It appears I am in a spot where I have a decision to make hardware wise with Home Assistant. Currently, Hass is running in a VM on my Proxmox server. I have a RPi 3B+ that is running Docker containers for ZwaveJS2MQTT and Zigbee2MQTT. For Zigbee, its using an older Texas Instruments sniffer device I modified according to their website about 4 or so years ago, maybe more.
My RPI has been giving me issues lately, where it just goes offline and locks up. I thought it was an SD card issue, but it turns out it is most likely the RPI itself after a good bit of testing. This setup has also given me issues where Zwave devices don’t really update their status in Hass if I turn the device off/on/brightness from the device itself.
I’m thinking of just going with a Home Assistant Green device along with a SkyConnect device (along with my current Zwave dongle) in hopes this would make things simpler and also hopefully fix my long standing Zwave/MQTT issue.
Does this seem like a good approach compared to my current setup? I think it would make things better, but want a sanity check. Potentially redoing all my Zigbee devices will be a pain if I can’t migrate, but otherwise it seems like it would be a smooth transition.
Not easy to migrate. Since you are using Zigbee2MQTT, I would buy a CC2652 instead of a Skyconnect. Then it is just copying over the data directory and you are migrated.
I would just get a skyconnect and use that directly with the VM with your zwave adapter, remove the RPi from the setup completely. Just do a USB filter to pass them through into the VM.
No need to add more to the setup if you don’t need to if you already have a VM based setup already that is working.
A ZigStar LAN Coordinator or SLZB-06M would be the better choice then since they and run them via POE to each location they need to extend but don’t have the option of using a smart plug or switch as a router device.
Trying to look up a z-wave based one but it’s harder to find it seems, that said this one is prob the best option if they need a 2 in one solution to place around:
“Z-NET is built with an internal radio to handle Z-Wave communications. A separate (optional) Zigbee USB coordinator is connected to one of the four USB ports to handle Zigbee communications. The unit itself is then added to your home network (via Ethernet or WiFi) for use with your HomeSeer or Home Assistant hub.”
I went with a Home Assistant Green and a Skyconnect. Downloaded a backup from my VM then transferred it to the new device. My Zwave stick worked just fine as expected without redoing any devices. For Zigbee, I just went around the house and reset and paired everything again. Then just renamed what I needed in Hass. From out of the box to being completed and testing everything took maybe an hour. all is working well and it solved my other issue with devices not updating if turned of at the device itself.