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 suggest limiting yourself to ZHA, which is natively supported by Home Assistant, specially in these early stages.
I am doing that, and essentially waiting until Matter becomes the bigger protocol.
Yeah, except I bought a couple new Hue bulbs and ZHA wouldn’t find them. Z2M picked them up immediately. There really is no universal solution, even with “standards”.
Did you check the ZHA compatibility list? Find it, and stick to it.
Yeah, lesson learned there, but to OP’s point, nothing ever seems to just work.
Fun part in my case is that the specific bulb I want doesn’t have a ZHA-compatible counterpart. (Hue a19 white& color 1100. The 800 isn’t bright enough.)
100% this. It’s the simplest and most straightforward integration of zigbee in hass.
I am leaning more towards something that might be complex to set up, but has broader support and is future proof. And the latter one seems something that is not really clear for any of the current protocols. Maybe in 10 years things will have settled and everyone uses the same protocol, but who knows what it will be :-) I am leaning towards Zigbee2MQTT for now since my impression is that you are very flexible to do with MQTT. I already use MQTT for Frigate and Owntracks and if other devices put their stuff into MQTT I will I have a pretty open pool for all the data / actions, even if I switch from HA to something else in the future. I feel MQTT is here to stay for a while, but well… that could all be wrong, Haha!