Which hub / equipment to buy next?

Hardware
8

I heard this so often and first went the route with zigbee, waisted lots of money and even more time to find out that this is only theory. Some zigbee devices pair indeed with (random) hubs but for example don’t expose any sensors to HA. Then the long research begins in search for custom quriks and what not.

Long story short: “All zigbee just works” isn’t the real truth and maybe more marketing speech then reality. For myself I got rid of all my zigbee devices (the unreliable ones and even the few more reliable ones) and completely switched to wifi devices with esphome. While not actively advertised they do actually all work a 100% with HA and even offer superior connection (local push) with high update frequency and other goodies like on device automations.

9

I have a sonoff zigbee dongle 3.0 and i have not found any issues pairing zigbee devices, from many vendors. All the 25 I have tried work without issue.

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10

Has anyone ever said that? :face_with_raised_eyebrow: More likely it was “Standard compliant Zigbee just works”, which is pretty accurate. Custom quirks in ZHA were intended to allow manufacturers to make innovative extensions to their devices. Instead they’ve been hijacked by people looking for fixes for cheap, buggy Chinese gadgets.

The key thing is to research before you buy. Just because it says Zigbee on the box, doesn’t mean the manufacturer has implemented the standard properly.

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11

Welcome!

If you decide to continue to expand your setup using zigbee devices, based on my experiences (and deep abandoned electronics stuff drawer :wink: ) I would get a Zigbee USB coordinator device based on the Texas Instruments CC2652P chip and pair it with the Zigbee2MQTT software. Ideally, if you are willing to do some Linux work, run Zigbee2MQTT and a MQTT broker in Docker containers in parallel with however you are running your Home Assistant setup. While you can run both of these services directly within some types of Home Assistant configurations, I have found having them running independently gives me the most stability and flexibility.

You will find a number of good experts here on this forum with first hand experiences and I also recommend using the github based Zigbee2MQTT forum and bug report area for good reference material regardless of what Zigbee route you take.

You will probably end up with a mixed ‘mutt’ bag of types of wireless interfaces, Zigbee, WiFi, Matter, Thread, Bluetooth, ‘Dixie Cups with Strings’ and more as you venture down this rabbit hole of home automation. It’s just the reality, Something you want/need will only be available on ‘pick whatever you don’t have’ :wink:

I’ve have found a vast number of useful, quality and cost effect Zigbee devices that run very will with the Zigbee2MQTT system. IMHO, it is the leading open system for local only controlled devices that work with Home Assisstant (and other systems). ESPHome and Tasmota are both fine systems as well in the WiFi domain for local only control of devices.

The link below is a good reference to Zigbee devices, where they are supported and links to purchase and system experiences :

Good hunting and success with home automation in 2024!

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12

Zwave.

With ESPHome you will need to DIY most stuff. Even stuff that comes pre-assembled from the manufacturer will need you to know how to replace the firmware on the device with the ESPHome firmware. If you don’t want to do that then you will need to stay away from most anything WiFi based. Shelly products are the only exception that I know of since they can work pretty well with HA straight out of the box.

13

Don’t buy anything! If you’ve only been at it for a few weeks there’s plenty to learn without adding new stuff. :grinning:

14

I checked that one out after zigbee was failing hard for me despite buying more and more router devices to even get little coverage. On paper zwave should have a little advantage regarding the range but the prices just weren’t in the right ball park for me. I decided on esphome wifi devices (which their are plenty of premade) instead and cost wise I get around 5 of them for the price of only 1 (one) zwave counterpart.

Biggest advantage about wifi for me is that I had a wifi router already (like probably most of the people in this community) and it is/was not necessary to build a new infrastructure/mesh and invest in a lot devices to get started.

15

I agree that zwave is more expensive (most of the time) but there are times that you can’t get what you need in other protocols. So it’s nice having options.

What kind of “pre-made ESPHome” devices are you finding that you don’t need to flash/etc?

16

I started with zwave 5+ years ago. I just installed my first esphome device (the ratgdo after the myq mess) a few weeks ago. I like esphome but I could not imagine trying to start out with it new when i first started buying devices- there is definitely a learning curve.

