Hi everyone,
I am reading up on that topic for a few weeks now and the only conclusion I have so far is: There is nothing that works perfect and you need to check for each device if it works with your setup.
So I am asking about your experience so far, what you use, if you plan to change your setup (for what reason?) or what you would do different. Or do you use multiple gateways / protocols at the same time?
I run HA in Docker for a few things, but I have nothing connected yet via one of the protocols mentioned above. Yesterday I came across SkyConnect and thought I found the holy grail of dongles. Zigbee? Check. Zigbee2MQTT? Check. Matter? Check. But then looking at the details… Zigbee2MQTT is experimental and in a few review (although none was younger than 9 months) people report that it works unreliable. Matter support also is not there yet it seems. And to add insult to insury it seems that it officially does not work with a Dockerized HA setup.
So whenever I think I found “my” solution, there is something that does not seem to work, is unreliable or not compatible with all devices. I even ran across reports that said if a device Support Zigbee or MQTT it might still not work with your particular setup because… well… not everything that has a specific protocol stamped on the package seem to work in the same way.
So I feel like running in circles. I wanted to start with a few simple things like Temperature / Humidity sensors and Door sensors like for example the ones from Aqara. But if I throw money at someone my highest priority is reliability. So I want to go a route that (at this moment) is the most stable, reliable and future proof in your opinion.
So I am very curious about your setups and the experience you made with it :-)
I have a lot of ZigBee devices with SLZB-06 Ethernet PoE ZigBee coordinator (it’s Ethernet, so hardware independent and you can put it wherever you want) and some Shelly (so WiFi) devices. I use ZigBee2MQTT (docker) and all the devices are managed by NodeRed, so If there is a device that is not supported by HA, I can make it compatible just with a couple of nodes in NodeRed that kinda works as protocol converter: it receives messages from devices and send them back to HA and vice versa. In this way I can use whatever device I want. For example I’ve just added acouole of 12 relays + 12 input ModBis over RS485 boards and with NodeRed in the middle, I can use it in HA without any problem!
I’m no HA expert, so maybe this can be done within it too, but with NodeRed it’s so easy, I don’t risk any break over HA updates since all the devices are basic MQTT devices and if tomorrow I want to switch to something different from HA, it would be pretty easy.
I was about to order a SLZB-06, but they were out of Stock. That one looks exactly what I want. I never really looked into NodeRed, but normalizing everything before using it makes sense. The SLZB-06 makes the Zigbee Network connections independent from any Servers and making everything going through MQTT makes you independent from any Software that has to communicate with the Devices. Sounds like a lot of flexibility and independence.
Exactly! If you've never used Node Red, get ready for a new world of possibilities!!!