Since Home Assistant now has a built-in native ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration (via the ZHA component) I was wondering if we can please get a dedicated subforum for “Zigbee devices and the ZHA Gateway” here under the configuration category section of the Home Assistant Community Forums as well?
My main argument for this is that more people might take notice of Zigbee solutions for HASS and perhaps that will help make it not take as long for Zigbee to also become a first-class citizen in Home Assistant, just as Z-Wave already is today.
Bump! Can we please get a separate sub-forum dedicated to “Zigbee devices and the ZHA Zigbee Gateway” configuration here in the Home Assistant community forum now that the ZHA integration component will soon be getting it has its own config panel in UI for Home Assistant (as per pull request #19664 on GitHub)?
Pull request #2389 which contain the initial Zigbee Home Automation configuration panel UI elements has already been merged:
Also, see pull request #2421 for expanding the ZHA configuration panel in the Polymer GUI frontend for Home Assistant
Will it be possible to use Conbee/Raspbee with HomeAssistant directly without going through deCONZ and deCONZ Rest API and pydeconz? Or what’s the difference?
Yes it means those USB and GPIO adapters will be supported natively through the Zigbee Home Automation hub component without the end-users having to install and configure a third-party software like deCONZ or other middleware software. deCONZ does not need to be running at all as with this solution Home Assistant commands those USB and GPIO adapters directly over serial (UART) via zigpy and the radio libraries.
If you are interested in helping with further development for ConBee and RaspBee then checkout this link:
So from an end-users point-of-view it will work similar to how native support for Z-Wave devices works in Home Assistant, though developers might require developing quirks ( ZHA Device Handlers) for Home Assistant or changes to the zigpy core to get more Zigbee end-point devices to become fully compatible.
This would make four different USB Zigbee radio that Zigpy support via same library, however @doudz have posted an update informing that he has become stuck on the ZiGate side and don’t have time to work on it any further right now. See his comments on the issues here
@MissyQ Can community managers / moderators look into splitting up the “Zigbee” sub-forum?
It has now gone a few years since the “Zigbee” sub-forum/sub-section was first added here in Home Assistant’s community forum and now I like to request that you please look into splitting up the “Zigbee” sub-forum or create additional sub-forums to separate all posts about Home Assistant’s built-in ZHA integration from all posts about third-party gateways/hubs/bridges and third-party software applications, like Zigbee2MQTT, deCONZ/Phoscon, Philips Hue Bridge, Samsung SmartThings Hub, IKEA Trådfri Gateway, Xiaomi Smart Home Hub, Aqara Smart Hubs, Tuya Smart Zigbee Gateways, etc.
Suggest that a good start might be to consider creating a new separate sub-forum for “Zigbee2MQTT” and maybe also “deCONZ” under the existing “Third party integrations” section as that would both high-light that Zigbee2MQTT and deCONZ are third-party integration and would move a lot of general posts about Zigbee2MQTT and deCONZ away from the Zigbee subforum/subsection, especially when most of such posts about should really have been posted externally to Zigbee2MQTT’s own community discussion and deCONZ/Phoscon forum instead of being posted in Home Assistant’s community forum.
Regardless I do not think that questions about configuring or troubleshooting Zigbee2MQTT and deCONZ or other third-party gateways/hubs/bridges all belong in the same subforum/subsection as questions about configuring or troubleshooting Home Assistant’s built-in ZHA integration, even if the main reason for me thinking so is the share number of posts for those two topics in the have gotten to point of being overwhelming. As such I believe currently new users are getting worse help than before because “Zigbee” sub-forum has gotten too fractured.
As it stands now we have a “can’t see the forest for the trees” scenario in the “Zigbee” sub-forum as the subject titles of most threads are ambiguous and it is often unclear from the first post in each thread which Zigbee solution the person is posting about, and many or most time people who want to help have to specifically ask the original poster what Zigbee solution they are actually using.
I would roughly estimate that today a third of the posts in the “Zigbee” sub-forum are about Home Assistant’s built-in ZHA integration, another third of the posts are about Zigbee2MQTT (also sometimes referred to as “Z2M”), an additional 5-10% are about deCONZ (or Phoscon), and then the rest of the posts are a mix or either general posts about various Zigbee devices/hardware that are not exclusive to any one Zigbee solution or very specific questions about configuring other third-party Zigbee gateways/hubs/bridges/controllers.