Ive used zigbee for awhile now too, adding a lot more devices after moving to home assistant and zigbee2mqtt. David’s advice above about zigbee2mqtt is very good and I agree. My zigbee devices and network, using zigbee2mqtt in docker and the zzh cc2652 usb coordinator probably cause me the least problems in my smarthome setup, and there is a huge selection of devices. For sensors, zigbee is low power vs wifi and batteries last awhile.

But at this point I like both zwave and zigbee. For both I have multple devices in each that make nice “mesh” networks. I just buy whichever device is the best price and has the best features at this point.

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17

Like all one could imagen. Check the link in the second post for a small selection of what is offered.

I did this when I still invested (had) zigbee and it fell on my feet. While a $5 esphome compatible plug for example works a 100% with HA no matter the manufacture a $5 zigbee plug is pure gamble imho. It can work but it also can be very limited or doesn’t even work at all. The hardware can then only be binned as the software running on the plug isn’t user replaceable.

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18

The thing about zigbee is the standard is open. Any device can claim its “zigbee”. If you get the wrong devices or use the wrong controller with the wrong program, yeah, you will have issues. So, i always check the zigbee2mqtt database before buying something to see if it is compatible or has issues listed.

Zwave has this problem less because every zwave device requires certification from the zwave alliance- but you generally pay more because of that certification/licensing fee.

The problem i have with wifi devices are the more you add, the more it puts a strain on your wifi network. You need a very good wifi router going down that path. Where with zwave or zigbee, because they are mesh networks and devices can piggy back of eachother, adding more devices generally makes the network stronger.

Every option has its tradeoffs and advantages/disadvantages.

19

I heard many users claiming this (often the same shouting loud “zigbee just works”) but my almost 8 year old (home use) router which I got gifted from a friend and that can even be bought used in my country for only $15 has no problems with my 60+ wifi devices. Maybe people don’t have enough DHCP leases configured?

Also people tend to forget what load/traffic streaming some video (HD/4k) on their phones puts on their wifi and on the other hand what little stress a esphome node with it’s highly optimized native api can put on your router (spoiler: probably not even 100 esphome nodes come close to a phone streaming even low quality video).

Again theory. I had my mileage with zigbee and not all devices work as routers relaying packages or making the “mesh” stronger. Just entering the zigbee category of this forum gives a preview of what can possible go wrong…

20

“my almost 8 year old (home use) router…has no problems with my 60+ wifi devices”
Just asking for a friend, if you have a 2 or 3 neb-u-lon kids gaming and streaming against that router, how’s the Home Assistant and espHome performance? :sunglasses:

21

“I still invested (had) zigbee and it fell on my feet”
I’ve always disliked human language (english in my case), however is not what you say better than falling on your :peach::wink:

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22

No idea but zigbee will probably suffer the most in that scenario because it has the weakest power budget, poor range and will loose if the kids occupy the 2.4GHz airtime :wink:

23

IMHO, this is where I think your logic is flawed ( I know I don’t have visibility to your N == 1 experience with Zigbee ). However, Zigbee devices send and receive data at BYTES per second vs. WiFi devices that send and receive at KILO and MEGA BYTES per second. And Zigbee (yes WiFi too) has packet resend and conformation built in. So, in my experience, in Zigbee you will see some more latency between when you ‘press the switch’ and the light changes state (not to minimize this time delta in the perception of the ‘significant other’ :confused:) but that is all :studio_microphone: :droplet:. However, unless you have some (more likely) other issues in your Zigbee network, the effects of: bandwidth, noise, WiFi channels and contention with your microwave are FAR less issues in Zigbee than WiFi devices. I am inserting the Mac ‘spinning rainbow of death’ and Windows ‘bluescreen of death’ here… :grinning:

And I’m sending a bunch of Gen Z’ers and Alpha’s over to use your WiFi for their ‘Gaming Night’, please have lots of Popcorn available… :sunglasses::partying_face::popcorn::popcorn:

24

CAN send, yes. The highly optimized native api from esphome even needs less bandwidth than mqtt which was designed for low/limited bandwidth scenarios decades ago. I hardly expect any esphome nodes (expect the ones with camera feeds) to send even kilo or megabytes per second.

