Tired of the unreliable connectivity of Wifi when controlling critical stuff like lights, I want to move to Zigbee.
I’m going to move everything to the Hue bulbs, but I want to use something connected directly to HA for the hub. Anyone have some clear advice on a good, available USB dongle for Home Assistant, config/setup/adding Hue lights?
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I got myself a Sonoff Zigbee dongle about a year ago, I think it was somewhere around €20 so it’s not too expensive. I use it with Zigbee2mqtt, which is not hard to set up if you run Home Assistant OS or Supervised. It should work with the HA Zigbee integration as well, though
This, plus read something about zigbee channels before you at it up. Some might interfere, others may not be supported by some devices, so choose wisely. I’m using >70 devices with a conbee 2 coordinator (which I recommend).
Is the Conbee 2 coordinator the same device as the poster below’s Conbee II?
Yes
I just bought that dongle this weekend. I’m setting up my first HA instance. You can flash a firmware on that dongle that also adds thread/matter support so you have both on one dongle.
I think this is where I’m getting frustrated. (On top of my frustration that like 4 lights just decided to stop connecting to my Unifi for absolutely no reason again.) It’s not clear if I can just plug into the HA Zigbee or if I need MQTT or if they both have their uses or when/why, etc.
HA Zigbee is the easiest to set up. You just plug in the stick and add the Zigbee integration (usually this is even auto-discovered).
Zigbee2MQTT is slightly harder to set up, but still very doable. It supports a wider range of Zigbee devices, although Philips Hue lamps (or any not-too-obscure Zigbee device) should not be a problem on either HA or Z2M.
Depends on the device. I originally had ZHA setup with a HUSBZB and had issues with Ikea devices. I upgraded to the Sonoff S3 Zigbee stick and while doing that moved over to Zigbee2MQTT. Things seem to be working better but that may have just been from the stick upgrade. I’d say ZHA is more user friendly but Z2M isn’t that difficult to learn/set up either.
I’m running a Sonoff usb dongle on a Debian Bookworm and a Lenovo Tiny PC. (I tried a RaspberryPi4 2gb but with Debian not enough memory) . but without the ZigBeeMQTT as that just kept give me problems, home assistant recognises the dongle on it’s own and all works just fine, so Debian, Mosquitto, HomeAssitant supervisor and the Sonoff dongle
Perfect, this is super helpful. I ordered a Conbee per comments below, I expect it’ll work as well as your sonoff.
I personally like the Zigbee2MQTT add on. And their documentation is great (zigbee2mqtt.io). Also, check out digiblur’s content on Youtube.
Why use the MQTT addon vs the native home assistant integration? Our am I misunderstanding the concept?
No no, you are understanding this right. Both do pretty much the same thing and neither is truely better or worse than the other. ZHA seems to be the more user friendly option and Zigbee2MQTT the more involved one. But then again plenty of happy users with either of those two. It just doesn’t matter much. If you already have a ton of Tasmota Wifi devices that use MQTT, then using Zigbee2MQTT may be more familiar to you.
I don’t use it, but my impression is that people who prefer MQTT either have a lot of other devices already working that way, or use additional programs like Node Red to handle some of what HA can also do which require MQTT.
The first part is very understandable, as that’s pretty much why all of us likely end up with a favorite protocol! I didn’t really plan to be mostly using Zigbee and Hue devices, but now that it’s the case I am going to keep going in that direction even more.
This. It depends how involved you are. ZHA is fine when getting started. But how far do you plan to take it?
My home automation is -sooo- expanded since it’s early days, where HA is now “just a part of”. Then MQTT comes into the picture. MQTT is my main “message bus” these days, where not only HA connects on, but also Node-Red, miscellaneous python scripts ( for e.g. Smart Meter Reading), my car also connects to it,… And then some more with Grafana, also sending things to influx,… It all depends where your focus is. For me, MQTT is the “solid foundation” of real-time data. I do have to say: Z2MQTT is rock stable, and the community is very involved. Top notch to be honest.
I’ve used both. ZHA didn’t perform as well with my number of devices (58) back when I used it. Zigbee2MQTT seems to perform better for me
Don’t add anything in zigbee until you read this! Save yourself the headache of trying to migrate later.
