How To Add Zigbee To Home Assistant - Conbee 2

[@paulhibbert]

Happy Saturday!! Thanks to MANSCAPED for sponsoring today’s video! Get 20% Off + Free International Shipping + 2 Free Gifts with my promo code “PAULH20” at manscaped.com! BUY THE CONBEE STICK HERE: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. By buying through any of the links below I will earn commission at no extra cost to you :) UK: amzn.to/3JOseIr US: amzn.to/3sn3KzX BUY A RASPBERRY PI HERE (Power supply case and SD card not included so make sure you order them too!): UK: amzn.to/3HmAYUA US: amzn.to/3hlmuJS Big thanks to Rob from the Hookup for helping me with triggering Alexa routines via Home Assistant, a tutorial will be coming soon. Checkout Rob here: kzbin.info Also some really helpful guides from Mark Watt Tech here: kzbin.info

[@rocteur]

I thought it was a Joke ad until I Googled it ;-)

[@android199ios25]

Sth removed my comment :(

[@android199ios25]

What I wanted to say is that there is zigbee2mqtt and tasmota custom firmware that is worth some attention. As well there is special configuration validation tab in settings that allows you to check configuration.yaml for errors before reboot.

[@fwolle30]

It's nice, you had your success with homeassistant. But a little tip to make it less annoying: start a habbit of backing up your SD-Card. If this thing breaks (and it will), you'll have an annoying time.

[@kerryaptekar2858]

if you want a step by step for adding alexa or google to home assistant free with no subscription follow these: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaiVfXxrbq6EZqM kzbin.info/www/bejne/iKKqmpJ9fpWfqrc

[@TheHookUp]

Always happy to help, especially if it means more home assistant content!

[@tombloemker9434]

Please summarize the presence fix that you did for Paul. Unless you can link a video solution.

[@TheHookUp]

@@tombloemker9434 I didn't fix his presence issue, he was struggling with the alexa routine triggers. As far as presence, I think that can be easily solved by increasing the radius of home, and perhaps adding a delay where you have to be "away" for x amount of time before it triggers.

[@gms03sbd3]

Your level of knowledge in HA as Dr. Zzz os so high. You should start a HA customer service xD.

[@android199ios25]

@@TheHookUp Presence problems might have to do with mobile device power conserving strategies. My phone never wished to update its battery percentage to hass. It requires some permissions that completely disable power saving features on home assistant companion app. I think that best presence detection can be achieved by pinging your phone every 10 min to check if it is still connected to wifi. Again there are some battery life concerns. You also could put some nfc tags on entrance and scann it with your phone as presence detection.

[@TabakMan]

@@tombloemker9434 you can try presence detection by wifi SSID I think you can just configure this in the companion app of you can check the phone mac address in the router if your router has this kind of integration with HA or you can expose the WIFI SSID sensor from the companion app and make automation to update the presence.

[@thomasloven]

Hey. Home Assistant developer here (one of hundreds). I commented on your last video on the subject too and I'm glad you seem to agree we're at least heading in the right direction. Still lots to do, but we're getting there.

[@rolandschuepbach6836]

Hi Thomas, yes, you guys are heading to the right direction. The latest changes in home assistant have been huge steps. I love it now. Was close to stop with it several times.

[@thomasloven]

@@rolandschuepbach6836 I gave up on Home Assistant entirely myself TWICE before giving it a real go.

[@miklossurjan]

One of hundreds??? Come on! You're one of the top developers for HA. After I started using card-mod, I was pretty sure that your real last name was Lovelace 🙂 (Not to mention the hundreds of questions you patiently answered on forums.)

[@d_sellers1]

@@miklossurjan I read the Thomas' comment before I read his username. Once I did: "Yup. I recognize the name." I agree with you that he has done so much and constantly seeing his responses to help users is exactly correct.

[@Evakron]

You also seem to be one of the only ones that has any interest in meaningfully growing the community. The toxicity in the forums, community gatekeeping and poor documentation is risking relegating all the hard work the HA team has done to a slow, painful death of niche software that is "super powerful but too hard to use". You're on borrowed time to solidify decent market share as home automation becomes more mainstream and every day users go looking for a platform that doesn't require extensive studying of passive aggressive forum posts to configure. tl;dr Please don't let elitism and an obsession with function over usability get in the way of HA becoming the exemplar of open source home automation it could be.

[@nate_river_]

I brought a Conbee 2 stick to cut my misbehaving Ikea hub out of the picture. Best decision ever. Also expensive, since the unlimited power went straight to my head and I spent £100 on temperature sensors. I still have no routines that do anything with temperature or humidity, but I do know exactly how cold the garage is at 3AM without having to go down there...

[@trevhib]

Don't leave us hanging. How cold is it at 3am?

[@nate_river_]

@@trevhib It was 4.5C at 3 this morning. Interestingly, the absolute coldest time seems to be just before 5AM, which was 3.8C.

[@trevhib]

@@nate_river_ Good intel. Well, they do say it's darkest just before the dawn 😁

[@error53ish]

@@nate_river_ Always coldest just before the dawn... Or something like that.

