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
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.
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).
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.
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’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
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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
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.
https://darkxst.github.io/silabs-firmware-builder/
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 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.
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’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.