I sadly switched to Z2M and really regretting it - the extra items exposed and ability to route things via my Hue light as a router do not make up for the weirdness…states of things are not always synched up between HA and MQTT/Z2M.
For instance it is often faster to connect to the MQTT entities - e.g. asking the MQTT Main Light if it’s on as a device rather than Light = on, or my front door sensor having a many second delay it didn’t have on ZHA unless I query the MQTT device, but then the Hallway light has randomly started coming on cos the sensor glitches to ‘unknown’ and that’s registering briefly as Open for some reason?) But often that breaks, the HA entity is slow but more reliable. Talking sensors or light on/off states equating differently sometimes across HA and MQTT devices, glitching.
Didn’t have any of this with ZHA. Thinking of switching back.
Today’s fun Z2M ssue is that my Hue light - the whole annoying reason I have Zigbee in the first place because it refuses to pair to HA on any of my Bluetooth dongles despite seeing it even in Hue app disoverable mode, it’s a Hue Color BLE light - the on/off state does not synch up when I turn it on via Alexa Z2M does not see it as on, so HA says ‘off’.
Only if I click on the ‘refresh’ in the Z2M device page does it suddenly clock that the light in on, This has meant the light has woken me up, blazing into my face Stasi style because HA see the light as on when it’s not. I looked into trying to ‘re-interview’ the light every 5 seconds, I see people have done this with Zwave devices and MQTT Publish but when I tried it with this it didn’t work.
Any way to trigger that ‘refresh’ every 5 seconds? Or should I consign Z2M to the dustbin again (I am really leaning towards the latter, so those in the Z2M cult better speak up fast because despite what the cool kids say, ZHA just works).
Had people in another thread deny that Z2M could ever have problems!
So it’s refreshing that someone says ‘switch back if it works for you’. I just want a working setup, and the received wisdom is Z2M works best, but in my case it most definitely does not.
But it’s going to be a faff to switch and re-pair everything, so if anyone has a fix for this supposedly ‘never wrong’ system, I’m all ears… #gauntletputdown
You hold the dubious honour of proving them wrong.
Normally I would suggest trying to debug the problem but, in this case, unless there’s a compelling need or preference for Zigbee2MQTT, I recommend simply using what has already proven itself to work for you.
I liked setting the update intervals, and I switched cos apparently new humiditty sensor that hasn’t arrived yet has a load of things you can’t set in ZHA like intervals.
But yes, it’s nothing critical. Sad, cos I want to be able to set stuff like that, but I don’t want to run two dongles and two Zigbee setups just for that one case,
What does your Zigbee network look like, how many routers do you have in the current Z2M network? Please explain more about your network and your whole setup (hardware etc).
I have only one router, which is the Hue light, only 5 devices - 2 motion sensors, 1 front door sensor, 1 temp/humidity sensor.
Hardware is a Dell Optiplex 3020M running Ubuntu 24.04 with HA in Virtualbox instance. I am using the Sonoff Dongle-P original firmware as a coordinator which should work fine with ZHA and Z2M. It’s all setup properly, all devices are seen in Z2M and I have the Dongle set to zstack, it onboarded automatically and was recognised.
The Philips Hue Color light is a LCA008 BLE device that can be controlled by BT, Wifi/Alexa or Zigbee.
Sensors are all routed through the light, as it improves LQI.
This is 99% certain your issue. I cannot tell you why you had more success with ZHA, but this is a very, very weak mesh. If you only have a handful devices and you have proven success with ZHA, go back to that.
This is not something you choose. Sure, you can add devices through a router, but the protocol does not dictate that your device(s) stick to that route.
You can choose, you can choose which device to pair to. Sure it can then decide to route elsewhere, whcih is what happened with the front door sensor, but it seems to have ‘stuck’
Telling people their experience isn’t true is not a good look. How can I know my ‘statement is false’ when in my experience, yes Z2M isn’t currently working at all?
They are all Zigbee 3,0. If you knew anything about Hue, you’d know that 3.0. My sensors are all 3,0 as well. I say ‘should be’ because I can’t exactly open up the sensors and double check can I?
You are arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. Please go away.
Roger. Good luck! I remind you that you said “devices” in plural, and you have a single Hue bulb, so not sure how I would connect that everything is 3.0 out of that.