[@angelaianburton6133]

Well done Paul, another great Video, thank you. I have a Conbee II stick on a 5m USB extension plugged into the USB3.0 port without any problems. I have placed the stick near the ceiling in our lounge and we have great coverage. I use this stick within Home Assistant via the DeConz intergration which is really easy to use. DeConz also allows you to change the Zigbee channel to keep it away from your WiFi channel ( if the two channels are too close together the will cause interference to each other) Also, if you use Zigbee bulbs or sockets this act as Zigbee routers which increases the range of your Zigbee network for your sensors to connect too.

[@daveross1595]

Some advice I was given about the Conbee II stick, put it on a USB extension lead to move it away from the Pi as they will interfere with each other otherwise.

[@house89147]

Make sure its a good cable. I've had issues with mine being less reliable when on a lead. I'm using a nuc too, and there are warnings floating about about avoiding the usb 3 ports but I can't say how much I've noticed a difference on those. Apparently they are meant to be noisy... I can say though make sure your earth is clean I had one with a 19.5v AC signal on it and the conbee would drop off and on the network as it saw fit.

[@jmr]

That's worth a try with any ZigBee dongle if you're using the onboard 2.4ghz WIFi. It probably doesn't do a lot if you are using Ethernet or 5ghz WiFi. There are USB cables with RF chokes or you can buy RF chokes to snap on. Those might be helpful if you have an issue.

[@sy086]

Yes, this! My conbee sick didn't like being near my USB3 hub... simply relocating it solved all the issues...

[@PrankstarDK]

I use my Raspee 2 (same as Conbee, but is installed on the GPIO pinouts) thus it beeing even closer to the Rasbperry Pi and i have +80 devices on my Zigbee2MQTT network. I even use the WIFI to place the Rasberry PI in the middle of the house, and there is no interference at all - it just works.

[@rodrigojds]

Also dont plug it in the USB 3.0 output..put it in the usb 2 one. It'll help with the interference

[@goosetamer]

Finally, you've seen the light, Paul. Good job! I have two minor corrections, though: it's not the ConBee people who have made it possible to integrate all these devices. The ConBee ist just another Zigbee dongle. There are plenty of other Zigbee dongles which can do the same. The magic really comes from the ZHA integration that has been a part of Home Assistant ever since. Also, you *can* integrate your Roborock with HA - granted, setting it up is a major pain in the arse ("copy pasting gibberish"), but it works.

oh yeah, I have my roborock in HA and it works great :) I use that integration to start cleaning when I actually leave a house, so it never bothers me when I am home :)

[@ChazzerB31491]

Honestly a small subscription fee that is optional if you'd prefer to code it yourself. Is worth the cost, I bought Nabu Casa before I even wanted to integrated Alexa into HA, because I was grateful for all the work the HA team does. I think of it more as a patreon payment than as a monthly fee

[@paulhibbert]

I think that's a good perspective man, and totally fair.

[@KyeMacdonald]

Very much my perspective. Nabu Casa is my way of supporting HA development.

[@SagiTabachnick]

I'm doing the same. I have everything set up even without Nabu Casa, but I really want to give back to the community. Really worth the $6 a month.

[@Chizzy01]

Saturday morning 10am means only 1 thing, Coffee & a new Paul Hibbert video 👍

[@chigsy]

Paul, I'm happy you made this video! I feel that stock home assistant is a little hard. I was screaming inside for you to use node red and ZigBee2mqtt. I'd love to walk you through my setup to see if you feel any differently about the nodered+ha set up. I never setup any 'logic' in home assistant. It just keeps the 'state' for my devices. The logic all lives in node red. It's mostly drag and drop and makes the creation of complex automations fairly easy. Rob from the hookup also uses this.

[@JoshHodgson]

That’s a very complicated way of doing things! HA automatons are much more powerful than they used to be. Blueprints especially help with some complicated bits. I am moving stuff away from node red and back into native automations!

[@mortenalbring1]

My understanding was that you only really need ZigBee2mqtt if you have some sort device with attributes that doesn't expose to ZHA? I have about 40 Zigbee devices, and I have dozens of automations all set up just using ZHA and HA. A few automations listen specifically to zha_event triggers because ZHA doesn't expose all the useful attributes for some reason. I've also tried NodeRed and also not really seen the purpose. I personally do prefer to write all my automations directly in YAML, so maybe it's just me though.

[@QualityDoggo]

@@mortenalbring1 I'm currently diagnosing issues testing a remote on both and it's super frustrating. ZHA misinterprets button presses while Z2M causes rapid battery drain for the device and missing functions.

[@elbueno22222]

​@@JoshHodgson I am sorry but I have to disagree, I can tell you many of the automations I have setup in node red would be really difficult (if not impossible) to replicate and debug with the native automations. When you start using flow/global variables to store data and use it in a different automation/flow, or have automations with multiple triggers and conditions, there isn´t a way back, node red is the best (happy to heard different opinions though, as I am so happy with node red that I haven´t touched the native automations in ages)

[@chad_baldwin]

@@elbueno22222 That's because you're looking at this from a power users perspective. Paul's videos are directed towards the "average" user. Sure, people like you and I enjoy building complex automations...but the average user simply wants a light to turn on or off at a certain time, or if a motion sensor is triggered. And for that, the standard automations are more than fine.