Most new users who post there asking for help/support do not understand that there is a difference between configuring and troubleshooting a native Zigbee gateway solution like Home Assistant’s built-in ZHA integration and third-party Zigbee gateways/hubs/bridges/controllers that all terminate the Zigbee protocol in their host application software then abstract those devices to interface with Home Assistant using a API or comminication protocol that is not Zigbee, so the attributes they present as virtual devices with entities to Home Assistant that do no longer have much to do with Zigbee.
In the end, if you count all third-party gateways/hubs/bridges/controllers and third-party Zigbee software solutions then there are probably 1000 or more ways to indirectly control a Zigbee device from Home Assistant, but that does not mean that this community has the capacity of helping all of them in a single unified subforum for all things related to “Zigbee”.
So is not like in the Z-Wave sub-forum where in practice Z-Wave JS is the only solution discussed
there today (and not the myriad of third-party gateways/hubs/bridges/controllers that support Z-Wave).
Forum changes will come in time, but this kind of stuff is exactly what I will ask for once I know what changes I’d like to see myself. All I ask for is a little patience - this is one of the largest communities out there and all of the platforms we’re on need a lot of love.
Never apologize for rants, verbose posts help me understand your perspective! Tone is what’s important, and I appreciate you laying this all out expressing your experiences and frustrations. Thank you for tagging me! It helps me keep track of requests. Once I post up asking for feedback on proposed changes for the forums, I’ll be sure to tag you asking for feedback on what I write up for this specifically.
@MissyQ Sorry to bother you with this again however it seems to me that this situation is getting worse and currently a majority of posts currently seem to be about problems with Zigbee2MQTT configuration:
Reading just the title Zigbee2MQTT/Z2M users give their topics there it is most times impossible to tell what software they use, that wasting everyone’s time and making it frustrating and can feel like a pain for both those trying to help as well as those looking for support as everyone first have to try figuring out what Zigbee gateway platform that each poster is talking about.
How can we get Zigbee2MQTT users to stop posting Zigbee2MQTT specific configuration issues to Home Assistant’s community forum section about Zigbee instead get them to post to the official Zigbee2MQTT community channels instead when those Zigbee2MQTT configuration questions/problems in 99% of the times do not have anything directly to do with Home Assistant at all?
The adoption of “official” native ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration is growing in popularity (probably due to sale of Nabu Casa’s official Home Assistant branded SkyConnect/ZBT-1 USB-dongle) and today 25% of Home Assistant install base / userbase have installed Home Assistant’s “official” native Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) integration, but Zigbee2MQTT still has a larger userbase which from my point-of-view keeps overwhelming the Zigbee section in Home Assistant forum with Zigbee2MQTT specific configuration questions and issues/problems (even though Zigbee2MQTT’s own community must clearly be better suited to handle posts about Zigbee2MQTT in their own support channels), but as it stands it is getting harder to support the ZHA integration that is built-into Home Assistant and for users to find topics that are only related to the ZHA integration:
That is, postrs should be made aware that the “Zigbee” section in the Home Assistant forum is really only intended to cover Home Assistant’s own native ZHA integration as well as Zigbee devices that can be used with it, (in fact that section was originally named “ZHA” and then renamed to “Zigbee” to indicate it is also about Zigbee devices too), but it has never been meant for support issues with every other third-party gateway/bridge/hub that can support Zigbee devices and present them to Home Assistant using other protocols.
IMHO this is becoming a problem when everyone expected to get support here if they have problems that are not really with Home Assistant but instead problems with the configuration or inter-workings of Zigbee2MQTT, deCONZ, Philips Hue Bridge, IKEA Tradfri Gateway, Samsung SmartThings, etc. as help with those type of problems should really be gotten via their own support channels and communities as they have nothing directly to do with Home Assistant, or as last resort you could post to the section about third party integrations → Third party integrations - Home Assistant Community
For example, why not refer users with Zigbee2MQTT (Z2M) issues to Zigbee2MQTT’s own community and support-channels? As I do not believe that Home Assistant’s Zigbee forum is the correct nor best place to continue if the root cause problem in Zigbee2MQTT application are more likely to be an issue with Zigbee2MQTT only and not a generic Zigbee network mesh. Z2M users will get better help with that here:
PS: Again, I guess it does not help that the “official” native integration is called “ZHA” and “Zigbee Home Automation” as both of those are generic names for the most common Zigbee device profile used.
@MissyQ bump this again now that your initial Discord chat channels restructuring has gone through.
