Update Zigbee/MQTT from old manual methods to current style

Hi people, been away a long time after a disastrous update to 84.0 combined with a zigbee2mqtt update that broke all my zigbee lights and then started creating multiple instances of them.

Unfortunately forgotten what all the issues were now but it was basically down to I was stubbornly hanging on to the old ways of manually speccing everything rather than using discovery or users etc etc and then the changes to MQTT for lights was the final straw.

So basically I got fed up trying to fix it and wound back to a fully working 83.3 and have left well alone since other than a few tweaks here and there. Now I need to update/add some components and am in the Catch 22 of them not working with the version of Hassio I’m on.

Can someone please point me at a simple guide to how it now works please, most stuff I’ve found is 5/6 months old and knowing most guides to HA are out of date a week after they’re published I’m struggling to know what to follow. I have loads of Sonoffs using MQTT so guess they will probably need some changes too after all this time.

I would recommend that any device that you have flashed with aftermarket firmware that uses mqtt that you reflash with esphome and use the api mode. Obviously you need to make sure that the device is supported but most devices seem to be, especially the sonoffs.

That way you might even be able to eliminate your mqtt broker all together.

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Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll take a look. At the moment it’s the zigbee devices I most concerned with though and they’ll need an mqtt broker.

oops. I missed the zigbee2mqtt part.

are you completely stuck using zigbee2mqtt or can you just move to zha?

No probs, had a quick read about the esphome api and definitely going to try it on some unused Sonoffs I have regardless so thanks again for that.

Regarding moving to zha, this is kind of where I’m stuck. When I set my CC2531 USB sniffer up zigbee2mqtt it was early days and the only way to use it but I’ve stayed out of the game for too long and now got myself in a right muddle about what’s still current and what’s moved on to something new. I knew I’d get caught by avoiding integrations and the like sooner or later but never intended to get so far behind!

I hear ya there. I start getting a bit nervous when I’m staring down just being more than one version behind. :grimacing:

I don’t have any zigbee2mqtt lights (or anything else for that matter) and I don’t want to come off as “that guy” but have you looked at the docs for the mqtt lights?

It really might be worth your while tho to try the latest zha component with your lights if you can. It would definitely simplify things a lot.