Looking for recommendations for a zigbee dongle/hub.

[real harness]

I am looking for a recommendation for zigbee dongle/hub to connect to my HA. Things I am looking for are wide range of device support good signal range and everything else as good as possible.

Looking around the internet I have 2 devices in mind, the HA SkyConnect and Sonoff ZB dongle.

Can't decide which to go with as price is pretty similar for both of these.

[magic swan]

I recommend the SLZB-O6(M). It can be used via ethernet (no need to plug into the server, great for virtualization or when server is in a bad place), USB, WiFi (but don't) and supports PoE.
It also has a web interface with information, firmware updater, etc

[real harness]

This particular device doesn't seem to be available in my country.

I did saw one store selling but it 2-3 times over the price of the sonoff and skyconnect

is there benefits in terms of performance and device support?

[magic swan]

No. Probably not. Buy it on aliexpress.

[real harness]

could you share a link for aliexpress?

[magic swan]

They have links here: https://smlight.tech/product/slzb-06/

[real harness]

both aliexpress link from their page says the product cannot be shipped to my specified address

[magic swan]

:<

[fossil anchor]

A generic advice: “Stay within the herd and be protected by numbers” and “if it’s good enough for most, it probably is good enough for you”.
If you want to discover, experience and tinker (and possible fail) go for the most esoteric option.
The dongle/hub is an essential port of all your devices. If it does not work optimally, all your will not work optimally.

[real harness]

can you repeat that in plain english please?

I don't want to tinker, but I do like to tinker every now then, perhaps I will tinker with it (software tinkering only, no hardware stuff)

[real harness]

😦

[tardy juniper]

I had a Sonoff dongle before moving to the SLZB-06 and it is a solid device as long as you can position it well and have other routers in the mesh

Just follow the recommendations and use a USB extension cable and a USB 2.0 port to isolate it from your HA machine's noise and you should be fine

[real harness]

I currently am running HA in a VM and probably have to connect to my server. But I had another question about RaspberryPi or similar devices for using HA. So I can put the Pi near my router connected via ethernet.

I also will buy Rpi or any similar SBCs. But not sure about what is good for running HA.

ATM the VM my HA is running in has 2 cores and 8GB RAM but at most I see it using, I'd say 4GB.

There is no reason for switching my install of HA to a SBC other than I just want to run it on a separate device rather than a VM and nothing else.

[magic swan]

Here are some of my personal reasons against a SBC: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/6ee130240bdc6a7fed2d5224616544a0
4GB is enough for most people's HAOS instance.

[real harness]

Thanks. I am aware of most of the limitations with SBCs. I already have couple pi zero 2 that I use as my door cam. I am not going to virtualize HA on Pi, I'll install it directly on it and it will be connected via the power adapter and ethernet.

I think it would be OK for me. In any case I do backups regularly, might even setup a script to copy the backups from HA on SBC to my NAS for extra precaution.

[real harness]

You think there is a particular RPi you would recommend? like does it have to be 4 or would 3 work as well?

[magic swan]

I cannot really recommend any of them, no. If you insist then the pi 5 with a NVMe SSD.

[real harness]

But you recommend the Sonoff zigbee dongle? as the smlight one is not available in my region?

[magic swan]

I used the Sonoff P before and it worked fine for me. The main reason I switched to the SLZB-06 was because I needed a coordinator that is not bound to a specific machine because I wanted to cluster. Apparently some batches have have a NVRAM issue but I haven't experienced it myself. You can also buy a ZBT-1 and suppport Nabu Casa. Both ZHA and Z2M have lists with other supported adapters.

[magic swan]

But to actually answer the question, a pi 3 will work for a basic HA install. It has very little memory though so don't expect to be able to run any interesting addons.

[real harness]

I have a lot of addons installed ATM and I do intent to add more in future.

[magic swan]

Please install the glances addon and check how much memory you need.

[real harness]

glances the htop like thing?

[magic swan]

Yes. You can also check in the hardware settings but this is more detailed.

[tawdry surge]

Hardware

Open your Home Assistant instance and show hardware information

[real harness]

one sec..

its showing 4GB inside HA because I use balloon memory.

[magic swan]

Is your node above 80% memory usage or was the VM just recently started?

[real harness]

What do you mean? you can see in proxmox screenshot uptime is 5 days.

where do you see 80% mem usage?

[magic swan]

I don't, I'm asking.

[real harness]

This particular node that HA is running on, yes the mem is 80% or so used ATM.

I am going to get 2 new nodes soon and mem and hdd issue should be fixed then.

[magic swan]

Ah, that explains it. At 80% ballooning starts. I'd recommend at least 4G.

[real harness]

Oh!

so you mean at 80 things start to shrink or expand as needed?

[magic swan]

Yes, memory from your VM will be removed up to the minimum defined until the hist is below 80% again: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/virtio-balloon/
KSM also only starts at 80% which is dumb. You can modify that though: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/3dbd7e0ddaf47c5539708a9cbcaab9e3#making-ksm-start-sooner
Ballooning is hard coded at the moment: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2413

[real harness]

I see.

So RPi 4 B with 4GB RAM.

RPi 5 is not that expensive either only few bucks more

[magic swan]

Yup. Or perhaps a HA green. Should be in a similar price range.

[real harness]

let me see if HA Green is available in my region.

is it from seeed studio?

this is way to expensive for me, probably an import and customs added.

My country adds way to much customs on imported items that I avoid aliexpress and all

I bought the PineTab 2 128/8 GB model and had to pay 50% of its price as customs.

for that price I could easily get a better android tab.

like if I convert the my currency to USD for the price of HA Green here its $153.83

where as on the web page it says $99 only, https://www.home-assistant.io/green/

see almost 50% more price

I hate this thing I miss out on so many things because of customs here.

