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 have close to 30 z-wave devices. Some are hard wired, some USB powered, some battery powered. I’m mostly happy with it, and things have gotten a lot of polish in the past couple of years. Z-wave JS is very good. I’ve been using Z-Wave JS UI which does the same thing but has a UI along with it. It’s unnecessary and has a more complicated setup, so stick with Z-Wave JS.
The only thing I run into on occasion is slow response time. It usually happens after an update and works itself out in time, or worst case after a reboot. Otherwise things are good and fast.
I also have a ton of wifi devices (and enough WiFi backbone to support them all). Most lamps in the house have a sonoff basic wired in.
Thank you! I suppose you use a USB Dongle or is ist some kind of stand-alone Gateway that sits in your LAN?
A USB dongle, yes. I think mine is a 700 series which was a little buggy for a while. It has been fixed with updates. I believe there’s an 800 series now, but I haven’t read anything about it.
Nice thing about z-wave is there’s one “company” in charge of the tech who licenses it out, so the market isn’t flooded with crap. Downside to that is higher cost typically. That’s my understanding of it at least.