My initial Conbee and two hue lights arrived today, and between the pain in the ass that I apparently need a hue hub or something to put the lights in pairing mode, plus this makes me think it’s not going to solve any of my connectivity problems.
Just in time for my Wi-Fi devices to start dropping again for no reason.
You absolutely don’t need the Hue hub to pair a light. It will work out of the box with your Conbee and ZHA. Where did you read that you needed the hub?
I couldn’t get the lights into pairing mode out of the box. It appears that for hue bulbs, the only option is a hue hub, a button combo with a remote switch, or resetting via the app and Bluetooth. None of those worked. The last option I found is touchlink.
I switched from ZHA to Zigbee2MQTT, which has touchlink built in, and that finally reset the bulb.
I tried a dozen times to get it to pair with ZHA, and it simply wouldn’t appear. Works fine with Zigbee2MQTT though.
Blackadder claims that’s the only tool verified to work on this specific model, so maybe that’s the problem with ZHA.
I’ve more or less figured out how to get things working with MQTT, but it really feels more complicated than it should be to just control a few lights.
If you already have a Hue hub, you can integrate with that from HA without new hardware or a direct connection. That is what I do for some of my Hue bulbs, but I do also have a Zigbee radio plugged into my Home Assistant Blue hardware as I have non-Hue Zigbee devices, too.
My experience is that Hue devices are the most reliable of everything I have in terms of both response time and connection. Zigbee devices vary a lot in quality, but my biggest issue are some switches that occasionally (but repeatedly) have to be re-paired, but generally as long as HA recognizes the device the reaction time and reliability of Zigbee is pretty solid.
I am using a ConBee II with my Raspberry Pi 3B+ and never had any problems.
Same setup here. Working w/o issues. I added an USB extension cable so to avoid interferences.
Zigbee is notorious for mesh instability, mostly because some devices (looking at you, Lightify) are picky about what repeaters they use in the mesh. Build your mesh slowly, spread some good repeaters around your house, and give the mesh time to settle down before using it in production. Don’t move repeater nodes or power them off. (I had some lights that I had to delete and re-add every two weeks, until I figured out that the cleaners were unplugging a repeater to plug in their vacuum:-) Finally, make use of the “Visualization” tab under Configure to see what’s happening on your mesh.
My plan is to stick with Hue bulbs as much as possible. More expensive, but seem to be the most solid hardware.
Each device is a repeater, right? So I should try to make every device’s potential signal overlaps multiple others?
I have half dozen Hue bulbs, and they seem rock-solid - far more stable than my Lightify bulbs.
The HA SkyConnect does seem to be a factor. For a while, my Lightify bulbs were the last thing on my old Samsung SmartThings hub (via the HA integration- basically using the ST hub as a Zigbee radio/stack), because they operated more reliably there.
Yes, every line-powered device is (probably) a repeater. Many light bulbs are, with the caveat that you must keep them powered all the time. Having a bunch of repeaters drop offline will cause fits with your mesh stability.
How are you getting your Hue bulbs into pairing mode? My new ConbeeII stick doesn’t see them. I tried connecting to them with the Bluetooth app and then doing a factory reset, no luck.
I recently installed the Skyconnect dongle, as it’s promoted by HA and it’s matter ready https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect/
I had a lot of trouble getting devices to stay online, they kept disconnecting. After adding more router devices, ie bulbs/plugs, it seems better. I’m using ZHA, so far only one device (an IR remote blaster) wasn’t compatible.
The one biggest thing I did that really improved my reception recently was buying a second dongle (Sonoff, they’re cheap on AliExpress and the newest version is pretty much the same hardware as a SkyConnect) and converting it to a router.
I have a few plugs that work as routers, but having a dedicated device with a legit antenna really stabilized everything.
I had a look at dedicated routers but found them quite expensive. I bought a couple of these zigbee plus, absolutely fantastic. Also very fast delivery. https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtDzhAq
Yep! I’ve got a few Sonoff plugs around the house that work quite well, although flashing a coordinator dongle to router firmware really tied everything together.
