I’ve just started with Home Assistant and I’m pretty new to the whole thing, so hopefully this isn’t a silly question.
I noticed that most people seem to use USB dongles (like Zigbee or Z-Wave sticks) with setups like Home Assistant Green, mini-PCs, or Raspberry Pi. But I was wondering — is there any hardware that has built-in Zigbee/Z-Wave? Like, an all-in-one device that doesn’t need any external dongles or HATs?
For example, I’m thinking about something you can just take out of the box, looks neat and professional, and works well for serious setups — maybe in businesses or just a “polished” home environment, you know? I tried Googling “Home Assistant gateway” or “Home Assistant hub,” but all I found were USB sticks or DIY setups.
So my questions are:
Does anything like this exist?
Or maybe my idea of needing built-in Zigbee/Z-Wave is unnecessary, and USB dongles are the better way to go?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks a lot for your help!
The gateway is pretty much HA.
The USB stick is just a radio to that one type of RF network, IE. Z-wave, Zigbee, Thread, RF or whatever.
The USB stick can often also be found in Ethernet variants, where the USB interface is replaced with an Ethernet port, but HA is still the part that handle the gateway tasks.
This is a Zigbee “gateway” that connects with HA via an integration:
Several manufacturers do something similar, but Hue is probably the best quality (as well as the most expensive). Works pretty much out of the box, but only with Hue lights and sensors - which is the downside of all these “gateways”.
The best way to go depends entirely on your requirements. A USB dongle is likely to be more flexible and much cheaper in the long run, but you’re committing yourself to a lot of tinkering to get it working.
Edit: A lot of people (myself included) start with a Hue bridge, then move to a USB dongle as they become more experienced/interested. All the Hue sensors and lights will work with a dongle as well.
There are some Home Assistant people that have moved from Hubitat that left their Zwave and Zigbee devices attached to the Hubitat for some amount of time and just used HA’s Hubitat Integration. I haven’t read of anyone starting with HA and buying an HE instead of the 2 dongles. HE is a about $165 right now but I don’t know what the 2 dongles cost. I predominantly use HE and my Zigbee and Zwave have been rock solid. I also bring some of my devices into HA to utilize the different dashboard capabilities HA has.
@WallyR Thanks so much for explaining! That makes a lot of sense. But I wonder — doesn’t splitting the gateway (HA) and the radio (like the USB stick) make things a bit more complicated for users?
For instance, do you think troubleshooting or configuring things separately (HA software + a USB stick) could be harder for people compared to having everything built into one device? Or is this something people just get used to?
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I’d love to hear your thoughts!
It’s easier to debug when things are setup a certain way and in this case having dedicated co-ordinators will allow you to resolve an issue with one as it comes up without taking out the other device network that you have setup.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, @jackjourneyman ! It really helped clarify some of the trade-offs here.
I see what you mean about Hue’s “easy-to-use” factor — it’s because Hue itself is a fully integrated ecosystem, and Home Assistant adds on top of that to enable more powerful functionality and interoperability. That makes total sense!
That said, I think one of the big reasons people turn to Home Assistant in the first place is to break free of those big ecosystems like Hue and gain more flexibility. But using something like a USB dongle definitely adds complexity. I have a Sonoff USB Zigbee dongle plugged into a NUC, and to be honest, it feels quite fragile — not the most professional-looking setup for sure!
Do you think there’s a good middle ground between using dongles and sticking entirely with ecosystems like Hue? Would something like an all-in-one device with built-in Zigbee (but designed to work with multiple brands/devices) be a better choice for users who want flexibility without the extra hassle?
@Stephenn Thanks for the idea! Using HE as a Zigbee/Z-Wave gateway definitely seems like a solid and professional solution to support more devices, and I like how stable it sounds.
If only Home Assistant could run directly on HE’s hardware! That would save the cost of buying an extra device and also cut down the maintenance effort of running two systems.
@TH3xR34P3R That’s a good point about debugging with dedicated coordinators! But since Home Assistant itself doesn’t support high availability, wouldn’t a single point of failure still exist? Even if the gateway and HA are separated, a failure in HA would still take down the entire system. It seems like splitting them helps with modularity and partial debugging, but doesn’t completely eliminate this risk.
High availability is dependent on your overall setup with both the software and hardware you have to work with at the time based on how critical it is.
i.e in my case I maintain snapshots of my virtual instance of HA that I rotate through with stable versions then back them up to the NAS and a USB stick for live and offline access. I also have my networking gear connected to a dedicate UPS to allow safe shut off should a power issue occur that lasts longer than the run time on the UPS.
