Why I am turning away from ZHA again

I come from Deconz and it worked satisfactorily for 7 years (raspbee1+2+conbee3).

The fact that new devices weren’t supported right from the start was never a big problem. But then I wanted to streamline my setup a bit and, after much deliberation, switched to ZHA, with ZBT-2 to be added later.

Three months have now passed. It runs just as stably as Deconz. Very good! But the way the devices are supported is terrible. Especially when it comes to something as essential as lights. In my case, Hue Bulbs.

  • Color loop: just on/off, no further settings. DIY

  • Flash light: Lights do not retain their previous state. DIY

  • Dimming lights with buttons: Forget it! Build something! DIY! No problem, but how do you stop a transition? Search the annals of GitHub - done

There’s more, but it’s not that important. So far, I’ve managed to get everything the way I wanted it, but in the long run, I don’t know what else is in store for me. I know you can do everything yourself, but why replicate native functions? For me, ZHA is nothing more than a good starting point when you start with HomeAssistant. I’m going to switch back to Deconz or maybe even Z2M.

After experiencing that very trivial things don’t work out of the box, I don’t believe that HomeAssistant or NabuCasa are serious about the ZBT-2. Maybe they should focus more on the basics than on gimmicks like voice, AI, and dashboards.

There are boat loads of integrations/cards/apps (addons) etc for lighting and in particular Hue. There are also quite a few PRs in the works, including one for setting Hue effects, but they just don’t seem to be getting the attention they deserve from the developers.

I agree that lighting, in general, is a bit hap hazard in ZHA. My guess is that over 90% of people get into home automation via lighting so Home Assistant (ZHA) should have really slick and wide ranging support out of the box.