Just started my home automation journey, have only HA and a Honeywell thermostat. Looking for recommendations of what light switches and plugs to purchase that will work with Just HA. looks like everything else needs a Controller (ZigBee, amazon, google) already installed and integrated with HA. Or will ZigBee devices connect direct to HA without having the ZigBee hardware controller?
Home automation is VERY region dependent because radio spectrums and power requirements.
We MUST know where (country) you live for good recommendations
Sorry, USA
Ok so first HA does not provide the hardware interface that’s provided by an integration. That translates whatever it’s connected to to HA.
Thats pretty much in all cases. So for something like Alexa that’s a cloud service. As long as you can connect great.
But for Zigbee, ZWave Matter KNX pretty much Anything else you need the connection hardware for HA to have something to read.
So you need to determine if you’re
Smart switches or lamps (not both… Please And what kind of transport (zigbee ZWave etc) yyouwant to use.
Id recommend reading the home assisant cookbook from front to back especially the section on hardware…
The. Come back and ask clarification questions.
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OK, that basically answered it all. i need to figure out what controller i want and go from there. Thank you much.
Pick your integration for ZWave and Zigbee and matter… That integration will have recommended hardware.
Nathan has given a pretty good overview, and some good reading for homework.
This has been discussed before, but I’ll briefly go over a couple of design criteria you’ll want to consider.
First, pick your protocol. You’ve probably already got WiFi in your home, so that’s a logical choice. But there are some downsides. Most off-the-shelf WiFi devices depend on the manufacturer’s “cloud” solution. Most HA users prefer local solutions which don’t have this dependency. You can “roll your own” WiFi devices with ESPHome, but you’ll probably want to avoid off-the-shelf WiFi devices. And you’ll want to give some thought about your own network design to make sure it works the way you want.
That pretty much leaves Zigbee and Z-Wave if you want a good selection of readily available devices. You can buy one USB stick which will act as a controller for both, although you probably want to just choose one protocol. There are pros and cons; I won’t endorse one over the other. Both are mostly plug-and-play without much network administration on your part.
Next, limit complexity. There’s so much HA can do, it’s easy to get carried away and want to try everything you read about. But for every new integration, add-on or customization, you’re making more work for yourself. You’ll need to keep up with updates, watch for breaking changes and generally do administrative work to keep everything working together. Follow the KISS principle, at least until you understand what kind of commitment you’ll be making.
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I disagree with CaptTom when they say that you’ll only want to use either one zwave or zigbee protocol.
Maybe you will but you shouldn’t limit yourself unnecessarily. Both protocols can work together since they use different hardware, radio frequency & control. And that means you will need two radio dongles to control those different protocols. But as mentioned there are a few options where one dongle can control both since they have two different radios & controllers in the same package.
I have both and use both pretty equally - I have 48 zigbee devices and 43 zwave devices.
But I do agree with them that I won’t say one is better in all cases than the other.
zigbee is generally cheaper but not every device is usable in HA due to not having a strict standard control like zwave does (but most work fine) and they tend to be more flaky than zwave.
just today I had a window sensor just randomly fall off the mesh network that I had to re-pair. That happens to devices on a kind of regular basis. I’d say about every 2 weeks I’ll have one drop off. fortunately it’s almost always battery powered devices and its as easy as putting zigbee into pairing mode and hit the action button on the device to bring it back online. HA remembers the config for it as well so you don’t have to worry about re-configuring anything.
and of course that means zwave is generally(always…?) more expensive but for me they just work.
But in full disclosure I do have one outlet that goes off the mesh every once in a while (once every month or two). but I have an automation that pings it when it goes offline and it always come back. so I don’t even have to manually intervene at all. It’s not a problem enough to even dig into it or replace it.
And I also use wifi devices (33 devices) that are all either ESPHome based (a DIY wifi protocol) or Shelly based (works locally pretty much out of the box with a very minimal config change). That’s not including my 10 IP security cameras and the other various supporting devices/services
My point in all of this is to again say to not unnecessarily limit your options. Most times zigbee is good enough. sometimes zwave would work better. and don’t count out wifi devices as long as they are fully local control and your wifi can support them.
I’m sure that whatever I need I can find something that’s supported by my system.
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Fair enough. If you buy a stick which supports both, and find some devices or use cases where one or the other works better for you, use it. And I already mentioned that WiFi works well if you stick with local control.
I’ve personally gravitated toward Zigbee as my go-to protocol for off-the-shelf devices. It’s worked well for me, but I have nothing against Z-Wave. I’ll give it a try if I run into a device where that makes sense.
Still, I like browsing through each month’s release thread and seeing all the problems with devices, integrations and protocols I don’t use. Taking a KISS approach with HA really does make your life easier.
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I’m a both user. But in no universe will I ever recommend a combined stick of any protocol.
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Usually the replacement cycles are out of sync causing replacement of stick while half of it is still perfectly good.
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most are poorly executed because they have to make concessions to accommodate the combined presence and usually have firmware issues a plenty
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or sometimes flat out doesn’t make sense. (I still have no idea why SmartThings put a zigbee/thread radio inside a Wi-Fi access point that has 2ghz wifi on by default…)
Im a slap em all on a powered usb2 hub on a 1m usb cable kinda guy…
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I think I could generally agree with that.
But I do have the Nortek combined zwave/zigbee dongle. But I only use that dongle for the zigbee side.
The reason I first started with home automation was that I wanted to have a remote indication and control of my garage door. And after researching a bit that was the one thing that started me down the HA path.
I work nights at times and I accidentally left the door open when I went to work and didn’t realize until the middle of the night that I might have forgotten to close it. And I had no way of checking or closing it if I did. So the first project I wanted to accomplish was the garage door.
The only thing really available at the time was the Linear zwave garage door controller. So I bought a zwave dongle and the controller. I fought with that for a bit before I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get it working. So ironically the initial reason I bought the zwave stick ended up not working for me. But I still eventually ended up using it for the intended purpose by installing a zwave tilt sensor and zwave dry contact relay and using that to control the door. I’ve been using that setup ever since and that was around 8 years ago now.
Then shortly later on I learned about zigbee and I found out about the Nortek combined stick so I figured I could use that for zigbee and if my zwave stick ever died I could use the zwave side of the stick as a backup. I found some cheap Sengled bulbs on Amazon to try out. Then quickly decided that smart bulbs are pretty much useless except in very limited situations. So again the original purpose in buying a zigbee controller didn’t actually end up being used.
so all of that to say right now I actually have two zwave radios and a zigbee radio connected directly to my system via the USB ports all on a NUC size PC (so all of them less than 6 inches apart and about 2 feet from a wifi AP) and have never had any issues.
So I have no problem recommending the Nortek zigbee/zwave stick based on my experience with it.
yup. I agree. Sorry if it came across as not.
I think for lighting specifically your budget will also dictate which direction you may want to go. While i use ZWave for a large portion of my devices, I specifically use Lutron for lighting with its bridge. It is certainly more expensive than other protocols, but the speed, reliability, and brand reputation is unmatched IMO. For something like light switches that are used so often and so visible I value the idea of the exact product being available many years from now. And with Lutron I know I’m getting that as opposed to some of the cheaper companies that may not exist ten or even two years from now.