Hello
I want to start adding more home sensors to my HA setup. I’m still quite a noob to home automation so I’m trying to find the best way forward.
I have been looking a wifi products such as Shelley and Hey!, and also a multitude of Tuya products, or whether to go with something like Sonoff.
Is Zigbee more complicated to integrate with HA?
Do you have to flash all zigbee devices?
any advice is greatly appreciated
thanks
Have a look at Zigbee2MQTT and start with easy and cheap Xiaomi Zigbee devices, no flashing needed. You also can add the Hue lights and a lot of other stuff.
Make your own choices and nowadays there isn’t much difference between zigbee of z-wave… this could be a long discussion wich one is better imho.(think it is getting a long discussion;)
Please give some (smart home brand) examples!
I had so much issue with ZWave that I moved to Zigbee: no more issue at all. And it’s a lot cheaper.
@netregha Try ZHA, it’s embedded and you do not need 2 add-ons like for Zigbee2MQTT.
I’ll second what @makai said. I’ve purged my entire house of Zwave in favor of either WiFi or Zigbee. In my personal experience (and this is always subjective) Zwave was an unnecessary evil in my network. For me, I wanted to minimize the number of different networks I have that require any kind of maintenance or support. Not having any Zwave devices is a godsend. Yes, it makes it a TAD harder to find a specific device that I want to deploy (e.g. a Smoke / CO Alarm), but on the other hand, all of my zigbee devices just work (after I went with a Conbee 2 dedicated Zigbee USB stick).
I’ve NEVER had to re-flash a Zigbee device and any reliability issues have been resolved by just adding some cheap INNR outlet plugs near the sensor in question (https://amzn.to/3iGMUFK).
WiFi is a different story, since you either need to settle on a particular brand (Tuya) or resolve yourself to re-flashing to get local-only access (Sonoff via Tasmota with MQTT).
Ultimately, I would recommend setting some goals for your implementation (e.g. all local access, minimize different cloud integrations, ease of finding devices, etc.) and then implement according to your own desires.
I’ve got probably 40-50 zigbee devices and 50+ zwave devices.
Everything zwave works 100% of the time.
Everything zigbee works maybe 90% of the time. Even the devices that are within 3 feet of the zigbee hub still sometimes miss commands. I’ve experienced this in 2 different houses with the devices hooked to smartthings, hubitat and zigbee2mqtt with a conbeeII stick. Always getting missed commands here and there.
The only benefit I see of zigbee is the stuff is usually cheaper than zwave. $15 motion sensors vs $60. But I guess you get what you pay for.
I have all three major protocols - zwave, zigbee and wifi.
All three are happily co-existing in my HA system.
And as noted above, I’m not limited in what I can buy - if one protocol doesn’t have something I need I can get it in a different one and not worry whether I can run it in HA.
But, also as noted above, the likelihood of needing to flash wifi devices is way higher than either zwave or zigbee that never need to be re-flashed (aside from a rare firmware update - which I’ve literally never done) to get them to work completely local (no cloud at all).
Satisfied Zigbee user here. No MQTT, just a Nortek HUSBZB hub plugged into the RPi USP port. Native ZHA, no add-ons or other services to install.
I’ve found Zigbee devices from several different manufacturers to be great, and very reliable. Almost all the mains-powered devices act as nodes in the self-organizing mesh that the protocol creates. I don’t see any movement away from Zigbee from any of the suppliers I’ve used. SmartThings and IKEA stuff is reasonably priced and widely available.
WiFi devices are cheaper, but seem to demand more attention. Unless your home network is rock-solid in every corner of your house, you’re going to have issues. Many of them require or are designed to use a proprietary vendor cloud solution. Even the ones which allow/tolerate local control can be fussy. Some of the HA integrations don’t cleanly handle the inevitable network drops or restarts while the devices are trying to “phone home” to their vendor cloud. Quality of and support for these integrations are highly variable, and the vendors are always changing things to introduce problems.
So, my preference is for Zigbee over WiFi, because I want something that just works out of the box. No tinkering, no flashing, no router rules to block cloud check-ins, no third-party apps, no buggy integrations.
As you can see, there are all kinds of opinions on the “best” protocol. Do your homework and choose what works for you.
You certainly asked the Pepsi vs. Coke question… 
All of the comments offer some good nuggets within them. The one I will add perhaps. The one current benefit of Z-Wave that I believe neither Wifi, Zigbee or Bluetooth can offer is the frequency that Z-Wave runs on. If you have thick walls or a very noisy 2.4 gHz environment, the fact that Z-Wave runs at sub-gigahertz 800 to 900 mHz gives it a basic stability start that the other three technologies are vexed by. Yes there are other considerations as well, but if you have spectrum noise or construction that will inhibit 2.4 gHz signals, do look at alternatives. And to that point many people are successful running two or more of these technologies without 2 x difficulty.
