Zigbee?

[BlueRidgeDog]

I see HS has a zwave and zigbee combined USB for HS4. For those running HS4 under Linux, does it support Zigbee natively so you don't need deCONZ?

[Rupp]

Here's a link with information on the new Zigbee plugin and a sampling of devices that have been tested.
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/hs4-products/hs4-plugins/lighting-primary-technology-plug-ins-aa/zigbee-homeseer-aa/1374764-anyone-up-for-zigbee-testing

[wkearney99]

I want to monitor the power consumption by the AC adapters for some motorized scooters. I'm looking find out when the scooters have reached full enough charge to where they're not pulling additional wattage. And to then programmatically tell the switch controlling them to turn off.

Turning them on will be handled by voice control, as in "Alexa, turn on scooter chargers". That or a daily scheduled event, followed by some wattage checking logic.

I wrestled with a similar idea some years ago with Z-Wave devices and never really met with the kind of reliability I wanted.

I'm in the US and these are wall voltage chargers.

I'm debating whether or not I want to monitor them individually or several all together. Right now I have them all being controlled by a Lutron appliance device, which is expensive and doesn't have power monitoring.

The goal here isn't detailed monitoring or tracking of consumption, rather to avoid them being charged constantly. I have done this in the the past successfully with work shop nicad battery packs by simply using a timed interval. The higher capacity of these makes that less than optimal.

Chargers malfunction, battery management systems as well, so I want to avoid frying the battery packs by only charging for as long as they need.

So my question is which plug-in zigbee power monitoring switch is the least tedious to work with?

[ewkearns]

Here's a link with information on the new Zigbee plugin and a sampling of devices that have been tested.
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/de...zigbee-testing

I'm really becoming interested in this... I have a LOT of questions, but before I decrease the signal to noise ratio, I'd like to do as much self-help as possible. To that end, the above link is a dead link. Can you fix that?

PS
There is virtually nothing "Zigbee" on the HS website, as well.

[dbrunt]

I'm really becoming interested in this... I have a LOT of questions, but before I decrease the signal to noise ratio, I'd like to do as much self-help as possible. To that end, the above link is a dead link. Can you fix that?

PS
There is virtually nothing "Zigbee" on the HS website, as well.

I found the correct link... https://forums.../forum/hs4-products/hs4-plugins/lighting-primary-technology-plug-ins-aa/.../1374764-anyone-up-for-zigbee-testing

[Michael McSharry]

Zigbee and Zwave are similiar technologies with different strengths. For battery powered devices Zigbee is the best choice. Zwave was first to market so typically has a wider choice of devices. Since Zwave is proprietary it will come at a higher cost to pay the royalties.

Interfacing Zigbee has multiple choices. The last available is the HS dongle/plugin and is just starting out so has the lowest level of maturity and the fewest number of devices supported.

Dresden (Germany) (https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/fu...re/deconz.html) has been around the longest with the DConz and related contributions. JowiHue is the 3rd-party plugin that has adopted this as the integration mechanism with Conbee and Raspbee as the interface hardware.

Zigbee2MQTT (https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/) is a vibrant community project that has the largest advertised number of supported devices. Being community supported it has a flavor of DIY. 3rd party mcsMQTT is the HS plugin that supports it.

Prior to the HST, Hubitat Elevation (https://hubitat.com/) introduced a product that somewhat competes with HS itself and uses the same Zigbee hardware interface selected by HST. It has a fast growing device support by both the principles and the community. It has the lowest level of user involvement for integration. mcsHubitat is the 3rd party plugin that supports this hub.

Another competing technology is WiFi. It wins the cost and breath of product availability battle. So if looking for a use-case solution rather than a technology adoption then this should be considered. Usually these are based upon Cloud operation, but can be altered for local control. Some also provide local control from the factory.

[racerfern]

I personally have a lot of zigbee sensors throughout the house with most tied in to z-wave devices via event control. I use JowiHue (raspbee) which is probably the best of both worlds with great functions and easy to use.

It's obvious now that HS4 is becoming more a generalized HA system that supports many different types of devices. I still wonder how long it will be before HS sheds the z-wave plug-in so that someone else can bring it up to the newest standards.

[ewkearns]

Thanks for the above responses, they have been very helpful.

I have held Zigbee at arm's length for some time, having understood that it was a loosely defined specification whose sundry iterations may or may not play well with each other. This seems to at least define what will and won't work with HS. I also grit my teeth every time I buy a Z-Wave device knowing that 1/2 or more of the cost of the item is the Z-Wave logo, which is little more than blue sky.

So beginning my journey, it appears that the Nortek HUSBZB-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave Plus USB Interface is one of two interfaces that will work with HS (haven't figured out what the other one is). That appears to be a dual radio, which for all of us with existing z-wave networks might be unnecessary or unwanted duplication. How does one deal with adding this interface if all that is desired is Zigbee? Will HS4 make the installation of drivers less of a goat rope?

[racerfern]

I personally have two z-nets (one at either end of the house), the zigbee (zigbee on a Rpi3) controller and the Philips Hue hub at one end of the house and the SmartThings in the attic for now.

FYI zigbee battery life is beyond excellent. A 2032 battery made it through the winter on two sensors that are outdoors and most of the devices are tiny and unobtrusive. To me that's impressive.

I personally would use the raspbee along with JowiHue since the HS4 zigbee PI alson with HUSBZB will probably not support the myriad of devices now available. Yes, you're buying another PI but IMO it's well worth it. You can buy the raspbee (now the Phoscon raspbeeII ?)and an RPi3 on Amazon. No need for an RPi4.

[NC-Lou]

Hi, Does anyone know if the HS4 Zigbee Plugin work with the Smartthings Multipurpose Sensor. I have a bunch of these sensors and I was hoping to use them with the new HS4 Zigbee plugin.

