Newbie to HA in Australia: where to buy HA Green and ZBT-1 dongle | Home Assistant | Page 1

astral orchid Dec 31, 2024, 12:05 AM

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Hi everyone, I'm into the Home Assistant rabbit hole the last few weeks, and finally preparing to buy a Home Assistant Green with Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 dongle.

Does anyone have any experience buying them in Australia? there are a couple of websites (smarthome.com.au and smartguys.com.au) , but I can hardly find anything on them (reviews, social media posts, etc.), which makes me uneasy to buy from them

Was hoping someone could share any experience or recommendation they have for me to get my hands on the hardware

Thanks!

bitter aspen Dec 31, 2024, 12:21 AM

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I can't provide any feedback on specific vendors in Australia as I live elsewhere - but something to consider is to look for alternate products which might be sold by vendors/stores you're more familiar with. You can run HAOS on standard PC hardware, so many folks here recommend using a mini PC or refurbished office PC. Also consider other Zigbee dongles which use the same chipset as the ZBT-1 - e.g. the SMLIGHT SLZB-07 or Sonoff ZBDongle-E work well (firmware for those is available here: https://darkxst.github.io/silabs-firmware-builder/ )

astral orchid Dec 31, 2024, 12:30 AM

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bitter aspen I can't provide any feedback on specific vendors in Australia as I live elsewher...

Thank you! I'll look up the alternative dongles you mentioned.

The reason why I listed those two was because they were listed on the HA website, and seems to be easy enough for a beginner like me to set up as a plug and play (with OS installation). Plus the HA Green looks really compact which makes it easy to store 😁

bitter aspen Dec 31, 2024, 12:33 AM

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yeah - a benefit to starting with PC hardware is that many enthusiasts here have a spare pc they can use for it (or even a virtual machine on some other computer). If you have something like that, you might be able to try out HA without needing to get new hardware at all.

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(other than the zigbee dongle of course, but that can be moved to a different system later)

astral orchid Dec 31, 2024, 12:42 AM

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bitter aspen yeah - a benefit to starting with PC hardware is that many enthusiasts here have...

Yeah unfortunately I don't have any spare PC hardware. Also another reason why I was looking at the HA Green.

May I ask which vendor you've used if any? They might ship to Australia and if the difference is negligible I might do that for a peace of mind

bitter aspen Dec 31, 2024, 12:44 AM

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I bought my SLZB-07 directly from the smartlight store: https://smartlight.me/smart-home-devices/zigbee-devices/slzb-07-zigbee-usb-adapter-en (which ships mostly worldwide); I don't have any recommendations for HA-branded devices.

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I should note that https://smartguys.com.au/ is the site that home assistant's own page links to for people who want shipping to australia

#Newbie to HA in Australia: where to buy HA Green and ZBT-1 dongle