Some great info here, thank you all for taking time to answer. Certainly given me a lot of food for thought.
thanks
Darren
Bit of an overstatement I think. I have both Zwave and Zigbee devices (via Wiser heating systems) Zigbee seems to be more sensitive to range issues and some devices will occasionally lose contact despite being within 5 or 6 metres of a mains powered Zigbee device. However the current lack of clarity on when Zwave will be available with the latest version on HA (and the considerable cost difference) means that, at least for a while I will continue with a mixed set up and will increase the number of Zigbee devices.
I think you should figure out what you want to use the Zigbee Devices for. I have both zigbee and zwave devices for door and motion sensors. These are battery powered and often do not show an accurate status. I just bought a Sonoff contact and motion because they were cheap but the motion sensor became unresponsive.
Where I can I have moved over to ESPHOME and installed proper contacts on doors as I find with both Zigbee and Zwave you spend allot of time replacing batteries, charging devices or generally trying to debug them.
I got a Aqara Cube for the cool factor and that works well no problems. Also thinking about getting some IKEA bulbs so I think these protocols do have a place and give more options.
But, I am one who feels they don’t make good security devices if security is a key concern.
I echo these comments.
Up until recently I have been happy with my Zigbee kit however recently I have had a few problems with Ikea lamps not working reliably, a couple of Aqara sensors going unavailable, and button batteries on an Ikea remote running down in a couple of weeks. The problems seem to have occurred since I started using the Ikea kit so it may be a compatibility issue.
By contrast my Zwave kit has been rock solid, I have 5 of the Neo Coolcam PIRs which are only around $20 each. These have been running for well over a year without missing a beat and on one of these the battery has just dipped to 75% (the rest are still at 100%).
If you determine that the IKEA bulbs are causing your issue please let us know. Rather not bring another variable into it.
I have 4 x Ikea lamps and 1 x Ikea remote, just looked at my logs and there are a huge number of errors:
Logger: homeassistant
Source: /usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/runner.py:99
First occurred: 04:02:40 (6977 occurrences)
Last logged: 14:45:15
Error doing job: Exception in callback ThreadsafeProxy.__getattr__.<locals>.func_wrapper.<locals>.check_result_wrapper() at /usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/thread.py:97
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/asyncio/events.py", line 81, in _run
self._context.run(self._callback, *self._args)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/thread.py", line 98, in check_result_wrapper
result = call()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/ezsp/__init__.py", line 254, in frame_received
self._protocol(data)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bellows/ezsp/protocol.py", line 102, in __call__
frame_name = self.COMMANDS_BY_ID[frame_id][0]
KeyError: 255
When I get some time I think I need to remove all the Ikea stuff and see if the errors go away.
Can you provide a few examples of major smart home manufacturers who have done this?
FWIW, Home Assistant’s ZigBee integration is more mature than its zwave integration which is currently undergoing a complete change of direction.
Wow, that is quite a thread to read, I did not realize the flux that going on in zwave with HA. Frustrating as the zwave hardware seems to be moving forward in a more unified and open direction.
This is exactly why I purged all Zwave. Most of mine was older, so I just shut down what I was using, and tossed everything else. If it’s not Zigbee, it’ll be Wifi.
Tough call. I am not sure I agree with you that it is realistic and useful to say Zigbee and Wifi only. As a smart person once told me … ‘Life sucks and then we die.’ 
For example, I have found that inexpensive bluetooth BLE temperature/humidly sensors are the best way to monitor these attributes through out houses and within refrigerators and freezers.
I found Zwave operating on sub gigahertz to be very helpful to reliably go through thick walls, even when it was a very closed garden. And, I would challenge you to say that they do not have a vibrant product universe.
The coming LoRa technologies (as well as Amazon’s Sidewalk) is very useful. What dog, cat child herder does not want a GPS fencing product that works over multiple 10,000 meter ranges at a reasonable cost???
Raise a 
and back to work integrating
No one is arguing that there aren’t uses for all of these technologies. But all of these technologies come at a price (added complexity). I’d be interested to hear how you’re monitoring all of your BLE devices around the house? Yet another server installed nearby reporting back to HA?
As for Sidewalk, I’ve turned it off, I’d rather not trust Amazon to manage who has access to my wireless network. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a use for it. But you’re trading security for convenience.