[@thebaldfox]

Welcome to the club :) For those of you not looking to pay the subscription, check out the tailscale integration for remote access. For those of you looking to link Google home and Alexa without paying for nabu casa check out the node-red integrations (the smarthome book (blog) has various walkthroughs).

[@pesheuk]

Excellent video, I am one of those Home assistant nerds. It has been hours over years of crap code slowly getting better. But have to say as your bottom line was, when it works it's awesome! Appreciate not for the average consumer but switching to node red was huge for ease of my routines/automations/scripts etc (yes it's a pain, but once you get basics very useful)

[@samibayley5755]

Completely with you. I spent the best part of a month setting up home assistant, alexa media player, all that jazz. I've probably put 150 hours into home assistant so far, and every time I want to set up a new service or ANYTHING for that matter, it involves at least 3 hours of research just to get it working. I've found myself actually moving away from buying smart home products, as I'm petrified of the work involved to get any of it to function properly.

[@gunny6517]

Yeah, NO Home Assistant for “ME”.. Great Video and the “Head Slaps” are hilarious…. Thanks Paul…. 🇺🇸

[@ecoterrorist1402]

Vintage Paul with the "Home Assistant" & "Need more Yachts", Bravo old bean. & quick message from me "The Boi as seen the light".

[@jbaudet]

Paul, Im really proud to have people like you that stands by what they believe regardless bad comments from others. I really appreciate that. In the beginning of this video I thought you had changed your mind on HA, I thought, maybe he was pressured or influenced by others to say the opposite of what you had said about HA. With this video you just found a reliable device that can accomplished many things with HA, that's it, still, HA is not user friendly for most of us like you stated before. I'm an IT guy (old school) and to me every time I try to do something I have to google it, learn it, watch videos etc. A simple Accuweather integrations took me hours if not days to get it to work, that is just one example. You ask around these people send you a link and if you cant figured it out we are idiots. They pretend we should know Yaml, Hacs, File Editor, coding etc etc etc. That's when HA becomes unfriendly. A normal person that uses Word or Excel cannot automate things in HA, its impossible, maybe integrate very basic things etc and let me tell you not even this. It took me days when I was installing HA on my VM to install the ZiGBee dongle I wanted to use. So, the bottom line is that you are absolutely right again, HA is not there yet, it has potential and you can do thousands of things but gurus in HA needs to understand that we as users are not educated, trained or prepared to do this. Im really amazed how some youtubers tell you what to automate things, geeez. It's like buying an echo device and after you have it at home amazon tell you ok now you need to go to the amazon server and create routines there using our coding program, what ? LOL. Well thanks Paul, keep the good work, you are very funny and original. P.S. Im trying to do some alexa routines, now I need to learn Hacs, LOL, how to install it, how to use it and theeeeeennnnnnnn create the routine I want, is that friendly ? I dont think so.

[@PoisonWaffle3]

Welcome to the dark side, Paul! You're not wrong that it sometimes takes a bit of time and research to figure something out, but that's what the community is there for. There are plenty of things that work perfectly smoothly and can be set up in a few minutes, though. Adaptive Lighting is one of my new favorite integrations, only took a few minutes to set up instead of hours for the manual lighting automations I had planned out in my head. Also, you don't really need the Nabu Casa subscription. It's pretty easy to do the Duck DNS and Google Assistant things. Also, I have Tuya and other cloud integrations added to both HA and to Google Home (as opposed to only in HA and exposing the entities to Google) so I can voice control them or control/automate them in HA. Much more reliable, much less latency, and doesn't require the subscription. That said, I still have the subscription so I can voice control homebrew ESPHome and other devices, and to support Nabu Casa/HA. Now that you're on the dark side, you can start automating everything in your house! When I first started I thought voice control was the way to go, but I was wrong. The house should think for you and do what you want based on sensor input. Try moving your Amazon routines over to HA bit by bit, and you'll find that there's so much more you can do 👍

[@pakings]

DuckDNS or Tailscale/ZeroTier

[@MustangBoss1973]

I've even ditched my tuya gateway because it's crap and just use the conbee2. I keep a spare RPI with a sonoff ZigBee plus in the pits just incase. Homeassistant has come a long way, a long long way. I used to give up on it but it's now soooo good. Especially thanks to all the KZbin channels that dedicate time to it.

[@OverseerVRS]

Glad you found Mark Watt's channel; he makes some great Home Assistant videos.

[@wizdude]

I’m one of those HA nerds that runs Home Assistant OS on a virtual server in my home lab, so a conbee stick isn’t a good choice for me. However I do use a Sonoff Zigbee Gateway that I flashed with Tasmota and it provides essentially the identical Zigbee integration experience. I’ve had lots of fun with many sensors and detectors and I’ve now come to the realisation that I need to get a whole bunch of motion sensors to automate everything. It’s going to be awesome. Glad to see you are slowly converting to the dark side. HA is getting better in every release. When I first started it was all yaml setup and nothing else. Now the automations and scenes are so cool you can do so much all inside the web ui. Love your videos btw. They are hilarious. Keep it up. Cheers.