[magic swan]

Maybe this list can inspire you: https://github.com/home-assistant/operating-system/blob/dev/Documentation/boards/README.md

[real harness]

I remember reading some forum post or something and people recommending ODROID c4 or something as well.

The only reason I choose to go RPi is its more popular hence more support and all you can get online.

[magic swan]

I'd just buy a cheap thin client/(U)SFF PC on eBay or some other platform where people sell used things.
The pis definitely have the broadest support among the SBCs.

[real harness]

Hmm.. my proxmox nodes are thin clients only..

perhaps I can get a lower end pentium or something with 8GB RAM?

[magic swan]

Pentium? 🧓
Quite possible that its power consumption will offset the lower price.

[real harness]

ebay is banned in my country BTW

[magic swan]

I usually recommend 4-6th gen and up. Thin clients can have some interesting CPUs though. Just make sure to research the power consumption for your model. Unless that's not a concern for you because electricity is cheap.

[real harness]

I mean if I can consume less power its always nice, its good to save money here and there if possible.

so you can get more stuff 😄

yea 4th gen thin clients are in RPi 5 4GB price range territory looks like.

not a bad deal though I can even virtualize and run couple of more things on it.

but I was already getting 2 new nodes (thin clients) so perhaps I should just keep running HA virtualized only?

Because I wanna use Zigbee I was thinking of moving my HA to RPi or something so I can move it near my router in the middle floor as I have to cover 3 floors with the zigbee thing.

but all my nodes are on top floor

[magic swan]

I think it's a superior way to run things in almost all circumstances: https://gist.github.com/Impact123/c23c36eafe1672ec056233e450a86ae2
The only thing that's not virtualized is my firewall.

[magic swan]

See now why I recommended a ethernet coordinator?

[real harness]

Totally agree on this.

[real harness]

What's that?

[magic swan]

If you have enough routers in range of each other and the coordinator it shouldn't really matter where the plug is.

The SLZB-06 is a PoE ethernet coordinator. You can use it wherever you have a ethernet cable.

[real harness]

I have been looking for a device with 2 eth ports so I can build a firewall but I cannot find any, the ones I find are very expensive for me.

[real harness]

Ah! That..

I would buy it, but its not available here..

[magic swan]

I use a N100 with 4 ports for mine but I bought in on aliexpress too.

[real harness]

nuc?

[magic swan]

Not from intel but yeah, similar. I previously used a Fujitsu Esprimo E920 for that.

[real harness]

could you share the link for the product?

[magic swan]

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007108442117.html

[real harness]

Ah! same can't be shipped to my address 😦

bad luck I guess

price is not bad though

guess I'll look around aliexpress and similar sites more to see some interesting deals.

what do you run BTW for firewall? pfsense?

[magic swan]

Yes. I don't like the UI/UX of opnSense.

[real harness]

I see, ATM I just run 3 routers, 2 dumb AP and one main router all with OpenWrt.

[real harness]

What processor does n100 has?

I found this one, https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Cheapest-J4125-Mini-PC-Router-DDR4_1601229924762.html

and this one, https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Fanless-mini-pc-intel-N100-DDR5_1601230773395.html

I find it hard to believe though that its DDR5.

[magic swan]

N100 is the processor.

[real harness]

would approve of this

[real harness]

^ then?

I have never shopped on these platforms that's why asking..

[magic swan]

I never bought on alibaba either but I'd get the second one. Looks okay at first glance.

[real harness]

Second one meaning n100 one?

does yours have DDR5 RAM?

[magic swan]

Yes. Yes. The CPU itself supports both IIRC.

[real harness]

I see.

Do you think the price makes sense though?

$80 plus $18 shipping

18. something..

[magic swan]

It actually seems extremely cheap.

[real harness]

enough to consider not try to buy it?

[magic swan]

Only you can decide that. I generally trust aliexpress and alibaba is part of that.

[real harness]

Hmm.. searching around alibaba is B2B mostly and aliexpress is B2C, https://www.gonukkad.com/blog/alibaba-vs-aliexpress

maybe its cheap because wholesale or something?

because I did notice a lot of sellers were not allowing buying just 1 unit of these things..

[magic swan]

It says minimum order unit 1 though.

[real harness]

yea this particular one I sent is allowing 1 unit purchase, but a lot of other I found did not allow that.

[outer hornet]

looking at this threads for resources regarding zigbee.
https://www.home-assistant.io/connectzbt1

can this work with any pc running HA?

my current setup is: a pop OS PC i use as a NAS.. with HA running on a VM on it.

I want to add zigbee to this. could be usb or ethernet

[magic swan]

I don't see why not but I'd recommend a ethernet one like the SLZB-06(M).

[outer hornet]

not sure if i got POE

[magic swan]

You don't need PoE. It can be powered by USB. PoE is more convenient, of course.

[outer hornet]

oh ok

i should have gone zigbee from the get go

this? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008417234959.html

what's the difference between 06, 06M, etc.. ?

ah not the same cpu.. apparently

[magic swan]

It's criminal to post a link like that: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008417234959.html

[outer hornet]

haha sry

[magic swan]

Different chips, yeah. The M is supposed to be more powerful. Both should work fine.

[outer hornet]

i'm looking at buttons and most only come with 1 button..

[magic swan]

What buttons do you mean?

[outer hornet]

just something to launch a scene with HA.. without using a screen..

something like this.. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006578089882.html

but not 100% sure it's compatible with any zigbee hub

[magic swan]

Ah. that's not really related to the coordinator though. I'd simply search zigbee button/switch/remote.
Compatibility is not always easy to predict with random aliexpress or tuya products.