I am researching using Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi4 to control a number of ZigBee switches automatically depending on PV output & state of charge of 2x 8.2kWh batteries.
Can anyone, that has done something similar, suggest what would be the best Zigbee 3 Coordinator to plug into the Raspberry Pi 4 USB port?
Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus is what I have been playing with and happy so far
I've had 4 models over the years:
Conbee II - was very stable, hooks into a Phoscon docker to control/configure
Nortek - native support and includes ZWAVE, this was initially my preferred choice
Reflashed CC2531 - cheap and cheerful, works, but lots of messing about
Sonoff - the unit of choice for me now, great to have external antenna, great price, solid performance, native support
However, generally i'm only using zigbee for low energy sensors and buttons now. I'm almost exclusively using wifi switches now (tuya, sonoff and shelly) - I'd recommend this any day as they are lower cost, more stable and easier to reconfigure (zigbee can be a pain and it's being replaced in a way by matter - which i believe is more wifi based)
Thanks @locked & jd I have ordered one of the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus
Regarding the Zigbee 3 switches, I already have a few of those that I currently control via a Gateway & App when manually monitoring the PV output & battery charge rate. I want to be able to automate the logic I am mentally working out to switch things (like water heater, granny EV charger, etc.).
I am hoping that I can do that within Home Assistant.
Woodlands if not familiar with node-red https://nodered.org/ it is while worth a look and words nicely in conjunction with home assistant
locked Thanks for the tip. All information useful, as I have not done any programming for some time. The various tutorials I am finding are certainly helping my understanding of what is possible & how to do it.
Found this for installing Portainer & Docker on the Pi https://www.wundertech.net/portainer-raspberry-pi-install-how-to-install-docker-and-portainer/ which I understand it is best to run Home Assistant & other software in.
Woodlands Best install HASSOS on the RPi which effectively runs dockers. It's all pre-installed for you and there are plenty of guides online to do this - super straight forward. A lot of the automation can be done in home assistant without the need for programming via the GUI, it's getting more and more user friendly by the month now (i've been using it for 8 years!)
I highly recommend these: https://shop.shelly.cloud/ (i use a 1PM for example to control the immersion heater and it also feeds back the power usage!)
You will need GivTCP to get the info from the inverter like power demand and supply from the EM115 and then try match the output by turning on various devices - there's quite a few ways to do it.
jd Have you got GivTCP running and working without HA being in a docker?
I use Portainer and run HA in a docker along with everything else - including supervisor - its not officially supported - but works 100%. I originally had everything on HASSOS - backed it all up and when i converted to dockers used the backup to rebuild HA - everthing just came back in their own container.
jd I highly recommend these: https://shop.shelly.cloud/ (i use a 1PM for example to control the immersion heater and it also feeds back the power usage!)
Still researching, but is it OK to use both Zigbee & WiFi controlled devices via Home Assistant? The shelly devices look interesting, but I don't want to ditch all the existing ZigBee switches I have.
BTW, our immersion heater is 1.2kW, so well below the maximum current of our existing Zigbee switches & the Shelly devices.
The various parts I have ordered (Pi4, Sonoff ZigBee 2 USB, etc) should be arriving soon. So once I get them will probably have a lot of questions whilst trying to set thing up.
I get drop outs very very occasionally. The latest flavour of givtcp keeps values persitantly now so it is only updates etc that will generally cock it up.
And the latest flavour of HA allows data to be adjusted to be correct (or incorrect if you do desire!)
jd I highly recommend these: https://shop.shelly.cloud/ (i use a 1PM for example to control the immersion heater and it also feeds back the power usage!)
@jd Thanks for the tip about these. I have ordered a couple of the Plus 1PM's in their Easter Sale for less than £30, including carriage from Europe. They were cheaper in their sale, than buying from their UK distributor or Amazon.
