What tool stack required for Lidl sensor?

[Greek]

Hi,

I am new.

HA 7.6 as OS on Raspberry PI 4 works nicely.
My first integration FritzDECT500 Light bulb worked in 15s. Amazing.

Getting Lidl Motion Sensor or Lidl 230V Plug to work fails. HA does not see them.
I installed MQTT broker.
Do I need anything else installed?

I watched a couple of videos, and everybody uses different tool stacks.
Do I need deConz? ZHA?

Thanks!
Armin

[Greek]

Oh, it looks like I need a Zigbee adapter (hardware)!
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/getting-started/#prerequisites
I assumed the Raspberry PI would use its bluetooth module to talk ZigBee.

[Tinkerer (aka DubhAd on GitHub)]

@Greek

I assumed the Raspberry PI would use its bluetooth module to talk ZigBee.

While they share the same frequencies (as does WiFi), they’re otherwise unrelated.

I’d recommend you buy a CC2652 based coordinator, and avoid those based on the CC253x chips.

[Hedda]

Before buy and setup/install recommend also reading tips as really apply to all to all Zigbee solutions:

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/18864

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#best-practices-to-avoid-pairingconnection-difficulties

@Greek

I watched a couple of videos, and everybody uses different tool stacks.
Do I need deConz? ZHA?

You can use ZHA (natively integrated into Home Assistant), deCONZ (requires an external deCONZ or Phoscon exist), or Zigbee2MQTT (requires existing Zigbee2MQTT and MQTT). Read integration docs:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/deconz/

https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/mqtt/discovery#support-by-third-party-tools

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/integrations/home_assistant.html

@Greek

Oh, it looks like I need a Zigbee adapter (hardware)!

Yes all different Zigbee solutions (ZHA, Z2M, deCONZ) require you to buy a Zigbee adapter and some Zigbee solutions support many different types of Zigbee adapters while others only a few or just one.

Correct termenoloty for this type of Zigbee gateway/bridge/hub adapter is a “Zigbee Coordinator”, see:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#compatible-hardware

https://phoscon.de/

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/supported_adapters.html

Note that you can use different Zigbee solutions at the same time but they will each need their own dedicated Zigbee adapter and every solution will only set up a single Zigbee network and it is not possible to connect different Zigbee networks so they will not be aware of the others in any way.

[Hedda]

@Greek

I assumed the Raspberry PI would use its bluetooth module to talk ZigBee.

No, while it shares some similarities to Bluetooth Mesh technology, Zigbee is a different specification, and regardless all different protocol specifications for WPAN (Wireless personal area network) and WSAN (wireless sensor actor networks) will need separate dedicated digital radio gateway adapters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wireless_data_standards

You will need a seperate dedicated digital radio “gateway/bridge/router” adapter for each type of wireless IoT technology you want to use, that includes; Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth Mesh and different versions), Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, 6LoWPAN/LoWPAN, EnOcean, UWB (Ultra-wideband), etc.

Recommend watching some of these videos that explain Zigbee if do not want to read more about it:

https://www.youtube.com/c/EverythingSmartHome/playlists

https://www.youtube.com/c/HomeAutomationGuy/playlists

https://www.youtube.com/c/digiblurDIY/playlists

PS: Bluetooth devices are actually generally the worse to deal out of all those mentioned protocols as each manufacturer implements their own quirks and application layers on top so not standardized at all.

[WallyR (Wally)]

I bought a Lidl Zigbee gateway and converted it.

Hacking the Silvercrest (Lidl/Tuya) Smart Home Gateway

If I get time, I plan to hack the Tuya / Lidl Smart Home hub to integrate with Home Assistant. Fortunately the device is fairly easy to get into and the ZigBee module might even have an open source SDK available so it might make a nice project for a rainy day. It would be nice to gauge interest in this. For those interested, I have documented findings so far here: https://paulbanks.org/projects/lidl-zigbee/ Enjoy!

HA imported it with its ZHA integration and it having been running smoothly since.

[Greek]

Thank you all for the comprehensive help!

I have now bought a CC2531 USB, which mentioned zigbee2mqtt in the article description.
I installed zigbee2mqtt - and got stuck with the “502: Bad Gateway” error. I will continue working on this tomorrow…different topic

[Greek]

looks like I f***** this one up since I bought a C2531

[Greek]

I got the C2531 working, no problem.

[WallyR (Wally)]

It can be made to work, but stability have been an issue.

Zigbee coordinator CC2531 vs CC2652p experience

Hi I want to share my experience with the zigbee coordinator. I have been using CC2531 for a long time. It was cheap With external antenna supported zigbee2mqtt and many devices was connected via a USB extension Then, over time, it stopped working. It was always necessary to remove and insert the USB. It is now marked as an unsupported device on the official website. I switched to CC2652p with 6dB antenna. I recomend signal stable light flash during the transition without problems. No …

Supported Adapters | Zigbee2MQTT

[Hedda]

@Greek

looks like I f***** this one up since I bought a C2531

Yeah, C2530 and C2531 are obsolete so not recommended even if it will work OK to start with.

Recommend that you buy a CC2652 (CC2652P) based USB adapter and migrate to that.

It is relatively easy to backup old C253x and then restore that backup to new CC26x2 adapter.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#known-working-zigbee-radio-modules

• "CC2530/CC2531 USB stick, module, or dev board hardware flashed with Z-Stack coordinator firmware (no longer recommended as uses deprecated hardware and very old end-of-life firmware, plus will not work properly at all if the whole Zigbee network has more than 15-20 devices)"

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/#recommended

notice the “recommended” vesus the “not recommended” header:

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/#not-recommended

Regardless you want to upgrade firmware:

https://github.com/Koenkk/Z-Stack-firmware/tree/master/coordinator