[@brandonmadigan7523]

0:25 "By the way Home Assistant is the only way that you can ensure that your system stays working even if the smart home industry goes bust tomorrow."

[@Drinkyoghurt]

Home assistant isn’t really for novices but if you’re willing to learn it then it really can’t be replaced by anything else. Glad you’ve changed your mind on home assistant.

[@dfgdfg_]

I don't think I properly smile so much as when watching Paul Hibbert muck about with home automation 😄

[@benzuniga1196]

This is the only channel where I can't miss a single sponsor... Cause a they are pure gold

[@Sebastian-xf8je]

The Alarmo add-on in home assistant allows for UI configuring an entire security alarm system. Very nice for keeping all security automations and triggers in one space.

[@PersonXes]

Yes Alarmo is what I use for my alarm system as well

[@lk229]

After using Smartthings for years, I tested Home Assistant for a couple weeks and then switched to Hubitat. I had Home Assistant working pretty much the way I wanted - that wasn't the problem. I even had it working with Google Home by setting up a developer account. That was the problem. It wasn't reliable and I kept reading about how the test account could be shut down by Google at any time. To have reliable voice assistant access, I'd have to pay for the monthly subscription which for an automation system that bills itself as free, the monthly fee seemed excessive. I figured it was worth maybe $2 a month, not $5 or whatever it's up to now. Anyway Hubitat was much easier to set up and does almost everything I want. It's all local too (except for the voice assistant obviously). With Z-Wave and Zigbee built in, it's simple to add any new device and integrate it into your automations. I know you've tested Hubitat in the past. Why did you give it up?

[@paulhibbert]

It's a long story. I got sent a homey hub and ended up implementing that for almost everything. I then fell out with the company because they started removing services AFTER people had bought it. I've never found time to switch back and now I'm checking out home assistant I'm torn. I'm hoping to checkout Hubitat again soon as part of a video anyway, so it will be interesting to see which way I go!

[@gwydionjhr]

Actually, I think you've got a great base line here. Do the exact same install, but use Hubitat. The internet LOVES comparison videos.

[@tharais]

@@paulhibbert My eyes were a bit blurry. So, I read that second sentence of your reply as "I got sent a horney hub". My anticipation of what the rest of the sentence would say was intense because you are always good for a belly laugh. Then, my eyes refocused and I realized there wasn't going to be anything funny following. 😞

[@johnpeters4214]

I have both Hubitat and HA with a Conbee II. The inbuilt Zigbee/Zwave and Google Home / Alexa integrations with Hubitat are quite compelling. Overall I find HA easier to configure especially with great resources such Mark Watt and Rob from The Hook Up. What does concern me is that community Hubitat integrations tend to be "lone wolf" developer maintained and Hubitat has banned groups of developers who were maintaining community integrations. For this reason alone I would steer people away from Hubitat.

[@lancercncs1822]

Lee, that's the thing. You don't need to pay a monthly subscription for reliable voice assistant access with Home Assistant. I had set up a duckdns URL +nginx proxy + dnsmasq for remote access w/ voice assistant capability (not easy.. but worth it IMHO!).There are also other voice assistant options that are not Google or Alexa(albeit more experimental), like Mycroft and Almond. My wife's a mac/Homekit person so I've been able to integrate Siri and use Google translate text-to-speech for that on top. No Google developer's account required.

[@jmcbri]

I have HA, love it, but your past comments are correct. It's brittle, complicated and high maintenance. We tech heads love that.

[@jmcbri]

Love it. My comment was before the good part.

[@WoottonRivers]

OH THE HOME ASSISTANT!!!! Don't plug the ConBee II directly into the Pi - use an extension cable. You only regret it

[@gmatochautube]

Every time I get really fed up with HA, I watch your videos for a dopamine fix - within minutes I'm crying laughing, feel tons better, then can take another few hours banging my head against yaml files and flaky HACS integrations. Thanks Paul!

[@ky7299]

Two things: Instead of the Conbee stick you can use a much cheaper ZigBee coordinator like for example ITEAD Zigbee USB Dongle 3.0 Plus which I am using and so far seems to work OK after I discovered that a Logitech unifying receiver plugged to my Pi was wreaking havoc via interference which I solved with a USB extension cable. I don't know about Alexa but you can integrate Google Home to Home Assistant without a paid subscription to Nabu Casa. There is a guide for this admittedly lengthy process in Home Assistant's manual pages and several videos and tutorials by other people. It is even said to support Local Fulfillment, a technique that allows Google devices to communicate with Home Assistant locally without having to go through the Google Cloud, which I haven't tested yet. PS. I really don't think coordinators like Conbee need to implement integrations for different product vendors. If the vendor has implemented the ZigBee protocol correctly then it should pair and work out of the box. Some products do have quirks (for example IKEA's 5 button remote control handles long pushes to its power button horribly) but usually there are ways to circumvent these quirks in HA and there are people who have written automation blueprints that do that which you just import.

