Home Assistant Zigbee2MQTT Setup

zigbee is a popular wireless protocol used by smart home devices but out of the box a smart home controller such as home assistants can't actually communicate with zigbee devices if you want to be able to talk to zigbee devices you're going to need a zigbee controller but you're also going to need additional software to be able to communicate with those devices through the zigbee controller one of the actual popular add-ons that's available for home assistant is called zigbee the mqdt how do you install zigbee.mqtt well if that's something you're interested in finding out then stick around and watch this video because that's what we'll be going over [Music] zigbee to mqtt is not an all-in-one solution it does have prerequisites and it does have requirements in other words if all you do is install the add-on it's not going to work you're not going to be able to communicate with zigbee devices for example so what we actually need to cover is what are the actual prerequisites well actually there's one which is an mqtt broker like the actual name of the add-on suggests we're talking about communication between zigbee and mqtt home assistant doesn't actually have an actual mqtt broker you can actually install one create one on a completely separate computer if you like or what you can do is install the mosquito broker that comes with home assistant now if you're not familiar with how to do that i do code that in another video that i've done but just bear in mind that you have to have this mqtt broker in some shape or form otherwise you'll install the add-on and you just won't achieve anything with it in terms of the actual requirements well you do actually need a zigbee controller because all we're going to be doing is installing software onto a computer and that computer does need a physical zigbee controller to be able to communicate with zigbee devices now there are actually certain ones that are preferred if we go to this link here this is actually a list of the supported adapters i'll include a link for the actual site uh in the description but it gives you a list of all the various um zigbee adapters that it works with for instance now in my case i'm going to be using a convict 2 control because that's very popular especially for home assistant it'll work but it's going to need a work around as we'll see but either way do check this actual list see if your device is supported otherwise you might actually have problems um if we go back to home assistant there is one more requirement and that is once you've actually got your controller installed well almost system itself needs to know what it is because one of the things we need to do is actually configure the software to tell it what our zigbee controller actually is now i'm getting a notification here um which is actually a click on that if i go to and have a look at what these new devices are it pops up my message because it's recognized my con v2 controller now this i mean this is fine if i was going to actually install the zigbee home automation integration software but we want to use a different um piece of software to deal with zigbee devices so i'm going to ignore that but at least i know straight away at least my control is being recognized but either way i still need any uh find some more specific details about this controller so i can pass those on into the configuration so to get that information i'm going to go to settings and then i'm going to go to system then i'm going to go to hardware and then up here if i click on the menu option and select all hardware it gives me a list of the actual hardware that it knows of now straight away i can see there's my con b2 actual zigbee controller the key bit of information to take from here is tty acm 0 in my case that's what i need to be able to supply to the actual configuration of our zigbee to mqtt add-on when we get to the actual configuration part now this zigbeta mqtt software is being managed by a community developer and home assistant knows nothing about it whatsoever so we actually have to tell home assistant where to go looking for it first and then we'll be able to actually install it so i'm just going to close this window here i'm going to go to settings then i'm going to go to add-ons i'm going to click on add-on store and then open the top right corner i'm going to click the menu option and select repositories and then i'm going to paste in the url for this github repository which is where the mqdtt add-on is now i will include that in the actual description though we're going to click on add and it's going to basically it's gone out to github let's come back to see that we've got this zigbee to mqtt software that we can use now so i'm gonna click on close and ah there's no sign of it yeah it can happen so what we're going to do is going to hit control f5 on the browser just to basically force a refresh and unfortunately that means i'm going to have to log back in again so just log in here and you can now actually see the software now there's two choices here we've got zigbee to mqdt and we've got zigbee to mqtt edge now it's not recommended to use that one it says this is a development build so what we want to do is to install this specific one here so we will click on that one then we're going to click on the install button and then off it goes and installs zigbee to mqdt so now that the add-on's installed the next thing to do is to configure it now here on the info tab by default we've got start on boot enabled which is what we want we also want to select the watchdog option as well now the reason for that is if this add-on were to crash home assistant will be able to get access to your zigbee devices and vice versa for instance so we want to make sure that if that actual add-on crashes home assistant will at least try and restart and get it back up and running again now this is entirely optional sure in sidebar if i select that basically it gives us a shortcut to this zigbee to mqtt software now at the moment you can't see that what that's going to take us to because once this is configured and up and running we'll actually get a link to the