app) every three to four months, mainly just to keep from falling too far behind.
I’d update less, but HA moves (too) fast and I want to make sure I don’t miss a six month deprecation window.
I never update around the 1st, always the last week or so of the month. Z2M updates have always gone flawlessly, HA updates usually pretty smooth unless something has been purposefully broken by the devs.
I can’t really speak to matter. I have it installed and a couple of low priority devices, but if they stopped working, I might not notice for a while.
Otherwise, I don’t touch it. No scheduled reboots, no need to restart Z2M. I could believe it could go a year or so.
It is true that it is in a room that is a bit apart from everything else with concrete walls. The interference is very unlikely as my house is very far from any other house. The only possible interference is with my own wifi.
One possible fix could be moving over to an ethernet based coordinator and place that more centrally. I did that and my Zigbee mesh is now quite solid.
Just to clarify what I mean by “a full year of uptime” — I’m not talking about literally zero restarts. Restarting for updates is totally normal and expected, that’s just part of running any system.
What I’m really asking about is a full year without having to debug anything. No hunting down why a Zigbee device suddenly dropped off the mesh, no force-restarting a Matter bridge because it stopped responding, no spending my evening troubleshooting instead of just living in my smart home.
Basically: update, restart, and everything just keeps working — for a whole year. That’s the dream. Is anyone actually living it?
Yes, that is indeed in my todo list, but I want to know beforehand if all that work (repairing my entire network) will be worth it. That’s why I’m asking here for advice
Not necessary needed, depending on what coordinator you have and what you migrate to. I’ve gone from zzh! to UZG-01 to SLZB06-p7 without having to re-pair. This is on Z2M, not sure how supported it is in ZHA.
Mine is running like that for i guess about a year or 3.
And i even moved house, shut it down in the old house, turned it back on in the new.
I normally update quite fast, including 1st release.
ofc i had some issues with newly added devices (heatpump, ventilation etc) in the new house, but they are stable too now.
oh, wait; last week i had to give one of my hue lights a power cycle… but that is about it as far as i can remember
But I agree, it took me a while to get it as stable as it is now…
And I also prepared for the worst…
backups are made daily to my NAS
I have a identical laptop (my haos host) laying around, just in case
less urgent, spare poe switch
so if shit might hit the fan, i should be able to recover within the hour
I’m using Zb2mqtt. I read stories of the process not working properly. It will be nice to have the ZigBee devices be stable a d work, but there will be still matter and other similar protocols problematic. For example, my Ikea dirigera never looses connection to it’s devices, but the matter bridge stops working. Same for my gobee lights, so I switched them to the native integration
If you use other coordinators (IKEA, Govee(not sure if that is Zigbee?) that means you have multiple zigbee networks, ie more interference. How many router and end devices do you have on Z2M currently?
The issues you’re seeing are with protocols which require a decent mesh to work properly. The most obvious solution is generally to add more router devices & strengthen your mesh.
@Sir_Goodenough has provided you with a link which will lead you to a guide on how mesh networks work. I suggest you read that & optimise your environment.
As mentioned before RF interference might be the cause.
WiFi, Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee all use the 2.4GHz frequency and other stuff might too.
You can search the internet for a channel to frequency band map for each of the protocols. It is sadly not always so that channel 10 in WiFi equals channel 10 in Zigbee or Matter, so find the actual frequencies.
Things that helped me increase Zigbee reliability:
Repositioning the coordinator dongle (and the HA minipc) to a more central location reduced about half the problems in my case; in the pic you shared, the dongle antenna is horizontal so the RF “donut” it creates around it is vertical. I would change this.
I replaced ALL Tuya devices, they are cheap for a reason. A couple of verbose Tuya devices can quicly overwhelm the mesh. I also avoid Sonoff stuff, but some folks in the community swear by them
I built this tool to help me “see” the mesh structure (zigbee map) and “listen” to the device chatter (zigbee log): Zigbee Map - Visualize your mesh network. You can also do this directly in Z2M, but for some reason the map from Z2M does not “click” with me.
I am. 5 years now and I have no need to troubleshooting… well, other than z2m updates and battery changes.
sonoff dongle P still with 2021 firmware, Z2M, 5ft USB 2.0 cable, HAOS in a VM.
In the very beginning there was a Aqara vibration sensor that keeps dropping out of my mesh network. I got rid of that, and nothing drop off since.
I have also made the decision stay away from Matter (over IP or over Thread.)
And if the same type/style device I want is available in z-wave flavour, I would prefer z-wave over zigbee.
My setup isn’t perfect I have to “Troubleshoot” something about once per quarter - but my troubleshooting is almost always power cycling the device that is misbehaving (it’s not always the same device) so I don’t worry too much about it just turn it off and on again then move on until the next thing.
