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?
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.
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