[@bikerchrisukk]

Great video Paul! I bought a Pi 3 B+ around 4 months ago, fiddled with it and only use it for basic functions these days. I'm sure I'll give it another go once I've earned enough food for next winter! Like you say, it's about time spent learning/editing vs actual time saved. If I spent 6 hours on something, I sort of want to save that amount of time over a year...and it can be a close one at times! I'd like to support HA one day I'm sure, as then it'll only get better. Keep up the good work! 👍

[@jmr]

They still have some work to do...... but 6 months is 6 years in HomeAssistant time! They have been moving fast! 👏👏👏 Great job Home Assistant team!

[@veenlo]

6:16 - Thought you’d sneak in the Riker and No one would notice!! 🤣🤣🤣

[@Magnous06]

Great video as always, you’re truly my favorite channel on KZbin. About sending commands to your Home Assistant while away from your local wifi: you can also do this if you setup a VPN and have your phone connected to said VPN - no subscriptions required. I probably just reinforced your assertion that Home Assistant is overly complicated, but there are devices that make VPNs relatively simple (I use a Firewalla Gold, but there are probably others). This is coming from a guy that is scared by Rob’s NodeRed videos.

[@craigw4644]

Paul, just don't forget to back up the HA before upgrading and you'll be fine. Might want to setup automatic backups to your GoogleDrive.

[@EsotericArctos]

I think there are easier ways to do Amazon Routines coming up in future updates. Adding Zigbee, particularly Conbee / deConz, and a ZWave stick to Home Assistant, you really do have a game changing local solution. It is still a tinkerer solution, and it is not, and never will be ,straight forward, but it is good when you can get it working.

[@michaelowens3477]

Long time viewer, first time caller. I am so excited to see more HA content in the future. I'm a long time Hubitat user, but I have Tuya, Kasa, myQ, Govee, Aqara, and GH things in my house. Currently running HA in a docker, but considering running stand-alone on a pi and eliminating the Hubitat (I have a VERY old version). With this dongle, it would get about 60% of my Hubitat things. The only problem is the other 40% of my Hubitat is Zed Wave (see what I did there, for you blokes across the pond)!

[@speedytweedy123]

Loved the “word from the sponsor” this week absolutely funny, made my day.

[@SmartHomeAF]

Hey Paul, hate to break it to you but you don’t need any template sensors, or input Boolean’s to make home assistant talk to HA. If you use hacs, which is like an unapproved App Store for home assistant, you can add the Alexa media player integration and you can trigger a routine directly from an automation. If you want I can walk you through it sometime.

[@KennethsTeknik]

You are absolutely right in a lot of you arguments, being a HA user and youtuber, it is not always simple to use. But the whole point is that you can take it in steps, get the integrations first, and then after a while get the other stuff going. I think the voice messages are much easier in Google btw. that just works. Yeah, the subscription, hmmm, well it's the income for the software development, and you get the easy integrations, but yeah, it's still a subscription, good work in taking another look, and Rob, he is a god-sent!

[@roberthernandez7564]

About lost it at the Philips gag joke. Flippin hysterical! Great work paul!

[@SlackerLabs]

Another awesome video! And totally not where I was expecting it to go. But the ability to trigger amazon routines is awesome and opens the world to a lot of devices. Always love your perspective of Home Assistant...because sometimes its hard for me to remember back when I was starting out.

[@MrTHX11]

This was like watching a video made about my experience. I've had a few dabbles in HA over the years. Had a conbee 2 since around September too, then I went to Ikea and bought a bunch of random stop and had similar levels of amazement at hose everything just came together. I'm staying with it this time around.

[@pfunkPT]

Finally! Home assistant! Home assistant! Your tutorial for remote home assistant without nabu casa would be really funny, probably... cheers mate!

[@grahamjones7814]

Thanks Paul, I tried Home Assistant because of this and I'm glad I did, I accidentally turned off my router via a smart switch (LightwaveRF) and with home assistant, was able to turn it back on (plug behind TV so hard to get to). I also have some Tuya items which I can not link to Smartthings, so will be buying the Conbee Stick. Once again, thanks.

[@HenningAndersen]

I haven't figured out the HA automations, i use three node red plugin for everything. It's very intuitive and everything is paid out graphically with nodes connected by "wires".. it's a really good upgrade for HA!

[@Chris173972]

Finally!! HOME ASSISTANT!! But yeah, yaml is a learning curve, not going to lie, but they seem to relying upon it less and less so not too worry. Mark is a great guy with tutorials. Used him to guide through things in the past 😊

[@wesleymartin4432]

Hey! The Conbee stick looks great, and thanks for looking into HA more, I'm looking forward to it!! For anyone out there who sees the conbee stick and thinks "z-wave?" I'd recommend the HUSBZB-1. Its a little more expensive, but worth it if you have both protocols around.

[@edwardsoares3838]

In fact, I've seen no difference between using a conbee or nortek with zha. Now, using the nortek with zha and conbee with z2mqtt.

[@davebareham1075]

Oh and before I forget - make sure you take backups of your HA configuration. I take one daily at 5am. Very helpful when I screw it up and need to go back!

[@TheHellis]

And make sure the backups are NOT local. Use Google drive backup or something like it or you have no backup at all.

