So, honestly I’m not sure if I need to ask this question but I’m worried that I’m going to regret not asking it later if I don’t…
I have a sonoff usb ZigBee stick and I added it to my Home Assistant setup earlier
Went swimmingly, recognised straight away and I then added a ZigBee device (an aqara button) again, no issues
However I’ve seen threads around ZigBee and people choosing between zha or zigbee2mqtt and there seemed to be pros and cons… Honestly, I’ve no idea which I’m now using and I’m not sure if it even matters, but just wondering if I should be worrying about it or if I should just continue merrily on my way?
There are both pros and cons to both, even deconz. So, there is some research that you will have to do to see what best fits your needs. Here is a video that can help you with this.
The part to be aware of is that in general Zigbee2MQTT supports more devices but it’s more work to setup. If you don’t have the time/patience for a bit more complicated setup then you may be better off with ZHA. That being said if you get to a point and find that ZHA isn’t cutting it in terms of support for the devices you are trying to use then switching later means you’ll have to re-setup all of your devices.
If you want to keep the setup easy you can stick with ZHA but just make sure that you always check that the hardware you are considering purchasing is supported by ZHA first. That line of thinking isn’t exactly exclusive to ZHA, sometimes there are devices that work under ZHA but not Z2M for whatever reason, or it’s just not been confirmed. An example of this is that I recently purchased a Tuya ZigBee thermostat & humidity sensor off of AliExpress on the cheap. After getting it I happened to check the ZigBee hardware compatibility lists and it wasn’t mentioned anywhere that it was supported by Z2M. I just gave it a whirl and the device paired no problem, though under a different model identifier but it works no problem. I put in am update request for the listing so that now others know that the device is compatible with Z2M.
For me I was at the same place you are when I started and looked at those resources and decided I was going to go with Z2M. However, I have a long history of using service like MQTT in corporate environments as a developer so I wasn’t scared away by going down that road.
As previously stated, most likely your on ZHA. If your not having any issues, then ZHA is fine. If your a tinkerer, then I encourage checking zigbee2mqtt out, but I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Thanks all, I’ll check out those resources…
Guessing from the comments that ZHA is the “default” - I’m not seeing it referenced anywhere, where would I confirm? (Edit: found it in the integrations list “ZigBee Home Automation”)
I have prominently Aqara ZigBee devices so guessing if one works they will all work, but I do have IKEA, Lidl, Osram Lightify, Innr, and probably a couple of other things lying around - will need to see if they work
I’m tempted to stick with ZHA, given the simplicity I’ve seen, there is already a huge learning curve ahead of me in my move over from Homey!!
Guessing that you can’t run both? Or swap without rebuilding the mesh and readding devices?
We use ZHA and have approx 60 devices on the mesh for multiple different vendors and have (so far) never had an issue pairing or using any of them via ZHA.