Thanks

[dbrunt]

See https://helpdesk.homeseer.com/articl...zigbee-devices

[sparks]

See https://helpdesk.homeseer.com/articl...zigbee-devices

How do we get devices added to the supported list?

[Crumpy]

Hi,

So it appears that in order to use the new zigbee functionality built into HS4, I need to purchase this: Nortek HUSBZB-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave Plus USB

Which isn't much use if you live in many countries which use a different z-wave frequency to the US. I can't find any alternative solution on the Homeseer site for non-US frequency z-wave countries.

So:

• Is there an Australian z-wave version (921.42MHz) available, and if so from where?
• Is this device the only way to get zigbee working on the HS4 built-in zigbee? Is there another dongle that works?
• Is there a separate zigbee dongle I could use (since I already have an AU frequency z-wave dongle)?

In the absence of there being a viable solution to the frequency issue, it strikes me that this is a pretty poor solution to the provision of zigbee for HS4, and shouldn't be advertised as providing zigbee when in fact it is available only in limited jurisdictions.

Thanks,

Dave

[Crumpy]

Thanks. I have had a bit of a look at the Sonoff devices. The most interesting one I have played with is the Sonoff zigbee Basic, which I can connect to HS4 with JowiHue, and control it.

Don't want to go down the MQTT route if I can avoid it - don't have the time to commit to learning it unfortunately..... Have loaded Tasmoto to one Sonoff switch, so might get back to having another look at it.

Don't want to go down the MQTT route if I can avoid it - don't have the time to commit to learning it unfortunately..... Have loaded Tasmoto to one Sonoff switch, so might get back to having another look at it.

There is indeed some learning involved for MQTT/Tasmota. Not sure what device types you are controlling with Zigbee and the investment already made but you could also look into Wifi devices, you wouldn't have to worry about RF frequencies.. everything I have here is deployed via Tasmota, mainly Wifi. Running perfectly and everything can be customized.

[Crumpy]

One of the upsides to the zigbee integration is cost. Whilst there are not the cheap Sonoff switches, there are lots of cheap, reliable, robust sensors and switches, which are really useful as input devices for my HS54 system, which has lots of controllable z-wave outputs (lights, coffee machine etc...).

Sonoff are bringing out more zigbee devices. I have a couple on order to have a play. I suspect they probably are not quite up to the high quality of the Xiaomi / Aqara devices, which can be purchased for a couple of bucks more. I'll be interested to see what additional zigbee devices Sonoff brin gout.

[ewkearns]

I was pretty excited to learn that HS4 would support Zigbee. However, a subsequent investigation led me to the point that only the "Nortek HUSBZB-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave Plus USB Hub." Now, this may be a workable solution for some but my HS4 Server Computer is not in a central location and I have hardwired to the Z-Net, which IS centrally located. I'm not excited about the need for a powered USB Extension Cable.

So, I queried HS Tech Support and they knew of no plans to incorporate any other Zigbee hub. Support said, "I would recommend asking about this via our message board as there are users integrating other hubs with HS to get this functionality."

So..... here I am! Anybody? Any path to a Zigbee Hub that could be remoted from the HSx Server?

[ewkearns]

Please don't take this personally or as a knock in any way. I'm truly amazed at what can be done technologically nowadays.

But what about the non-nerds and boomers in this forum? And If HS4 is geared to the KISS group what are they to do? I realize what I just typed applies to nearly every digital product and on almost every forum across the internet.

<Snip>

I think we need to realize that the non-nerds and the NON-boomers apply here as well. My son is a millennial, so he knows his way around computers pretty well, and several of his friends are IT-gurus, but NONE of them want to spend the inordinate hours I have spent getting my system going with a healthy WAF and depth of utility. They want Amazon/Google level of plug and play and look at HS (so do the commercial folks I've tried to interest) as a sort of Amateur Radio Operator, where the journey supersedes the end result. IMHO, the winner of the Home Automation Wars will be the entity that offers the best combination of plug-n-play and guru level configurability.

PS
Most of them have HA, but they spent their money on Google or Amazon. They love what I can do, but don't want to turn the enterprise into another day job.

[mik3]

I think we need to realize that the non-nerds and the NON-boomers apply here as well. My son is a millennial, so he knows his way around computers pretty well, and several of his friends are IT-gurus, but NONE of them want to spend the inordinate hours I have spent getting my system going with a healthy WAF and depth of utility. They want Amazon/Google level of plug and play and look at HS (so do the commercial folks I've tried to interest) as a sort of Amateur Radio Operator, where the journey supersedes the end result. IMHO, the winner of the Home Automation Wars will be the entity that offers the best combination of plug-n-play and guru level configurability.

PS
Most of them have HA, but they spent their money on Google or Amazon. They love what I can do, but don't want to turn the enterprise into another day job.

This argument can be had for any advance home automation system. Pretty much everything outside of Google and Amazon, which is technically voice control and not automation.

[ewkearns]

This argument can be had for any advance home automation system. Pretty much everything outside of Google and Amazon, which is technically voice control and not automation.

There is no point in trivializing this issue by noting that the logical argument could be had on any advanced automation system. It could be had on anything, at all, that is designed to achieve a particular goal, so that argument is really a moot point.

The point is that the consumer is having this argument with him or her self every time they face a purchase. What home automation software and hardware engineers need to realize (and act accordingly) is thatusability and salability go hand-in-hand. If insufficient end users are able to achieve their desired objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction, in a reasonable amount of time and effort, one has the Home Automation equivalent of an Edsel. People will vote with their feet. There are a LOT of HA companies on the scrap heap...