[@TabakMan]

Hey there, just to point out that the Conbee 2 stick is just the Zigbee sniffer, it sure is the best that I know about but this can be achieved with any Zigbee radio sniffer. With that said I want to correct something that Paul said - Conbee didn't code the integration, it is the other way around -> Home Assistant made ZHA. There are other integrations for zigbee that work with HA but they are not plug and play and you need to install and configure additional addons. deCONZ -> developed by the Conbee creators zigbee2mqtt -> my personal favorite

[@SAdams1980]

Hi Paul, thanks for these video's they are really helping me. Just got all my smart home items out of the loft, after the wife relented and realised the money and time the automations will save in the long run. Just setup Home Assistant with the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and it is working brilliantly. Just need a tablet to stick on the wall now, with it on.

[@xescure]

You can set up a Roborock vacuum in Home Assistant, but you will have to do it through the Xiaomi Home app. It requires some tinkering, but it's way easier than a few years ago

[@trickk2754]

Hey Paul, just throwing IoBroker in the room. I use it for my smarthome. In my opinion IoBroker > HomeAssistant. In regards to control your smarthome when away, just use a VPN connection.

[@alexanderpasnl]

Your comment on 08:10 made me laugh out loud so hard that I think my downstairs neighbour has a whiplash now.

[@tombloemker9434]

I still have not resolved the presence issue in home assistant. I'd love to see you explain that experience or recommend a video that spells it out. I've watch a number of other videos and have not has success. Help a brother out! Thanks for the humor! You had me in stitches!

[@jeremystrong3161]

First time I’ve not skipped through the paid advertising bit of a KZbin video… absolutely hilarious! 😂

[@ipon70]

I agree with you on home assistant. I have spent over a month trying to get a docker version of home assistant running on my qnap. It’s not that it doesn’t run, it’s just that nothing works right or installs. The whole system is frustrating. I have following 4 different guides called “simple” and still to this day it doesn’t work. Great video.

[@Theguitarguy972]

Another thing you can look at is HACS… it’s an unofficial library for integrations that can be added to home assistant. I’ve found a few useful things there that didn’t have a native integration.

[@qwarlockz8017]

Yet another great vid. Thanks! I will def pick that up. By the by... you CAN control Home Assistant from your phone from anywhere.. all you need is a vpn client on your phone and run the server on your network. Then when you activate the vpn... you are pretty much local. It just works!

[@marcoontingco5370]

this is why i love Paul, he happily endorsed other youtubers that he thinks could help the public. and he's hilarious 🤣. been wanting to try home assistant but it scares the sht out of me.

[@SamPhoenix_]

Not all zigbee sticks are Plug-and-play with HA, however the Sonoff Zigbee sticks also are and about half the price of Conbee. There is supposedly also a way to trigger alexa routines via Alexa Media Player (a custom integration) but I have not tried - AMP also allows you to (fairly) easily get Alexa to say things by running a service. I would highly reccommend installing HACS (you do have to do a little file editing but its mostly drag and drop) then you can install custom integrations with one click & add even more devices to HA

[@TrophysoftCom]

You shouldn't use HA's built-in automations. You should use the Node Red addon. It does have an initial learning curve but once you learn to use it you'll absolutely love it.

[@smitty9398]

Hey Paul... I would like to hear more about Hubitat. I think it falls in-between big box consumer solutions like Alexa and deep dive need to have lots of time on your hands, source your own hardware solutions, like Home Assistant. What I liked about Hubitat is that you buy the hardware that already has the radios built in as well as the system software already loaded. From there you add your customizations. No, it is not turnkey like Alexa, but it is not so complex where you seem to be starting from scratch. Like in many cases stuff that is more powerful it is going to have a steeper learning curve, but it also has a greater payoff. I think Hubitat fits in the middle and the time you put into it is worth the effort. As I have worked with this hub the more I have come to realize just how powerful this platform is. Just putting out a plug for Hubitat. I do not see as much buzz about this product as I see for the other two. So, hoping to make some noise about it.

[@daiharder]

I've just got one of these conbee sticks too, works great with my Hive Motion and Door sensors. In my case I got it the Hive sensors were just rubbish at reporting states to Home Assistant. Now they're local, their state is instant and allowed me to use my existing kit without having to rely on Hive. Just need to see what else works

[@robonions]

I've gone down the rabbit hole thanks to you and now can't get enough of input booleans and yaml files.

[@corbosman]

I used to use the Conbee, but imo the SonOFF Zigbee Wifi Bridge is a much better alternative due to the fact you can put it anywhere you want for optimal coverage, or even put multiple bridges around your house.

[@MKA_NET]

My home didn't get smart until I started using Home Assistant. Warning, it can get very addicting, especially if you have OCD.

