Looking for those that use HA alongside HE

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I loaded up home assistant onto an older Nuc type devices and plan to use the bridge to bring HA into HE. Maybe later I may try some things the other way. I have some questions, plus I'd like to hear about some things I'm not even aware of. Anyways I'll start with a list. Answer if you can or just tell me something cool you do running both.

  1. ZigBee coordinator. I would like to use my pile of Linkind buttons, Ikea buttons, and Aqara sensors. Any suggestions for a coordinator? I won't allow them onto my HE mesh. Could a second HE hub work? I assume not since it doesn't with HE itself, but maybe it's a software not hardware issue.

  2. Geo-location, does it work well? I haven't looked into it yet but I assume it's fairly simple to set up and integrate into HE.

  3. Amcrest and or Blue Iris for security cameras. I see that they have an integration, anybody use either?

I guess I'll stop there for now and see how this thread goes.

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I think there's a blue iris integration on HE already, not requiring HA.

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I have a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 Plus Dongle as a coordinator for a HA setup, using MQTT to expose the few devices I have, like IKEA on/off switches. Not a big network, so can't comment on a "whole-of-house" setup...

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I'd also add that, for me, things that made the HA setup easy while maintaining control in both HE and HA included:

  • Keeping Hue lights and potentially accessories on the Hue bridge
  • Using a Bond bridge for my Somfy shades
  • Using Logitech Harmony
  • Chromecast and Sonos speakers / cast devices

I'd like to say EcoWitt, but I will need to do a little more work on that one....

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That's what I ordered last night. Not sure if I'll do zha or mqtt. Honestly I don't understand mqtt. Seems like it's more difficult.

I intend to continue to use HE as my actual setup just adding HA for some weird stuff and any other neat things I can find.

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Always good to have options, makes it easier to adapt when you make a.... mis-step when purchasing new tech.... :slight_smile: (Like me...)

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Mis-step, I think you mean Ikea, Aqara, Linkind. Lol. I didn't spend much on them but I have like 20 buttons and I refuse to give up on them. Funny thing is, I really don't have a use for all those buttons, but Ikea and Linkind made such nice buttons.

Also need to figure out what to do with 3 Aqara vibration sensors and that stupid magic cube.

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I have used the Smartlight.me CC2652P (SLZB-02) coordinator with zigbee2mqtt to get Ikea buttons and motion sensors into HE.
The only problem I found with this combo was battery life for the on/off dimmers wasn't great (a common problem using Ikea battery devices)

I'm currently using a SONOFF ZigBee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2 (ZBDongle-E based on Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 chip, same as what's in Home Assistant Yellow).
This one I'm using with ZHA and only have an Ikea motion sensor attached to it.
Battery life has been great so far, but the motion sensor and the ZigBee coordinator are in the same room.

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I run Z2M with mosquito broker, how do you get the devices connected to Z2M into HE.

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I use the Home Assistant Device Bridge, installed from Hubitat Package Manager, which connects to my Home Assistant.

I'm not sure if it will work if you are just running Z2M with mosquitto, as the bridge needs to use a Home Assistant Long-Lived Access Token.

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I do that by creating virtual devices in this MQTT app

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I tried the same app but no device was discovered !!
What am I doing wrong?!

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Sorry, I should have made clear that I don't use HA and that I manually create the virtual devices. Someone with HA experience will have to chime in to help you in that dept.

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I don’t have HA either, I’m trying to connect it directly to Z2M, I created a virtual device using the app but can’t figure out how to configure it.

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Ah, yes, that is not at all intuitive. I'll PM you.

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