this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Zigbee2mqtt + homeassistant = all I need at home and away.
All my zigbee devices just report in and I automate my home that way.
I have high hopes for matter but in the interim: I've got shit working great. Window sensors to automate air filters going on and off, a humidifier running in response to a few sensors around the apartment, grow lights on and off on some simple timers.
More complicated things like fans and lights for a 3d printing enclosure? Easy: octoprint has a homeassistant hook and I can listen in for printer start/stop.
Local control will always beat out the "easy solution" IMO. It's just a bit more setup.
But it's not a solution I could hand off to technically illiterate grandparents.
I feel your last line. I'm a competent user (read: great at following tutorials) and couldn't get HA/mosquitto/z2m all working together. I wish I could, but I wouldn't dream of passing it to even my brother, it's so far from plug and play. Huge shame, because it's so attractive.
Yeah it took a bit to get it all working. Zigbee2mqtt runs on an rasp-pi in the middle of the apartment for good coverage. The mosquitto broker is on the same box as HA but it took a couple tries to figure out how to get it to talk to HA.
Once it was set up it was pretty great. Occasionally I'll have to restart the rpi to fix some communication breakdown or another.
The main non-userfriendly aspect is that I have to ssh into the rpi and edit a text file then restart the docker container to accept new devices into the network, then change the file back at the end.
No other option though: I live in an apartment complex. I can't just blindly accept new devices.