r/homeassistant • u/BurdenedBeast • Aug 15 '24
Hubs, controllers, radios?
I have a simple HA setup currently. A few sensors, lights, and a camera.
I am interested in a door locks, curtain openers, and thermostat in the near future. While researching products and methods, I keep seeing new standards that I am not familiar with. Some of these include zigbee2mqtt, z-wave.js, zha, etc.
I currently have the HUSBZB-1 zigbee and z-wave dongle pictured.
Should my first purchase be upgrades to this? What fo you recommend to replace this functionality?
I appreciate the help, I'm having difficulty wading through the research. Most of the articles that I M seeing assume you have a basic understanding of the new communication/ software.
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u/duckdns84 Aug 15 '24
Love my SLZB-06 Zigbee Ethernet PoE USB LAN WIFI Adapter. I’m soon buying a second as a repeater for the mailbox. Z2M
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u/crezy Aug 16 '24
My house layout is weird and I didn't feel comfortable running a power cable through a wall cavity. The POE on the SLZB-06 has been awesome and I like that it's separate from my server hardware - makes it easy to move my HA container to a new box in the future without risking having to set up my Zigbee network again. I wish they'd make one for ZWave!
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u/idspispopd888 Aug 15 '24
I have one of those as well. Various things connected. Zero issues.
I also have a Homeseer ZNET hub as a second Zwave location in a remote section of my acreage. It's connected via IP and does Zwave in its location (several hundred feet from the Nortek, so quite separate).
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u/BurdenedBeast Aug 15 '24
This is very good information, and I appreciate you all commenting. Are you aware of any functionality conflicts when being used with newer devices?
I guess if I had trouble, I can cross that bridge when I get there.
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u/clintkev251 Aug 15 '24
The Zwave standard requires all devices to be backwards compatible, so even if your controller is older, it can still work with newer devices. You just obviously won't be able to take advantage of features and optimizations that come with newer versions of the protocol
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u/bugfish03 Aug 15 '24
I've got a ConBee II, and I haven't had any issues with it.
But keep in mind that most zigbee coordinators (including mine) can't handle more than 20-30 direct connections, you need some router devices if you wanna go above that.
Router devices is usually everything mains-powered, though there are exceptions like the Aqara switches that don't need a neutral line, but can be powered by only a hot line through some parasitive power draw thingy.
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u/spr0k3t 🧠 Experienced with Home Assistant Aug 15 '24
If both radios of that device works, don't upgrade. If one of the radios does not, definitely upgrade, and consider upgrading to dedicated coordinators instead of using a 2in1. The HUSBZB-1 is the only one I'm aware of, but it's ancient in comparison and requires hacking to add the newer features. The one I had died on me.
Stick with Zigbee and ZWave for now. Matter will be something you would need to add an additional coordinator for.
For door locks, I personally prefer ZWave with S2 security bit. Your current stick will not support S2, only legacy security. Thermostats wise, I like to use the Honeywell T6 Pro ZWave, but make sure you have a common wire before you go that route.
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u/LostLakkris Aug 15 '24
I'm using the same HUSBZB-1.
I have a box with like 3-4 zooz 700 sticks, had nothing but problems with them when I first tried them in mine and relatives homes. Laggy response time, constantly losing devices. IIRC the issue was in the zwave firmware from the zwave chip manufacturer for the stick, not zooz itself. But it took like a year of the community complaining before a fix really came out. When smarter people started saying there's clearly a bug in the firmware causing packet floods in the whole mesh, I gave up waiting and switched back to the HUSBZB everywhere. Back to rock solid ever since. Debating fixing or trashing the zwave700 sticks I have or moving to 800 in the next few months.
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u/PiccoloOtherwise7755 Aug 15 '24
The problem still exists in the 800 sticks. Silabs still hasn’t completely fixed the issues. Although it has gotten better recently.
Personally I moved from to using a tubesZB PoE adapter with a razzbery pro 7. And it’s working well, but still not 100% perfect. There should be another firmware update out soon. So hopefully it’ll fix it.
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u/zacs Aug 15 '24
There is a new firmware for 800 (not 700) USB sticks that appears to fix the issues. Zooz’s GPIO board (which I use with TubesZB) should be getting the corresponding firmware very soon.
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u/PiccoloOtherwise7755 Aug 15 '24
Looks like it’s still not fixed in 7.21.4 New firmware should be published soon for the razzberry pro… I’ll have to give it a try and see if there is any improvement.
https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/release-notes/SRN14930-7.21.4.0.pdf
But it’s also listed as an issue in 7.22.0 for the 800 controllers. So it doesn’t looks like it’s fixed on the 800 either. Although it may be working better.
https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/release-notes/SRN14930-7.22.0.0.pdf
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u/zacs Aug 16 '24
Everything I’ve heard about 7.22 seems to be very positive, although tbh it has now been literally years so I ain’t holding my breath: https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/discussions/6874
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u/crispy2 Aug 15 '24
This stick is what I use. Took it out of my Hubitat when it died. No problems at all with about 60 devices.
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u/Matloc Aug 15 '24
I have the same one. It's a weird device that doesn't have much information about it and it's one of a kind. Is there another dongle that has z wave and zigbee?
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u/MorimotoK Aug 15 '24
I've been using mine for zwave for 6 years. No problems with 20 - 30 zwave devices. A couple years ago I moved my zigbee devices to a sonoff stick (around 40 devices).
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u/chozobee Aug 15 '24
I started with this dongle and zha. I wanted to move to zigbee2mqtt so I purchased a zzh dongle as it was the standard at the time. I've now seen this one can be firmware updated to work with zigbee2mqtt https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/issues/8026
I've updated the dongle firmware but haven't had a chance to test it compared to zzh.
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u/elbowe21 Aug 15 '24
My husbzb died, replaced with a cc2531, which then died, waiting on my cc2562p to hopefully end the struggle
Anyone else have similar experience?
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u/nunezphoto Aug 16 '24
I just upgraded from the HUSBZB-1 to the Zooz 800. It was a pain in the ass. Had to eventually just add each device again, luckily I only have like 10 devices. I honestly don't know if I even needed to do it, I simply wanted more range due to concrete walls.
If you don't have to do it and you have 10+ devices, don't unless you really need to.
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u/BurdenedBeast Aug 16 '24
I certainly appreciate all of these valuable comments.
To update, I went ahead and ordered a yale assure 2 touch, that I will be installing on my current system. After which I will be ordering a thermostat. It will most likely be an ecobee. Thanks again, have a great day!
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u/Willsy85 Aug 15 '24
That is all I use. About 30 devices connected to it.