I currently have a SmartThings V2 hub and like most others am trying to ditch it. I have roughly 40 or so Z-Wave/Zigbee devices in my home (thanks to my DIY husband and the total remodel/rewiring of our entire home). My frustration lies in relying on a software bridge for HA to communicate with the hub and the configuration of MQTT devices. Took me forever to get the device config file written and it’s frustrating when reconfiguring devices. If the device name gets changed in SmartThings by mistake, for instance, a reconfiguration of the MQTT device declaration in the config file must be manually updated to communicate with the device through the bridge then hub.
I wanted to try ditching the hub but wanted to avoid using any Zigbee “link”/hub (I can’t stand Phillip’s over priced Hue system and have more than just Zigbee bulbs) along with a z-wave stick. I was browsing through a couple websites and was excited to find this Zigbee/Z-Wave combo stick. I didn’t know if anybody had see it/used it and what the success was with it.
I wanna thank the creators of HASS too for finally creating a platform that works, works well, and is truely community driven. I’ve used HA for almost 7-8 months now and continue to be astonished at just what and how well it integrates devices.
Although ST is PITA, its support for Zigbee HA and ZWave is awesome. I saw that Zwave stick works fine in HA but not for Zigbee. For me, Zigbee makes more sense because of its price (relatively cheaper than Zwave) and i don’t have to worry about different frequency for different countries.
I wonder if anyone had success of using Zigbee HA devices in HA and willing to share the success.
I can definitely see why people chose one over the other (or have a personal preference on which one they chose). I have found with my experience that in the beginning Zigbee was very unreliable. It didn’t take much, it felt, to knock a sensor out of the mesh network and have reset and repair the device. But as technology has grown, so has it. I would say my home is an equal 50/50 split of both. For switches and sensors, the z-wave plus sensors I have are definitely pair once, and they always work, until they don’t (battery needs to be replaced, sensor goes bad, ect). Then you branch off into a whole new headache. Of device exclusion and inclusion. With factory resetting the sensor and trying to get it to pair, taking 3 or 4 tried to be effective. Once its paired though, it’ll work great. Most devices are on the pricier side of the spectrum.
Zigbee on the other hand works great for light bulbs and sensors. The overall cost of the sensors/devices is noticibly less. The redundent mesh network that’s created is self healing. The devices are super easy to pair, there’s no exclusion process needed to repair a sensor that’s falled off the network, just a simple device reset and re-pair and if the device is online when removed, a reset signal is automatically sent to the device. OTA firmware updates help the devices to continue improving. I have, however, noticed the devices fall out of the network easily. Light bulbs for instance that are installed in a standard switched light socket will fall out of the network if the power is turned off to the The reset process is usually simple and repairing is quick, but there’s that annoyance of a sensor falling out once a week or so. Then sometimes it’ll be smooth sailing for a couple weeks, then out of the blue 2 or 3 devices will drop off.
What would, in the end, be freakin’ awesome is if they would combine forces and create a standard platform with the best of both worlds. Wishful thinking I know, but I can dream!!
I’m in a similar position in that I’m looking to move to HASS from smartthings for its all local processing but have about 15 zigbee devices (bulbs, smart plugs and sensors). I’ve searched but can’t find any information on zigbee integration that doesn’t involve the cloud which defeats the purpose.
Any information on a way to integrate zigbee devices would be greatly appreciated.
Let me first preface my post with the fact that I can’t answer your question, but I thought I’d share my experience since I’m in a similar boat. I’m extremely new to HA and home automation in general. Super excited about what this platform offers!
I spent a good portion of my vacation (while the wife and kids slept!) getting HA and ST setup after deciding on using ST as a “dumb hub”. Many long nights (and a lot of research before that!). Getting the two to work was quite a hassle (things like using Mosquitto over Mosca for MQTT, etc) but I feel like now that they are, it seems to offer the most flexibility for the time being. It’s quite possible I’m wrong here though, but I didn’t want to have to worry about all the different communication protocols and stacks and ST seems to have a pretty good future-proofed hub in v2. After quite a bit of research, I felt that because ST had nailed down all of the communication pretty well and offered things like battery backup, USB ports for future use (cellular backup maybe?), BT/BTLE, ZWave, and Zigbee, that I could manage to go with ST for now (got it on sale for 75). My biggest fear was having to worry about stack/protocol implementations. Since ST masks all that behind MQTT, it works out nicely for me.
I do see what you’re saying with configuration and renaming though. It can be a bigger pain having to manually add MQTT devices versus leveraging discovery which I assume you can do with a USB ZWave/Zigbee stick, but I find that it isn’t too painful once you’ve done it a few times. Of course I’m nowhere near the amount of sensors you have yet, but hopefully soon!
Sorry for the digression! Just thought it was interesting seeing you are looking to move away from ST.
I have ST and while I find it’s great in its ability to work with almost any device that’s zigbee or Zwave, I am saddened by its inability to run everything without the need of the Internet. An Internet outage can mean nothing works and that sucks big time. I wish they would use the built in storage or USB storage to store the smart apps that an individual user has on their account allowing for things to run locally and just keep things synced with the cloud every few hours or when necessary.
I definitely agree with the requirement of steady internet access for functionality. I know, in theory, with everything being handled by the cloud, its suppose to expand possibilities and compatibility, as I’m sure it does, but nothing is more irritating than an internet outage at 2 am, me getting up, walking into the kitchen anticipating my cabinet lighting to kick on low, and it doesn’t… I had herd there was suppose to be a move on some devices to be locally controlled, but I’m still unsure of this and have been too occupied with HASS’s awesomeness to research it further.
I have not started with HASS but I’ve been researching it and it seems very interesting but I have mainly zigbee devices thus my question here in this thread. How can I integrate my zigbee devices with HASS? I’ve read about xbee but still don’t know if zigbee devices work with it, it’s all very confusing and I can’t find any concrete information on the whole topic.
I’m not using Hass yet. I’m still using smartthings and while it runs smoothly 95% of the time, that last 5% can really bug me out and be annoying as he’ll which is why I’d love to go full Hass but most of my devices are currently zigbee. I have 7 cree bulbs, 1 lowes open close sensor, 3 lowes motion sensors, 4 lowes smart plugs, 1 xiaomi motion sensor and 1 xiaomi smart button, all of which are zigbee. I have a Zwave relay on my ceiling fan and 3 minimotes which are z wave so you see my dilemma.
We don’t see much activity with ZigBee devices here. Given the components you have, they may not have specific support as per the ZigBee component page https://home-assistant.io/components/zigbee/
You can however use HASS with your ST hub basically as a collection of radios.
@russell This sounds very nice!
Some questions because i dont have hardware to test it:
Can this be used on a raspberry without any 3rd party software?
How is device discovery/configuration handled?
Is it possible to get button press notifications without polling them? (this is the main problem with the hue bridge for me)
Device inclusion is done similarly to the ZWave component. Call the zha/permit service, and then use your device’s usual inclusion method (eg, push a button on it, or turn it off and on 5 times for some light bulbs).
Oh, sorry, on button presses… I haven’t added support for any devices like this. I have a lutron remote that I plan to add support for. From what I can tell, it should be fairly straightforward and wouldn’t require any polling. I’m not familiar with the Xiaomi smart button, so I don’t know whether it’d require polling or not (if you can make it work with other controllers without polling, then we can probably make this work without polling too).
I might have to grab one of these, I have a Wink hub and am always have to fight it to do what I want. Plus having to rely on an internet connection is a big negative IMO.