Please at least consider maybe adding a new separate dedicated sub-forum that is specifically only for for the ZHA (built-in Zigbee gateway) integration and perhaps renaming the existing Zigbee sub-forum to “Zigbee general” or something similar instead (as that is apparently what it has become?)?
My point is that users who are looking for help with built-in ZHA integration (and those wanting to support those users) should not need to wade through a sea of off-topic threads where a majority of people posting to seek help there are now looking for help with other third-party Zigbee gateway solutions but can not be bothered to add a title pre-fix or any indicationin the subject or even their first post what Zigbee gateway solution they are using so that almost always need to be the first question.
As it stands right now I am personally giving up on the existing Zigbee sub-forum as it today a total mess, and on top of that I have recently even got told off by a few users and even a forum moderator for recommending that Zigbee2MQTT users should first address their Zigbee2MQTT specific questions and problems to Zigbee2MQTT own community forum and support channels.
Often when someone is asking for help with the ZHA integration in a thread there sometimes someone that posts to only suggest that the user should just move to Zigbee2MQTT with comment “because it is better”. I mean, how is the ZHA integration suppose to get better if issues are not sorted out instead of users just abandoning it, that is not a good way to build a sub-community around the ZHA integration.
What is next, would it be OK if a majority of people start recommending to new users posting here in this forum with Home Assistant Core problems that they should just migrate to OpenHAB instead of trying to solve their Home Assistant core problems and make Home Assistant a better product?
It is like going to a BMW car forum and mostly seeing threads about Dodge cars in that BMW car forum as many people are looking for help with troubleshooting the engine in their Dodge car which is not running well. Why should we not recommend that they first go ask in the official Dodge car forum first?
These community forums are for everything regarding HA, including software that runs next to HA. The discord revamp even combines all Zigbee related support into a single category.
Tags and or pre-fixes might make it a little easier to search but in my opinion it is not enough, and it will not help with reading that subforum when not searching, I believe it will remain a mess until you create a dedicated subforum just for the ZHA integration to separate support for it from every other Zigbee gateway implementation in the world that people are now posting about here.
Not having another dedicated subforum that is only for the ZHA integration would be the best solution in my opinion as that would help grow a larger sub-community around just the ZHA integration, which in my opinion would be a good idea.
That is by the way, Zigbee2MQTT has done in own community and that is partially why it is thriving and its community is growing faster than communities for other Zigbee gateway implementations. And I doubt they would have grown as much it they encuraged people to continue posting recommendations in their own forum to use other Zigbee gateway applications instead of helping improve Zigbee2MQTT.
As mentioned above I will stop posting in the ”general” Zigbee forum completley now due to how frustrating it to read posts there about everything.
Anyway, I think you are wrong about its original intent of the Zigbee forum as FYI, if you read the very first post in this thread you might understand that I was the first one requested that the subforum was created and knowing the history of it as a follower from its in reception it was originally made as a forum for the ZHA integration.
Again those are just my options and I will not pursue this any longer as I have given up on the existing Zigbee subforum, so I will avoid reading and posting there from now on to lessen my frustration.
Another option that could help promote building a dedicated sub-community around the ZHA integration could be for ZHA developers to enable GitHub Discussions for the zigpy organization in order to consolidate all ZHA development discussions to a single place:
At least I understand that GitHub organization owners are now able to choose to use this existing repository or create a repository specifically to hold your organization discussions. Meaning that have to option to simply point/redirect to this existing zigpy discussion section.
"You can use GitHub Discussions in an organization as a place for your organization to have conversations that aren’t specific to a single repository within your organization.
When you enable organization discussions, you will choose a repository in the organization to be the source repository for your organization discussions. You can use an existing repository or create a repository specifically to hold your organization discussions. Discussions will appear both on the discussions page for the organization and on the discussion page for the source repository."
Follow-up is disabling or closing all the other GitHub Discussions in each of the other individual code repositories that have their own discussion sections so consolidate all ZHA related discussions in one place:
That way the single discussions section will appear at the top level and there will only be one discussions section which consolidates all discussion posts to a single location, and it will make it easier for everyone to not miss discussions when they are no longer spread out.
PS: If you want to see a good POC example of this then check out Music Assistant which is now using this at the organization level:
Thank you for the poke and additional details. I hope to be working on the forum changes here shortly to make things look nice for WTH. I’ll go through your thread here again when I am tackling this and then reach out over DMs to see what we can work out.
Thank you for tagging me! It helps me keep track of requests. Once I post up asking for feedback on proposed changes for the forums, I’ll be sure to tag you asking for feedback on what I write up for this specifically. 
