I got my Home Assistant Skyconnect today and want to replace my existing Zigbee2MQTT setup with Skyconnect+ZHA. However, I’m running into a few challenges.
I’d like to be able to customize device specific settings, this was pretty easy in Zigbee2MQTT, but I can’t seem to find any good guides on how to do this with ZHA. Can anyone help me out?
An example of a setting I would like to change is the occupancy time-out for my aqara motion sensor. Z2M provides me with a dialog box under device>Settings(Specific) and I can just put the amount of seconds in under occupancy_timeout. Is this possible with ZHA or is this Z2M specific?
These are the older Aqara sensors, not the newer P1?
AFAIK, options under the “Settings(Specific)” tab are manipulations of the sensor data before being published. I’ve never seen the equivalent in ZHA. Your automations, etc will need to accomodate the “raw” sensor data.
If the sensor itself supports setting a timeout, Z2M should expose the setting on the “Exposes” tab.
ZHA is inconsistent in how it handles device settings. The settings are often not exposed as entities and have to be changed via cluster settings under the “Manage zigbee device” dialog.
Using my Philips motion as an example, this time last year ZHA had no device settings exposed as entities. Recently they added sensitivity and led settings for the Philips, but timeout must still \be set via a cluster command.
But… I’m pretty sure I saw a screen shot for the Aqara P1 where timeout was exposed as an entity. I guess it depends on how much time was put into the device quirk.
Nothing like an overall tutorial that I’ve found. It really just depends on the device. If you know the device supports an option that isn’t exposed, it is often possible to figure it out with enough poke and prod trail and error. Using my Philips example again, it was just some googling until I was lucky enough to find someone that had already worked out the options.
AFAIK, the older Aqara sensors don’t have anything meaningful to set.
ZHA continues to improve, I keep ZHA installed and active and test any new device with it, but I still prefer z2m and keep most everything under z2m. I’d still stick with what I said after moving from ZHA to z2m,: ZHA is easier to start with and Z2M is easier to live with. But, it is all very subjective. Both are very good at getting the job done. Both have their own advantages and annoyances.