Any thoughts on which is better

[CatmanV2]

Obviously a quiet forum, but perhaps it's time

I'm looking at rolling Zigbee into my system, in large part for the Aqara FP300 presence sensors which seem to finally provide a solution to if the wasp is actually in the box.

My current set up is as follows:

One Debian VM on Synology NAS running:
Z-wave Server
Open Luup
Multi system reactor
HA bridge
Mosquito MQQT broker
This machine has a UZB Z-wave stick connected via the USB port on the NAS

Another HAOS VM on the same NAS running HAOS

I've got some older Z-wave stuff that I keep around until it fails.
I have some Tuya stuff integrated in HA

My thought was to get either a SMLIGHT SLZB-06M
or an Aqara Hub M2

Integrate them via Zigbee2MQQT (running on the Debian machine) and then expose them in HA so I can continue to automate in MSR.

Thoughts on which of those devices wold be preferable long term. Both are POE capable which is good. It also appears I could add a USB dongle to the NAS and expose it to the HAOS machine.

Any thoughts from the assembled experts here? TIA

C

[therealdb]

I have this Home Assistant ZBT-2 in one house, and SONOFF ZBDongle-E in another and both are working OK with Zigbee2MQTT. Mostly plug&play (just the setup is not very straightforward - but manageable), definitely good after setup.

[CatmanV2]

Thanks. I read that but didn't twig.

Is it connected to an HA host or something else?

Cheers

C

[therealdb]

@CatmanV2 yes. you could use it directly or via Zigbee2MQTT, as I did (because I wanted to fiddle around).

Home Assistant

Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2

The easiest way to start with Zigbee or Thread is now even better.

[CatmanV2]

All makes sense. The Sonoff is even cheaper ATM

SONOFF Universal Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus ZBDongle E Gateway with Antenna for Home Assistant, Open HAB etc, Support Data Flow Control : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Just to make sure I'm straight.
Install Zigbee2MQQT on my Debian VM with my MQQT server
Connect the dongle to the HAOS VM
Configure
Play?

Cheers

C

[therealdb]

if you connect to HAOS VM, there's no need to install Zigbee2MQTT.

This should be recognized by HAOS as well. Otherwise, map the USB to your Zigbee2MQTT VM/Docker image and you're good to go. Remember to get an USB cable, so the radio is not near the internal USB port - that's better in terms of radio.

[CatmanV2]

For the FP300 apparently the features of ZIgbee2MQQT are far greater than the standard ZHA install. May as well get over the hump first off rather than have to go back to it.

Cheers

C