actual web interface of this software which is basically what that's pointing to now what we also need to do is go to the configuration tab now we're actually using the mosquito broker now that's basically running on the same computer so it's a local service if you will it's technically an add-on but because of that we don't actually have to configure anything here in the mqtt settings if we actually were using some remote server a completely separate computer as the documentation explains you'll have to provide the actual details for that server where it's at login credentials but because it's local we don't need to touch that but i will include a link to the actual installation details that are in the description now as far as the serial part here is concerned this is where we need to tell it about the actual zigbee controller we're going to use so i'm going to paste in the details for mine so this is where i was going over the prerequisites and the requirements was that you need a zigbee controller on here we have to actually tell it what our controller is so mine was tty acm0 so yours might be the same might be different it depends on how many usb devices you've got in here for example but we put that slash div slash in front of that so that's how we actually reference that specific device there so i'm going to click on save then i'm going to go back to info and then what i'm going to do is then actually start the add-on now this is going to take a while um so once it's actually up and running or in my case it'll actually fall over as you'll see but what you should be able to get is this assuming everything goes to plan it'll be up and running and you'll be able to click on this open web ui button which is same as what that shortcut is and then you'll be able to actually connect to this actual add-on in my case i'm using a convie 2 controller and it's going to have problems i'm going to have to fix this so i need to leave this a while to finish doing what it's going to try and do to get everything up and running if you find it works fine then skip the next section but if you're using a convict 2 controller for example then you'll need to cover the next section with me where we go over how to fix this problem now if like me you're using the combi 2 controller what you'll find is that the zigbee to mqtt add-on looks as though it's working but in actuality it's not i mean we've got a green icon up on the top right hand corner but if i try to connect to the add-on all i get is bad gateway now typically that just means that the service is not ready yet it hasn't finished doing what it needs to do to get itself fully up and running but you can leave this as long as you like it's not going to make any difference because if you click on the log tab over here we'll see there's an error message showed up be able to connect to the adapter unfortunately you do get a link to follow and if you do follow that i'll include it in the description this is the common problem it's the number one at least as far as the actual you know goes right to the top of the list basically uh issue which is problems connecting to the adapter and like i pointed out there are some requirements when it comes to this software there are supported adapters the convict 2 works but there's a catch if we do follow that link and it's the same link i was showing early on and scroll all the way down and expand this conbie coli 2 raspy raspy 2 link that we've got here and you can see it actually tells you you need to add in some additional lines to the configuration.yaml file so i'm going to copy these out i'm going to go back to home assistant we go to studio code server you can use any file editor that you like because we need to make a configuration change now the key thing to point out is it's a configuration.yaml file that belongs to zigbee to mqtt i'll just shrink that because it's a bit deceptive home assistant has its own configuration.yaml file you might think well i'll put the lines there because that's what it's talking about surely it says add these to your configuration.yellow file but it's not expand this out as you can see it's got its own configuration yaml file that's where we need to paste our lines into so paste those into there i'll close that i'll go back to the add-on and i'm going to restart this because i need to do that for the changes to take effect well the add-on's now restarted it's back up and running and if i click on open web ui this time hey voila we've now actually got a zigbee mqtt add-on up and running now to add a zigbee device to home assistant what we need to do is to actually put a zigbee to mqtt uh add-on into pairing mode so up here there's a an option from it join all so we'll click on that so it puts us into pairing mode for zigbee devices so what i need to do is put the actual device out got into pairing mode now how you do that really depends on the actual device itself um i'm using an acara device as an example but it can be a bit fiddly i must admit the idea is to hold down the actual button there we go and then it pops up now i must admit sometimes what i find with this is that it actually initially identifies when you add the device for the first time it shows up as an unknown device but if you give it long enough eventually it pops up and it shows shows itself as a zombie device that's how you pronounce it now you end up with a really obscure name i must admit but you can at least change that i mean if we click on the edit option here i can call that just say door sensor for example i'll select the option to update home assistant i'll rename the device that's that's a more meaningful name than what i was seeing before now if i go to settings and then to devices this is going to show up as an mqtt device so this is my first mqt device if i click on that you can see it's been renamed to door sensor i'll go over to overview it's sitting in a an unknown location at the moment but it doesn't even know what the status is but as you can see as i'm moving it around at least i'm starting to get feedback from it so that's closed open closed so it's starting to work now so that's good let's just