I have a Raspberry π 4b with Home Assistant running. I am interested in some of the lighting options IKEA sells, just as a starting point. Do I need to buy their Dirigera controller to do that on top of/as well as HA or can HA talk directly to their hardware? This is really just me trying to find a use for the Raspberry π and indulge my curiosity. So what are some easy wins/low hanging fruit I can enjoy? I see a lot of devices were discovered but I am not sure what I can do with them. Let’s fool with lighting first.
You need a ( Zigbee ) Controller. Dirigera and IKEA integration is an easy start. And… low hanging fruit.
Poke around in " Integrations and Add_Ons " see if something there Trigger your curiosity
I was under impression that the dirigera while zigbee, doesn’t work with non-ikea devices? or maybe it was it won’t work without ikea account/cloud?
That said, the dirigera does apparently support both zigbee and thread (new ikea devices will use thread), at the same time.
I would look at true zigbee dongles, like the new home assistant zbt2 or other brands unless you intend to stay within the ikea ecosystem.
You are suggesting what to me seems to be " a Struggle " as the fact that OP has zero experience with ha, just got his HA up and running
Keep talking, I’m listening. So I was under the impression there was some kind of interoperability/standard (Matter? Thread?) underpinning all of this, so that one could reliably buy components from different brands and get them to work. I see some additional reading in my future.
Do you want to use ZHA or Z2M?
Enter IKEA as the vendor here: Zigbee2MQTT
It will list all the devices that are compatible with zigbee2mqtt and any coordinator that Z2M supports.
There’s also this list Database of Zigbee devices compatible with ZHA, Tasmota, Zigbee2MQTT, deCONZ, ZiGate and ioBroker that will tell you if it is supported by ZHA and any coordinator capable of working with home assistant.
Which would you recommend?
Z2M.
ZHA is easiest.
Z2M a bit more complicated to set up and requires an MQTT broker. However it is an add-on and so keeps running when you restart HA. So the devices initialize faster. Z2M also has faster support for new devices.
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Since you are just starting out, I would recommend reading @ The Home Assistant Cookbook - Index which will point you to a lot of information and experiences that others have shared, this will help increase your awareness of what can or can’t be done, help you avoid potential pitfalls and confusion, and start you down the path with a better knowledge base that you can apply to your own desires and journey.
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I just moved the physical device and realized I need to find an ethernet connection for it…is wireless not best practice for this? I didn’t see any place to set that up in the imager or the setup UI. Also, this is excuse to print another case for it, as the case it has was bespoke for another use I no longer have.
Definitely not.
Got it. I’ll make space for it. Lots to learn, thanks to all the work that’s been done.
Regarding smart IKEA devices specifically, note that they are moving towards Matter/Thread, which is a different “standard” than zigbee.
What will become of their zigbee lineup (Tradfri) is unknown (to me).
Which should be even easier to connect to Home Assistant without their proprietary hub.
Personally I’m not jumping on the matter/thread bandwagon just yet.
Well, not convinced Thread will be easier to install/configure/maintain. Matter should be an improvement, indeed.
I’m planning to experiment, but yeah, as the meme perfectly illustrates, yet another standard to grasp, and yet another source of interferences on the 2.4GHz band…
There will be a sale to get rid of existing stock. The question is will they still have years of reliable operation left or become unsupported boat anchors?
Cutting edge or bleeding edge?