Yes, lagging of zigbee is substantial and special visible when switching to wifi (esphome) which allows real time scenarios and high update rates. Also automations literally can fail if zigbee devices have low update frequency or hard coded “cool down” timers.

Are you sure not mixing things up here? I have my microwave door usual closed when using it so no microwaves escape! Also zigbee is the known technology not only with little range but being very sensitive too and have little penetration (human body can block a weak signal completely for example). On the other hand I never had a wifi device “jumping” off my network or stop working because of microwave. Also I never thought about interference when using wifi devices - simply because it is not important - for zigbee on the other hand it can be a real show stopper!

Check out this extensive information @hedda accumulates and that shows all the possible pitfalls zigbee has to offer.

I stick to esphome wifi devices only for now and don’t need to care about anything of that at all. :wink:

25

Okay, we will agree to disagree. I will not call for ‘match up’ between your wifi device and my zigbee device in ‘the pit’ :wink:

And make sure to use that Microwave when making the :popcorn: for the kids :wink:

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26

Thanks I missed that link.

There does seem to be quite a bit of at least the basic stuff available. I’ll keep them in mind the next time I need something.

27

@indeeed @finity I advise not to buy any proprietary hub/gateway/bridge/controller/coordinator appliances as most such commercial appliances only support their own branded devices and a few of their partner’s devices.

Instead I highly recommend buying separate USB radio adapters for each wireless IoT protocol and using Home Assistant’s built-in integration with native support for those, (there are normally a dedicated integration for each standard IoT communication protocol), that way you can make a single installation of the Home Assistant Operating System itself into a central all-in-one hub/gateway/bridge/controller/coordinator system, with just a single computer to rule them all :wink:

I suggest starting with ITead’s TI CC2652P based “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” (which is now renamed to “ZBDongle-P”) as a dedicated Zigbee Coordinator radio adapter → ITead's "Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus" (model "ZBDongle-P") based on Texas Instruments CC2652P +20dBm radio SoC/MCU

Alternatively, get the Home Assistant SkyConnect USB dongle which support Zigbee and Thread, though personally I really suggest getting separate dedicated USB radio adapters for each protocol (so an option there is to get two Home Assistant SkyConnect USB dongles).

Another related alternative option is to get the Home Assistant Yellow for running Home Assistant on as that like a Raspberry Pi with an embedded Home Assistant SkyConnect radio adapter module on the board:

There are even USB radio adapters + integrations for less common and older wireless IoT protocols if you already own such device (but I’m not recommending such devices for new purchases), like:

In addition, check out the native HomeKit Device HomeKit controller integration as well, (a least if you already own any sch devices), even though connectivity is not done directly via a USB radio adapter :

FYI, several third-party alternative solutions support using USB radio adapters directly as well but better to research those on a protocol-by-protocol basis by looking at specific device compatibility, (like for example Zigbee2MQTT for Zigbee instead of the built-in ZHA integration), however overall I suggest starting with the natively built-in integration as they are more often than not easier to get started with, and you can later always migrate your devices to third-party alternative solutions per protocol if you feel that the built-in integration for that protocol does not meet for needs for the devices that you bought.

Generally, I say that Zigbee has the most amount of different devices on the market but can be finicky and higher maintenance to maintain, while Z-Wave devices are more expensive but more or less just works. And as for Matter there are so few Matter over Thread devices on the market and the standard is not mature (with BETA stage in Home Assistant) so I think it is not worth bothering with until a few years from now.

Note! Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread all depend on mesh networking technology which in essence means that they practically rely on having many mains-powered devices on the same network mesh that act as routers/repeaters/extenders, so it is not a good idea to start with only a few battery-operated devices on any such wireless IoT protocol networks. While for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices you really also need have a few ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy devices for good connection if spread out them out in a large home. For Zigbee read and follow tips here → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage

PS: You can also do similar for some wired IoT protocols, such as the KNX integration, but for some wired IoT protocols it can be better to use an external converter device that is based on ESPHome or an external bridge that convert to a universal IoT communication protocol like MQTT.

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