[@johnelliott9823]

It all started with low grade stuff... My church bought me a smart doorbell for services rendered... Then I stumbled across Paul Hibbert and learned about Alexa, and then Home Assistant. Working in the IT space, I knew I'd better go with Home Assistant, or be doomed to mockery from the other guys on my team who might also be into home automation (there are three) for going with straight consumer goods instead of something hackable and not too user friendly. And indeed, it has been a worthwhile endeavour - my sys admin skills got a good workout. I find automation easier with node-red added on top of home assistant, as you get a nice visual overview of how all the bits relate. Node-Red can unify all the Alexa stuff and the home assistant stuff under one "pane of glass" if you will. The subscription is not strictly necessary, but I figured it sustains development and I frankly can't be arsed to bother with the workaround. PS - raspberry Pi is not strictly necessary - I started with a virtual machine on Windows, now I use a mini-PC with the OS replaced with Home Assistant OS - actually cheaper than a raspberry Pi (ymmv)

[@healeydave]

The reason people have been banging on about Home Assistant all this time is because once you see the light and commit, you know that you WILL be able to control everything in your smart home. Some stuff will be easy, some stuff might be harder but there will be a way, where-as other solutions might easy for one thing but impossible for others. As more and more HA Integrations and Add-Ons come along, some of those things that used to be hard become seamless or even automatic! I think it's already got to the point now, that if a device is good, it will make it into Home Assistant with ease. If it doesn't, it probably wasn't worth it in the first place, there's likely a better alternative out there!!

[@VolgClawtooth]

Methinks you missed OpenHAB.. Open source Home Automation... It does the same kind of things Home Assistant does, vendor agnostic, Open source and cloud independent (although it supports cloud connectivity as well)

[@wildpig9532]

Thank you so much for telling the truth about Home Assistant. Never a truer word has been said about HA. Maybe if you keep highlighting the the issues someone at HA will do something about improving the use ability of the system. Keep up the great work

[@KF5AIB]

I can’t wait for the Alexa routine tutorial! I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my Jasco MyTouch Smart WiFi plug that doesn’t work in Home Assistant but works with alexa to work with home assistant. Thanks Paul!

[@mihairachita174]

You can also use an sonoff zigbee CC2531 pre-flashed usb domgle from ali express 4-5£ /amazon 10£ / ebay 7£. For me is working great without any problems. I'm using ikea products,philips hue, tp link, and plenty of sonoff products. Still learning but work great for me.

[@magic7s]

I consider myself in the Super Nerd category, but gave up on Home Assistant the first time, going with Homebridge for Apple. It’s like a super simple version of HA and makes everything show up in HomeKit. You can even integrate with Alexa and trigger routines there if necessary. I am trying out HA again on a new house. We’ll see how that goes.

[@cnjdata]

Home assistant nerd here. Best video ever. 😍 Happy you found the local zigbee function.

[@Sparky_D]

Instead of creating your own automations for an alarm system you should look at Alarmo (Home Assistant custom integration). It makes it all very easy.

[@brianredmond7891]

Just an FYI. There are much easier ways of integrating Alexa with Home Assistant (that I’ve found via my frustrations). The Alexa Skill in Node Red allows you to receive input from Her to trigger events and a new service called Voice Monkey allows you to trigger events (from Node Red) in Alexa as if you just told her to say or do something. You should check them out now that you’re becoming a “convert.” 😜 Love your videos!

[@alfworks]

So I recently "upgraded" my Conbee 2 stick for Sonoff Zigbee Dongle V2... first couple of days it was working fine, but the more time went on, the Zigbee network was worse and worse - eventually making me switch back to good old Conbee 2.... now everything works again just fine. So much about "upgrading"

[@SpicyOliv]

The Jerry's Final Thought alone was worth the watch of this video.

[@psynchro]

All these comments on how nice it is he's seen the light and no one going to mention how effective that sponsored advert was?? Loved the cameo and thanks for the laugh.

[@Larstronomy]

Paul, first of all happy to see you give Home Assistant another try, second of all, connecting your Voice Assistant isn't that hard, I'm absolutely not a huge nerd but following their documentation on the website it was about 30 minutes of work. Definitely don't need the subscription!

[@joelfrojmowicz]

Paul, welcome back to Home Assistant,....AGAIN ! Hehehe, just enjoy. Regarding the ConbeeII, you should use it with an extension cable!! Now you're ready for the next step: Just try NodeRed for your automations instead of using the YAML. HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT, HOME ASSISTANT!!

[@RichHeimlich]

We run on Home Assistant at my house and I both love it and hate it. It's great once you get it going, but getting there was a slog and keeping it there is just as complicated. I just changed phones, for example, and it look over an hour to figure out how to update HA to get my presence sense working again. Every device more or less seems to need special care and scripting to make work. Almost nothing is just simply plug and play, especially if you want to do anything byond the basics. If you've got the time and the patience, it's a great solution. If you're not an engineer or programmer, be prepared for lots of head scratching.

