Which hub / equipment to buy next?

Hardware
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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