I’m slowly planning to smart my home but want to do it as energy efficiently as possible *
So I was wondering what the most energy efficient way to run one or multiple zigbee hubs troughout my home would be? (would a raspberry pi with a zigbee hat be the best? if so, which raspberry pi should I go with)
Cheers!
Well, this is Home Assistant, why not use a Zigbee stick and one of the Zigbee integrations 
Just run the one you select on your existing Home Assistant system.
I was planning to put my HA installation in a VM on my synology. But my synology is on the other side of the building (where my business is located). So that wouldn’t give me enough range for my zigbee radio
You can drop a Raspberry Pi with either deCONZ or Zigbee2MQTT on it in a suitable location. Both of those will work remotely from Home Assistant.
Yeah was thinking of that. But wasn’t sure if there was a commercial box that was even more power efficient than a raspberry pi.
But I just realized I could use a Rasperry pi zero w which is the lowest power usage for a raspberry pi (with wifi)
And seems like people have done it before: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/connecting_cc2530.html#to-a-raspberry-pi-zero
Yeah, for what you’re doing a Zero will do if you’re really concerned, though I’d suggest a Pi3B if you can budget the power will be a better long term platform (and may well make a difference to the performance too).
Beyond that, there’s this for Tasmota, though it may well be more limited.
Bear in mind that Zigbee also meshes. So while it’s on the other side of the building, if you have bulbs from one side to the other, you may well be able to still manage it, as the signal can pass from one bulb (node) to another.
Or via a repeater.