[@360theosiris]

Really? I would say most things ARE plug and play and just require some clicks in a fairly intuitive UI. Same with keeping it running and updates.. No developer or engineering skills required here. :) Yes, some things are a bit more complicated. Eg, I didn't just switch phones but went from Android to iPhone and it took me 20 mins to set all my stuff back up, since some things behave differently in iOS.. In the end it was quite easy, documentation is usually very clear and once you begin to understand how some aspects work, alot of other things gets easier as well.. Disclaimer: I am a software engineer.. :)

[@OPB682]

Paul. You might want to look at sonoff dongle 3 and zigbee2mqtt. I have just changed over from conbee to sonoff/zigbee2mqtt. I changed cos the conbee II just can't handle the number of devices (I'm up at 120+) It is a bit of a bend over n take a home assistant "pelvic thrust" to get it working but in the long run it won't piss u off as much as a full conbee stick does by doing a face first "pelvic thrust" I am a HA fan and I truly love watching your videos - keep doing what you're doing 🤪

[@leesouthworth]

Slightly small bit of advice, put any Zigbee or Z-wave transmitter on a USB extension cable. I've had interference issues with them plugged directly into computers.

[@hydeapd]

Thanks Paul, I have a rasburry Pi running home assistant and I update it every month in the hope that one day an update will make it as easy to use as she who should not be named. I will try the combi stick and see if that helps. Thanks for the research 😀

[@lococruzn]

Thank you, Paul, I fell out of my chair and hurt my knee laughing at your video, you're a riot.

[@robertbrennan4391]

At last! One huge tip. Beware due an industry wide well known interference problem with USB3, separate the Conbee stick with a good USB cable. I found this out the hard way after seeing ZigBee devices suddenly disappearing from the network.

[@filipsvoboda7712]

Living with Homeassist is like training a dog. Just when you think it's listening perfectly, it chews up your shoes and shits on the carpet. But when you're most upset with him, he'll come to you, lay his head on your lap and bring you ZHA integration. Who would be mad at him then? However, you never know when he's gonna snap and stop listening. What I haven't heard mentioned is the deCONZ addon , which is the way to update the Firmware in that USB thing. (Among other things) and the very useful use of a USB extension cable to reduce interference and improve Zigbee performance. Otherwise, the Sonoff USB Zigbee 3.0 Plus adds just as well to HA, which has a slightly better price but doesn't have deCONZ. Thanks for the video, I had fun.

[@paulhibbert]

I knew what I was talking about in this one then? 😂

[@filipsvoboda7712]

@@paulhibbert You've described the advanced user experience well this time. In a funny and useful way for most people. Unfortunately, you made me remember that I have to set up automation for Alarm on HA in the near future. :( Good thing there is Blueprint. Hopefully it will save me a bit.

[@paulhibbert]

Good luck mate!

[@ericsantana7180]

Is there any other easy way to update firmware or is is that the only way? I ask because I'm about to start working on keeping my conbee stick remote from my HA implementation on an Rpi where I'll also be running Rhasspy to allow me to get more centeralized zigbee (I only have a few and my main HA machine is hidden in the basement for approval purposes) and also setup voice where i need it to get rid of she who shall not be named.....

[@TheCelticbeast]

I'll stop teabagging the food processor and buy a manscape trimmer after the hilarious word from your sponsor.

[@GeorgeLeite]

Even this OpenHab user is enjoying this HA content. One of my favorite channels.

[@maxtester8824]

You are right. Home assistant is really good! And yes, you are right as well regarding the needed nerdiness to cut all corners in it. And that is what we will have to accept for now and for sure into the foreseeable future. Consumer ready products will ALWAYS be talking home because there lies so much money to earn. And so we will have to nerd up and dig a little bit in yaml-files or .items, .rules, .things and what not in openhab (which is a good open source platform as well). As always, Paul, I enjoyed your video. Good job, mate!

[@rychei5393]

Would LOVE a tutorial from you, because you are right, it seems complicated, and I really really need it dumbed down.

[@ChazzerB31491]

Another super fair critique of Home Assistant. Well done. It's super powerful, yet can be super confusing. Thankfully, there is a large community that tends to be rather helpful. Looking forward to future videos. Excellent job.

[@DerekHolmes]

I'm glad you're going to check out home assistant integration capability going forward. It is probably worth also adding a zwave stick to enable z wave devices.

[@rapidrick]

Yep I've actually been using ring contact sensors for garage door and the gate. Surprisingly tricky to get good quality outdoor ones but the ring ones have been flawless and connected to my z stick like any other z wave device

[@kingpuppet5881]

I laughed so hard at the man skaped advert, you could see a pube on the blade. Brilliant lol

[@simonmills2375]

Mate, not sure what you were on about but the advert was bloody brilliant

[@incywincy2k]

Curious how this affects firmware updates before people go throwing their IKEA, Aldi and hue hubs in the bin. Do you still need to re pair all these devices to the manufacturer hubs for periodic updates or can home assistant provide device updates?

[@jyvben1520]

if it works why would you need to update, better security might be the only reason ... like if an attack on your home network could happen thru the "bad" device (war driving ?), but the management network should be separate from your main network ... a pfsense device as the main router should help that division.

[@thierry3610]

Entertaining as always Paul, and now you're seeing the light as well 😂 Also can't go wrong with Rob on your side!!

[@djgigabit]

The Alamo HA integration is the best saves a you building an alarm from scratch and has amazing features, worth a try you won’t turn back!

[@waynenocton]

I love Home Assistant, BUT, any time I have a specific problem and ask for help on Discord, the people always just paste a link to the help page that I already read and didn’t understand 100 times lol, which doesn’t really help at all.