Zigbee2MQTT vs ZHA vs deCONZ - WATCH THIS BEFORE YOU DECIDE!

hey there in the last three videos i showed you how you can install your zigbee devices using zha zigb2 mqtt or decons in this video i'm going to compare the tree and tell you what my opinion is which version you can use best for your zigbee devices [Applause] [Music] i was always wondering what zigbee integration would work best in home assistant for me i mean i always used decons but i knew there was also zha and zigbee to mqtt and i didn't really know which one was the best and i heard a lot of people on the internet shouting about zigb2 mqtt about zha about decons and then i thought maybe i should set all three of them up and see what happens just see what works best for me so i decided to do that in my last three videos i showed you how you can install zha zigbee to mqtt or decons to control your zigbee devices at the beginning i didn't know what i was going into but it turned out to be quite a big rabbit hole if you haven't seen those videos yet the links are in the description below so check him out i ran into a lot of issues and a lot of fun stuff and i'm going to share everything now in this video with you so let's go into this the process was as follows for every integration or add-on i had to start with a fresh home assistant installation and then i installed the integration audio add-on so zha or zigbee to mqtt or dcons then i showed the user interface how it looks and then i started to pair the same devices to all the three integrations after that i tried to add the entities in home assistant to the dashboard to show you what you can see in the dashboard for that specific integration or add-on and finally i created an automation and i tested the automation and that automation was basically switch a light or smart plug based on motion then the devices that i tested during this whole process were three devices one is the ikea light bulb it's a color light bulb the second one is a popular motion sensor it's the acara motion sensor and the third one is a popular smart plug which is the blitzwolf smart plug with power metering if you want to order one of those the links are in the description below the coordinator that i used is the combi2 stick that's the only coordinator that i have but you can also use other coordinators of course but this is the one that i used i already told you the integrations and add-ons that i tested they were zha which is a default integration in home assistant zigbee to mqtt which is an add-on and decons which is also an add-on the total list of zigbee devices that are supported by integrations can be found in this list as you can see it's a huge list with devices and for every device you see if the integration supports that device which is really handy to know before you start installing an integration now let's start with zha installing zha was super easy it was installed in minutes it worked really well the whole installation went without any problems zha supports a lot of coordinators in fact it supports the most coordinators of all the integrations that i tested then the device support zha supports a lot of devices not all of them but most of them are supported only some exotic ones are not supported zha is easy to use installing was a blast and pairing devices went without any problems it went really really really well it worked right out of the box for the zigbee devices that i paired with zha a lot of entities were visible and home assistant actually zha showed me the most entities of all the integrations creating an automation and home assistant based on the triggers that were provided worked really well so that was also really good now let's go to zigbee to mqtt the installation of zigbee to mqtt was more difficult than installing zha i had to install mosquito broker and i had to install zigbee to mqtt and i had to connect the two together and that took me quite some time to figure out how that worked but in the end when it worked it was pretty stable then the coordinator support zigbee to mqtt doesn't support as much coordinators as zha but still supports the most common one so it's quite okay the device's support in zigbee to mqtt is superb zigbee to mqtt supports by far the most devices of all of the integrations it's a long list and it supports even the exotic ones so that's really nice then the ease of use it's okay i mean it has a nice interface but it is a little bit tacky so that's why i didn't give it five stars because you need to be a little bit more technical to use zigbee to mqtt and the entities that were visible in home assistant were also not as many as i saw in zha but that can also be because of the devices that i tested and maybe for other devices it might be the other way around but i didn't test that automation triggers work the same as in zha so setting up an automation was easy there were a lot of triggers and the automation worked perfect now let's go over to decons the installation of decons went pretty okay i had to install an add-on i had to make sure that the add-on accepts connections from home assistant i had to remember an ip address and there were some other things that i had to do to get it running but then in the end it was stable coordinator support is not that much because decons is the official software that belongs to the combi and raspy stick so it only supports the combi and raspy sticks then devices support is also quite a lot not as much as zigbee to mqtt but still a lot of devices are supported and there are only some exotic devices that are not supported by dcons the ease of use is quite okay actually the interface is pretty user friendly there is an interface where you can pair your light bulbs and your switches and your motion sensors that is called foscon and that is quite a nice interface so yeah it's quite nice to use if you're not really technical the entities that were visible in home assistant were not that many as that we saw in zha and in zigbee to mqtt so you have less entities to work with and the automation triggers were also working fine i set up an automation i got a lot of triggers and the automation worked pretty fine now let's go to the overview of all the three integrations and add-ons as you can see i have the same bullet points here as that i talked about in the previous slides but those are not the only things that we have to take into consideration there are more things to consider and i'm going to discuss them here so let's go over them one by one for the installation part zha was by far the best integration it worked right out of the box i had no issues during installation and i did have issues with zigbee to mqtt and with decons zha supports the most coordinators that doesn't really need to be a problem but it supports almost everything while the other integrations don't then the device support zigbee to mqtt is the absolute winner here but also zha and false corners support a lot of devices but they do not really support all the exotic ones then the ease of use zha was the most easy to use integration in my opinion and in zha the most entities were visible automation was for all three integrations or add-ons the same and now we go to the new bullet points then the documentation really important part for all three integrations there is documentation about the integration but what about the documentation about the devices in the integration and what you can do with them well zigbee to mqtt has very good documentation on every device as you can see here every device has some documentation about it and what you can do with it for zha and decons this does not exist so i think that's a big plus for zigbee to mqtt then another thing over the air updates can you update the firmware of your devices using these integrations yes you can you can do it with all three of these integrations but zigbee to mqtt seems to support the most integrations here then binding what does binding mean binding means that you can connect one zigbee device straight to another zigbee device so that it controls the other zigbee device straight away for instance you can bind an ikea remote to a light bulb so that it controls that light build straight away binding can be done by all three of the integrations or add-ons then another very important point will my zigbee network stay alive when my home assistant instant is going down for an update of one reboot well for zigbee to mqtt and for decons it does but for zha it doesn't so if you use for example the binding option that i just told about and you reboot home assistant and you use zha then you cannot control your lights anymore but when you use zigbee to mqtt or decons when home assistant is down you can still control your zigbee lights then the tweak possibilities this is more for power users zha and fosscon do have possibilities to tweak settings but zigbee to mqtt has a huge interface where you can tweak a lot of things so in this case zigbee to mqt is the winner again and now drumroll the winner is actually i think there are two winners in my humble opinion if you want easy and simple then go for zha it's easy to set up you don't need a lot of technical knowledge and it works quite well it supports a lot of devices so you'll be fine if you're more of a power user then go to zigbee to mqtt you can tweak a lot you can do a lot more fine graining of settings and i think then you'll be fine with zigbee to mqtt so in my opinion there are two winners for two different types of people oh and one more thing always check if your devices are supported before you make your final choice just check if your devices are in the list of devices that are supported by the integration and then choose the right integration for you i hope this video helped you if so give this video a thumbs up subscribe to my channel click the notification bell and i'll see you next time bye bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Smart Home Junkie

