Hello all - I’m new to HA/Hassio and enjoying it a lot, but the rapid updates, splendid as they are, can make the docs confusing if you don’t know what’s up to date! Could I just check my understanding? And please point me to docs or other discussions if there are good starting points for this! I did search quite a bit!
I’ve got a house with lots of Hue lights, sensors, tap switches and dimmers in it. I’ve found the Hue-sensors-HASS component which allows me to detect motion and switch events, and this works OK, but polling the hub every 0.1 secs doesn’t seem ideal.
I was hoping I might be able to snoop on the zigbee events from HA, so I’ve bought a ConBee stick. Now, though, I think I’m right in saying this won’t work unless I unpair everything from the Philips hub and use my Hassio Pi as a hub instead. Is that right? Fun as HA is, I don’t think it’s nearly reliable enough to replace my Hue hub yet, alas.
I followed what docs I could find, installed Deconz, enabled its VNC interface etc, but all really in vain, since I don’t have any other Zigbee devices to play with yet. Some Xiaomi stuff may be coming soon, so I wanted to persist. But all of that software infrastructure seems terribly heavyweight for a little Raspberry Pi.
Then we got the update and I heard about a Zigbee panel being built in! Hurrah! I couldn’t find anything in the docs, or the UI, but eventually I discovered that this new thing is called ZHA. So I enabled that, and it killed my UI. No front-end at all, despite reboots, power cycling etc; nothing I could see in the logs. Finally, some hours later, after enabling root access, running ‘docker ps’ etc, I realised that part of deConz was still running (and presumably locking the USB device so nothing could start up). By disabling ZHA I could get my UI back, and found deconz in the hass.io page and uninstalled it. Then added ZHA back in the YAML file, restarted everything yet again, and finally - yay! - there it was in my GUI.
So now I can click on it, and I get a button I can click called ‘Permit’. Which does nothing except pop up a little red error box. I’m not even sure if my Conbee device has been found… how would I know?
Am I right that I don’t need deConz any more? I saw some reference to ZHA supporting the Conbee, but via the zigpy-deconz library, which made me wonder.
Finally, should I consider buying Xiaomi kit and controlling it this way at all, or should I get a Xiaomi hub and talk to that through HA? I found one or two messages suggesting that the latter would be much more reliable than trying to do Zigbee in HA, but I wonder if that’s still the case?
Anyway, apologies for the essay, but any enlightentment welcome! It does at least highlight the challenges faced by newcomers, even those with degrees in Computer Science.
There are currently five different ways to connect native zigbee devices to HA ( excluding using propriety hubs , Xiaomi,hue, tradfri, etc).
Each software solution supports different hardware and the hardware is not currently interchangeable between the software solutions. Edit think conbee usb supports ZHA and deCONZ
ZHA
Hardware must be connected to the computer running HA . This is the native HA solution.
Zigbee
Hardware must be connected to the computer running HA via a serial port .
Mind-field of different solutions Have been playing with ZHA , but so far is very unreliable. Have 26 Xiaomi devices and 6 Tradfri bulbs. The Xiaomi hub has been very reliable. Interestingly Xiaomi now supports Tradfri bulbs and experimental support for sonoff (cloud to cloud) so at the moment I’m waiting as my current solution is stable , but I need to run two additional hubs.
Hi! Could you say, why did you exclude xiaomi? How can I mannage sensors without gateway?
I tried zigbee2mqtt but half of my sensors did not connect to Home Assistant, so then I connected them to gateway again.
Would deconz or something else work? And why there is a difficulty with xiaomi? Don’t they use pure zigbee?
HASS (hassio) on a different host on the same network of the pi3
The solution has been extremely reliable: when HASS is down all my lights still work. So far my Conbee/pi3 has never been down …
In the future I may use the HASSIO/deCONZ addon and use just one single host for HASS and the Conbee, but yes, as you are, I am a bit scared of this solution because sometimes HASS is down (mainly because of me doing upgrades/tests), and thats not very FA (family accepted)
Advantage of my solution is much smaller wireless interference then in the past.
I had a Hue Bridge, 2 Xiaomi Gateway, and of course Wifi. Many times that had an effect on my network stability: too much wireless in the same frequency range (Zigbee and WiFI share the same frequency spectrum).
With Conbee now I have only Conbee and WiFi, and so far had ZERO problem in regards of network stability.
My HA runs in a linux container (LXC not docker) on a HP Microserver - this runs separate Linux containers too for Node Red, MQTT, Unifi, docker etc). As a result of migrating this all over to the micro server I have about 6 RPI3 sitting around doing nothing.
I am not sure of the way to go - was thinking of the Zigbee2mqqt route on a pi as the bulbs would all be repeaters as they are mains wired? But there is something about the Conbee/Raspbee/deCONZ solution that appeals to me (mainly a GUI lol).
Is one better than the other in your opinion ? I have on order both the Conbee USB and the stuff needed for the Zigbee2mqqt could i run both and one as a router? As I say I have these spare Pis all over the place so may as well use them? Also, to minimise WiFi/2.4ghz interference, The Pi will be hard wired so bluetooth and WiFi will be disabled (Actually thinking of using an original RPI zero that doesn’t have WiFi or BT with a USB LAN connection…but maybe that is too much of a faf!)
Thanks in advance and sorry if my question hijacks the thread
Xiaomi is a propriety solution until December last year only supported Xiaomi devices ( now supports Tradfri bulbs) . The others I mentioned can create a single Zigbee mesh from multiple manufacturers . “one ring too rule them alll” .
A single zigbee mesh should be more reliable as the powered devices act as routers, extending the signal. Each propriety hub (Xioami, tradfri, hue) adds another Zigbee mesh. However at the moment I agree the Xiaomi hub is very reliable , as long as you only have Xiaomi kit it is the best solution ( as long as you stop the hub from phoning home !).
A zigbee mesh is made up of one coordinator, multiple routers and end devices. A coordinator is the hub , a conbee stick, Hue, ,zigate,etc . So if you run Zigbee2mggt and deCONZ you will be running two mesh networks.
Unless you flash one of the sticks as a router. Both are limited to the number of devices you can connect. A router (a powered device, bulb, plug, etc) will extend the range and support additional end devices (typically battery powered) , so ideally you should run 1 mesh, but I’m running two Xiaomi and Tradfri . Thats why I’m very interested in the Xiaomi hub supporting tradfri bulbs.
With a Conbee stick you can test both ZHA and deCONZ
I have had no joy with ZHA, but I understand a lot of “love” is being put into future releases of ZHA there is now a GUI in HA front-end and more work is being done on the back-end . At the moment my solution works , but I would like a “single hub solution”.
Conbee you will not be disappointed. Don’t know much about other solutions, but when I studied them I felt they were not so reliable.
You can’t have both under the same mesh so I recommend one or the other and not both (also stop using Hue and Xiaomi gateway or any other gateway like Tradfri or osram).
The whole point is having ONE reliable mesh, not 2+
Thanks, yes, I’d like to have them all on one mesh.
But I’m still a bit concerned about my wife suddenly being unable to turn lights on and off when I’m away, because of something like an SD card error. That’s the main thing keeping me on the Hue hub, which has always been rock solid…
How about firmware updates for the connected devices? Do you require the original manufacturer’s hub/gateway to update these or is this possible with something like the ConBee?
Did someone already evaluate the Phoscon Gateway from dresden elektronik? It’s five times the price of a ConBee so I’d expect at least miracles from it… Jokes aside if we want to use the recently announced Zigbee management panel, the hardware gateway itself should rather not have its own big UI/Logic or am I misunderstanding the purpose of said management panel in Home Assistant?
