Zigbee Smart bridge

[rafale77]

After researching a number of various Zigbee solutions, I have come to the conclusion that Deconz with a ConbeeII is probably the best one available, covering the two HA1.2 stacks and ZLL stacks with the widest compatibility range, even better than the ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT components of Home Assistant, and also the best maintained with regurlar firmware updates. It is really an equivalent to z-way but for zigbee. It has a rest API so I am dreaming awake of a bridge for openLuup here...

Introduction - deCONZ REST-API

Could be a good project? I may get one to play with... It could potentially enable unifying the hue devices into one network.

[therealdb]

I could probably help, as I already said to @akbooer but because of the fun involved, nothing more. I don't have the hardware, but I see a summer in my future with no beach and a lot of stay-at-home.

[rafale77]

After thinking hard about it, I will be putting this one on the back burner... I have a working solution with the ZHA component of Home assistant for now and have no intention of expanding my zigbee network. The only significant advantage for my setup was to get rid of the hue hub and consolidate all zigbee networks into one for the future. Zigbee is just a mess with too many semi proprietary stacks and I will try to stay away from it as much as I can.

[sender]

Have deconz on hass, with conbee2 works like charm! Beatifull interface in hass and with vnc. Only downturn is philips_hue firmware updates, thats not easy due to lack of firmware files.

[rafale77]

Alright after now well over 6 months using the vera zigbee chip, I have decided to bite the bullet and move to conbee2.
I found it interesting while shopping that Aeotec is selling the razberryII for less than $18 and that there is a deconz equivalent with the raspbee II sold for the same price as the usb version. Let's see how this goes. Not giving up on the idea of a bridge for openLuup.

[akbooer]

@rafale77 said in Deconz:

Not giving up on the idea of a bridge for openLuup

Currently I’m working on new concepts for plugin implementations, taking Shelly as an exemplar. If successful, this could be a framework for other protocols.

Unlike the other place, I’m looking for a seamless evolution of API and capability. The BIG IDEA is to implement ‘plugins’ as CGI files which could be run under almost any web server. A significant part of openLuup’s extended functionality is already implemented in this way (Historian, Console, ...) For a complete transition, I would need to wrap some existing parts (Luup requests, bridges, ...) as CGIs. This would, eventually allow me to lose the weakest part of openLuup, which is its own web server...

[therealdb]

@rafale77 I've not invested so much into Zigbee, but count me in if you want help. I could afford a controller+some devices
@akboer this sounds great. I was toying with the ability to explicitly implement ha bridgefeatures in LUA and offer Alexa's support natively. in general, this could help the addition of different APIs to openLuup and this sounds great!

[rafale77]

I have not invested a whole lot in zigbee either. The device/mesh management is much easier than zwave on one hand but the controller implementation and stack complexity are big downsides.
Thanks for the support guys! I am trying to get away from having this done in home assistant. In spite of the evolution they have made, I am finding the configuration/entity setup they implemented very cumbersome and vastly prefer a z-way bridge type integration into openLuup.

[akbooer]

My only Zigbee experience is through the Hue bridge and @amg0's excellent AltHUE bridge. I have installed some LED strips with compatible drivers, and they (surprise!) actually compatible, so they work fine too. Current lighting strategy is Hue for individual bulbs/strips and Shelly for relay-controlled clusters. The only other Zigbee device I have is actually a Hue motion sensor, and that seems to work well, but I have no real plans to extend the Hue network (a bit expensive.)

Shelly forever! (well, for a while, at least.)

[sender]

@akbooer said in Deconz:

Shelly forever! (well, for a while, at least.)

Have a look at esphome.io

And also google at tuya convert.

Very reliable and cheap!

[akbooer]

Yup, same technology.

[RHCPNG]

I was thinking of getting myself a conbee and try some zigbee. So a bridge for openluup would be very welcome! I will be monitoring this!

[rafale77]

I went the lazy way for now for lack of time and just dropped in the conbee directly to replace the vera plus into home assistant using the zha component then into openLuup instead of using deconz. I would have to pick up another conbee and really start from a deconz installation to get going on a bridge...