Views: 41,937

Keywords: Home Assistant, Home Assistant for beginners, Home Assistant teacher, Home assistant beginners guide, Home assistant tutorial, Howto, Set up home assistant, beginners guide to home assistant, home assistant guide, home assistant setup, home automation, home automation ideas, homeassistant, how to, install home assistant, smart home, smart home automation, smart home tech, smarthome, zigbee, connect zigbee devices to home assistant, deCONZ, Phoscon, ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT

Id: RWzzNe5gm5s

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Gelu6713]

TL;DW: ZHA for simplicity, Zigbee2mqtt for power users

[u/NicoLeOca]

Thanks for the video I started with a combee; so i used deconz without even thinking about it I will have a closer look at the two other options now

[u/capstan1234]

One thing I'm missing in this video: -phoscon ui is so limited: --- no direct switch binding (to have working remotes even when the stick is down) --- some device types aren't supported so they just don't show up (like thermostats) - setting device configurations from HA via deconz.configure is very helpful (like cooldown time for motion sensors or temperature offset for thermostats)

I just used deconz but with major issues/things not mentioned I still don't know if the others manage it any better. Hoped a deeper dive when you announced your series.

It's not that I didn't like your video, I just missed some things. Keep up your fine work!

[u/akafester]

What about reliability, coordinator firmware updates and uptime? This was a very superficial overview that you could search your way to. Also, how can you score 1 star when you don’t have any device documentation? It should be zero. Minor grievance though.

[u/rinyre]

I use Hue Essentials to manage Deconz presently, but have been musing on Z2M instead. I can't use ZHA because it does not support the Hue Tap switch signals.