I don't like how HAOS is the only currently-supported way to use the SkyConnect to get Zigbee + Matter support currently, and messing with firmware on the SkyConnect was exactly the opposite reason why I got one in the first place. It doesn't "just work", even for just ZigBee, and now I've sunk hours into troubleshooting it without a working ZigBee setup in HA. Meanwhile, the Sonoff ZigBee bridge worked flawlessly the first time setting it up with my phone and their eWeLink app.
Smart Home 2023Q3 status: still for hackers only if you want more than a few lightswitches that you can just toggle from your phone, and even if you do want that, stick to one vendor + system only.
After a few days with ZigBee I was ready for an extended vacation. Finally got rid of the whole thing and everything is on a dedicated WiFi network now that is an integral part of the house, in other words: if I sell this house that WiFi network + all HA stuff goes with it including a nice manual of how it all hangs together.
Highly recommended: Shelly gear, it is easy to configure and seems to be rock solid, I've got a bunch of their remote control radiator valves, several remote control relays and a tri-phase consumption/production meter. It all worked flawlessly since installation. And instead of a regular Pi I got one that was built into a keyboard. It was mostly because I couldn't get a bare one but in the end I think this was the better option.
> if I sell this house that WiFi network + all HA stuff goes with it including a nice manual of how it all hangs together
I had something similar. Rock solid. Wired back haul. Nice manual. I knew it wouldn’t add $$$ to the house but I was a little surprised to find out it actually put a lot of people off. It had negative value as I had to rip it out and go analog.
Even nerds looking at the house wanted to do their own thing not maintain someone else's ideal and normies refused to spend ANY mental energy on understanding it.
That could well happen, so, for that eventuality I have a little cardboard box with the old radiator valves and thermostat. The solar panels and the inverters would be a bigger issue though, this all runs locally, not in the cloud (it was a bit of a job to find inverters that do not require a cloud connection, what a nonsense that is). But given that altogether these give the house its A++++ energy label (it is in the top .1% or so for houses of this size and age with respect to energy consumption) I'm pretty sure that buyers would be A-ok with it. Energy efficiency is a massive factor in people's buying decision here (as well as location and general state of the house, obviously).
But your point is well taken and I'll be sure to introduce the subject at the handover if it ever comes to that.
Here it's a mandatory disclosure item and it's important enough that you can filter by it on the real estate listing sites. More so because now house insulation comes with a mandatory 'bat study' requirement which is absolutely bonkers. So houses that are already energy efficient are at a premium.
What also helps is that the whole system runs without any user intervention. The manual is mostly aimed at people hired to add stuff at some point in the future, or in case something breaks.
Recently set up HA with a Zigbee dongle, took less than 15 from zero (newer used HA before) to be able to control my dimmer, most of that time was spent on finding my USB device path in /dev.
Connect the usb dongle, start docker container, initial HA setup, find my Zigbee device and done.
Wait a few months. My HA Zigbee integration works great… most of the time. Sometimes it loses all the devices and I have to reboot. Never found the time to dig into why.
Can’t confirm, the only issues I’ve had were with Deconz, since switching to Zigbee2MQTT (using the same ConBee stick) there have been no issues whatsoever.
If you know where to find the mesh view of your zigbee network, the one that has all of the links between the nodes rendered using bezier curves, at the bottom of that page there are three icons. The first icon is called Network, and if you view that page there should be an option for editing the channel That the zigbee network is on.
Tapping that option should bring up a dialogue that lets you migrate to a different channel with a warning about how some devices may not automatically migrate and will need to be removed and re-added if so.
I bought a cheap ConBee (is that what it’s even called?) Zigbee USB dongle, plugged it in, passed it through to my HA container, and it’s flawless. Plenty of things you can knock HA for, but good ZigBee support is easily attainable. I have…a large setup. 30 lights, door locks, ZigBee switches, blah blah blah. And I’m not smart guy. Such an improvement over WiFi
I think if you stick with Homekit certified accessories you can probably have a multi-vendor setup that's OK. Homekit can be flaky at times, though, and I would definitely recommend Home Assistant instead if you are a hacker.
+1 for the HUZBZB-1. I waxed more poetically about my setup already[1], but I've had that little guy for over 4 years, it was plug-and-play on day 1, and I've never had a single issue with a Zigbee or Z-Wave device. (Wi-Fi? don't even get me started...)
And yeah, it'll be another year or two before Matter/Threads really starts picking up steam. I'll just pick up a new dongle when there's 10 of 'em in that same timeframe.
(Disclaimer: my house is 800 sqft and I don't share any walls with neighbors. Zigbee is SUPPOSED to be mesh and Just Work assuming you have enough devices, but I can't speak from experience on that front.)
I definitely have a small setup, but getting ZigBee running was fairly straightforward. Two steps: 1) buy a ConBee dongle and 2) install and setup Zigbee2MQTT.
This is even better than the docker version, because it's able to set up a bunch of stuff for you that you'd have to do manually with docker, like the current ZWave integration.
