Zigbee Recommendation

Hardware
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1

I am currently in the process of trying to eliminate the internet from my HA set up (I am mostly Hue and Samsung SmartThings). While I do have a few wifi devices (Kasa only), I would like to get rid of the 2 hubs.

I orginally bought one of the cheap $5 zigbee dongles (it actually cost me more in shipping than it cost to buy), which i think was DOA.

I’m looking for something that is going to allow me to replace my 2 hubs. I ordered a Conbee II stick, and am thinking of the dConz integration . . . anyone have any pointers? Either on hardware (return the Conbee and get a Sonoff zigbee hub and flash it?), implementation, etc?

I’m in the IT world (software dev that has moved to management, so . . . don’t feel like you have to sugar coat the tech speak)

2

Sonoff zbbridge flashed. Works very well. Good range and remote.
No need to plug it anywhere.

3

You realize they don’t work out of the box, they need to be flashed with new firmware before they work ? Anyway, I would not recommend them.

4

I use Hubitat for all of my Zigbee/Z-Wave needs.
It’s not got for running but it is a bridge with a great custom component.
I do all my automation in node-red and it’s all still very fast.

5

Yeah, but it wouldn’t even stayed powered up.

6

Its a bit of an open question.

I have used the CC2531 dongles with zigbee2mqtt and found them surprisingly good. I switched a few months ago to a Conbee II and deconz that I am pretty happy with it.

Deconz probably has more moving parts than I need (although seems very stable) so I am thinking to try the built in HA zigbee support with ZHA

7

sharing my post to warn others.