I use a switchbot bot to toggle the button on the mbeat usb hub I am using for the skyconnect should ZHA not be able to see it on a reboot or restart after an update and its connected to the UPS using a battery eliminator cable so that I don’t have to worry about replacing its battery, the bot is also connected through the matter over wifi bridge portion of the hub 2 which is keeping it standalone in that regard and the only weakpoint is that the hub 2 is not on its own UPS since its being used as a temp and humidity sensor in my bathroom and just plugged in via usb power to the useelink matter over wifi powerstrip I have there but in turn that is set to always turn on when power is restored anyways (same thing I setup with other smart power strips and plugs with my gear in the rack).
tldr its about redundancy and testing where your setup fails to pass the tests when building it out over time and then implementing better solutions to match your needs, i.e I had issues with snapshots and restoration of matter over thread config where as everything else worked flawless without any issues so I replaced my thread devices with zigbee versions instead until I retest future updates.
Its like an USB mouse.
You know that if it is mechanical then it is the mouse, but the software and configuration is done in Windows or whatever system you might be using.
Ethernet radios require a little bit more when connecting it, like setting the IP address of the ethernet device, but that is quickly learnt and after that it is the same as with the USB.
Usually USB is the first version you buy and then later you might find that a placement of the radio separate from the HA server might be good and you then research it and find the Ethernet variant, but at that time you will also be more experienced with the actual radio setup, so the Ethernet part is easy.
Wow, I’m blown away by your system! The attention to detail, the backups, and even the creative use of tools like SwitchBot are all incredibly impressive. It’s clear you’ve invested so much thought and effort into ensuring reliability and making everything as fail-safe as possible.
Thanks for sharing such a detailed breakdown — it’s super inspiring and gives me a lot to think about for improving my own setup!
This is what I do. I am a hubitat user, with a bunch of ZWave things connected, and started dabbling with Home Assistant using a Proxmox VM. It has been working well, although theres a few devices that Hubitat doesn’t seem to be able to convey through to HA with the integration. I haven’t looked into whether it’s a Hubitat or HA issue. I came looking for this thread though, because I’m building a new house, and will be starting over, and basically have the same question as the OP for a new install. I am torn between having an “HA Green” or NUC type hardware installed with the USB dongles, vs continuing to use a Hubitat as the zwave intermediary. My concerns are that leaving it a VM with Hubitat means added complexity and that a failure in my Proxmox setup could cause a failure. That is easily fixed with an OS level restore to a new proxmox VM though, and a hardware failure of a NUC or “HA Green” install means new hardware to recover from a failure. I am not quite sure which way I want to go at this point for the new install. I can say I’ve been generally happy with the hubitat being the zwave hub though…
I try not get carried away when giving details for ideas based on my experiences but being in IT I can’t help it lol I have a need to make sure it’s all explained best I can heh.
I’ve posted the same question on Reddit, and after combining the inputs from both here and Reddit, it seems USB dongles can slightly improve installation flexibility when paired with an extension cable. However, Ethernet-to-Zigbee/Z-Wave solutions go a step further by completely separating the device running Home Assistant from the radios. For example, you could put the Home Assistant server in a closet or data rack, and position the radios in a more central location within each room. This setup seems ideal for larger houses or scenarios with signal challenges.
Personally, I find USB dongles a bit unappealing because of their aesthetics — they just don’t look great. And when they stop responding, you’d need to implement a solution like the one TH3xR34P3R described to restart them, since most PCs or even HA Green don’t support native USB peripheral reboots.
For simpler installations without signal-blocking issues, I think a single device that can run Home Assistant and include the necessary radios would be a perfect solution. If only we could run Home Assistant directly on hardware like Hubitat! Haha, wishful thinking.
For setups with signal-blocking concerns or when the radios need to be placed far away, I think a separate Ethernet-to-Zigbee/Z-Wave or Wi-Fi-to-Zigbee/Z-Wave solution would be more reliable. That said, something like the Hubitat Elevation C-8 does feel a bit pricey if it’s only used as a standalone radio device.
Not everybody wants Zigbee, or Z-Wave, or … other technologies. Why should they have to pay for that hardware that they’ll never use?
In the case of Z-Wave that hardware is also region specific, so people would need to buy the right one for their region.
Also, different Zigbee (for example) coordinators have different costs, and capabilities. Some people want a USB stick they can plug in that’ll cope with a dozen devices. Some want something network connected that they can put centrally in the house, that’ll handle a couple of hundred devices.
Yes, there’s hardware for HA like the Yellow that has Zigbee built in. For most people though having the flexibility to use what they want, running HA on the hardware they already have, that’s the solution they want.
There is a “smart” usb hub but I have not got around to ordering it and seeing how well it would work in the setup since I have the current setup working for my needs on what I already had on hand:
That said in the specs its listed as Tuya wifi which is reliant on the smart app and its cloud server to control devices, I am not sure how well it would translate to a local integration setup.
Which is exactly why I just use a switchbot bot as a toggle for my mbeat 7 port usb hub that has flat style power buttons for each port lol… simple and local xD
ever since the dev portal issues with tuya and my lenovo plugs that use it I avoid tuya wifi like the plague for the reason its too much faffing about compared to other options we have that just work an don’t fight us.
But I wonder — doesn’t splitting the gateway (HA) and the radio (like the USB stick) make things a bit more complicated for users?