put that down you can see it's added the device in so what it means is if i go back to the add-ons back to my mosquito well actually i want to go to settings and i want to go to devices and services to devices and what i can do is i can edit this and put it in a specific location for example that's a bit more meaningful than where it was before so now it should put it back into the actual test room let's double check i did save that correctly it's in the test room so for some reason it's not showing that there we'll just click on refresh yeah everything's now back in the test room so now what you're getting is although you've actually got a zigbee device as such it's communicating to our zigbee to mqtt add-on and it's then presenting it to the mqtt broker so as far as warm assistance concerned this is an mqtt device uh to us we know it's a zigbee device but home assistant sees it as an mqtt device i suppose benefit from that is it means that you're you know disconnected really from even home assistant if you want to move on to something else for example as long as you've got an mqdt broker you can use this on any um smart home hub really that supports mqtt in a way but it's quite useful most of it in that respect i mean it's pretty easy to add things in if i go back to the add-on you can see it's showing that up but i must i mean i'm not overly fond of the way it um gives you those bizarre names almost i mean you've got to change at least but fortunately you've got that option to you know update home assistant as well and pass it on and as long as you've got home assistance set up with its default sort of settings anything that gets learned in mqtt automatically does get populated as a device and learned if we go to the actual dashboard it's giving you a bit of information about that if we go to the map it's really not a great deal to learn to be honest there's just the controller on the door sensor there's various things you can do in here there's tools and try and restart zigbee and so on um what i'm interested in next i suppose is really just to add more devices into here and as i say how you do that really varies depending on the device some of the electrical devices that you've got for example it's a case of maybe you just turn it on as soon as it powers on the first time it goes into a pairing mode with some it might be a case of you've got to buggle the actual on and off button a few times to put it in the pairing mode but i suppose one of the good things about this is it also does support more actual devices than home assistant's own software if we go to notifications check it out it's suggesting to install the zigbee home automation integration now this specific um add-on that we've put in the zigbee to mqtt it does supposedly support a lot more devices so you've got choices here where if you've actually got a piece of hardware and it doesn't work in that zigbee home automation software you can actually check out the site here i mean the the go over the actual hardware not just the adapters but the actual types of devices i mean yeah we're talking about 23018 if you find it on that list you might have better look because i know i've got a zigbee bull for example it isn't recognized by zhe i know that for certain it'll work if i pair it up with a philips hue bridge but it won't talk directly to a home assistant using zhis that's something i might check out to see if this will resolve that it's not a big deal because i've got all the bulbs on on my phillips hue bridge anyway but it's just something i need to bear in mind so it's pretty easy to add the devices in and yes you can rename them i think that's just a feature where it didn't initially recognize it although it's branded as a car it all belongs that mean parent company anyway so that's as far as this particular software goes it sees it's belong to zooming it's all based on like fingerprints every device has got a fingerprint essentially and that's it all depends on the database that the actual devs keep and what they recognize it as but that's something to bear in mind so pretty easy to add devices in now when it comes to zigbee it's pretty easy to remove a device from your network we've got a door sensor that we've added in if i want to remove it for whatever reason all i need to do is click on the the bin icon hover over it says remove device so i'll click on that i'll select force remove there's not as like a two-way communication here going on i'll just remove it from this network and that's it now if this was a device that i don't want to come back i would also select that option to block from joining again in this particular case we're doing a video i'm doing a demo so i do want the device to be able to be added back in again so what i'm going to do is leave that deselected type of force remove click delete and that's it it's gone if we go to our overview page it's gone from here go to settings devices it's no longer referenced as a device on the mqtt broker either so very very easy to actually remove a zigbee device well thanks for making it to the end of this video i really do hope you found it useful if so then do click the like button and share as that will help get the video out to more people who might find it useful as well if you've got any comments or suggestions please post those in the comments section below and if you're new to the channel and you'd like to see more content like this then yes do subscribe just remember to set the bell icon to actually send your notifications when new content gets 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Channel: Tech Tutorials - David McKone

Views: 8,145

Keywords: home assistant zigbee2mqtt, home assistant zigbee2mqtt setup, home assistant zigbee2mqtt bad gateway, home assistant zigbee2mqtt addon, home assistant zigbee2mqtt add new device, home assistant zigbee2mqtt integration, home assistant zigbee2mqtt configuration, home assistant zigbee2mqtt map, zigbee2mqtt, zigbee2mqtt home assistant, zigbee2mqtt setup, zigbee2mqtt conbee 2, zigbee2mqtt home assistant setup, zigbee2mqtt add device

Id: Ke_WIGgWa84

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 17 2022