Home Assistant

[sko]

no need for bhyve, just run it in a jail and spare yourself the headache of dealing with linux...

 

[DanielBowman]

ZHA also works with ethernet-connected zigbee coordinators.
I've switched from zigbee2mqtt a long time ago as it was horribly buggy and stuff was constantly failing/hanging. I also replaced the SMLight SLZB-06MG24 coordinator (the same guy maintaining Z2M also maintains the firmware of this device...) with the Sonoff Dongle Max. Zigbee with Homeassistant has been an absolutely smooth experience ever since...

Yeah. It is too many moving parts, putting MQTT in the middle.
Zigbee is pretty good. ZWave if you need to reach backyard shed. Matter/Thread if you want to run with IKEA deals. I would stay away from WiFi - it constricts your bandwidth, consumes more power (no battery) and most of the time needs mobile app from manufacturer to setup.

Running it on FreeBSD complicates things I would say. Unless you already have a server running 24/7, I would go with Proxmox or Rapsberry or MiniPC - noise and electricity costs.

 

[DanielBowman]

no need for bhyve, just run it in a jail and spare yourself the headache of dealing with linux...

He would need to manage all the apps and integrations separately. Better install Hass as the whole virtual machine solution and have integrations and Apps out of the box from Nabu Casa team.

 

[epower53]

Yeah. It is too many moving parts, putting MQTT in the middle.

Where zigbee2mqtt shines is away from Home Assistant. I use zigbee2mqtt and Zwave-JS UI, both feeding mosquito. All my automations are in Node Red, which is like comfort food for a wrench monkey like me. It's basically LabView for home automation. My HA instance just pulls from MQTT to give me dashboards I can pass out to the family. I absolutely hate yaml... using Node Red for automations is far easier imo.

 

[sko]

I would stay away from WiFi - it constricts your bandwidth, consumes more power (no battery) and most of the time needs mobile app from manufacturer to setup.

If you have a proper wifi deployed in your house wifi is also a valid option. Just stick with proper devices that have a web interface and/or need only *very* minimal configuration (i.e. once) via some shoephone app - regardless of how they communicate. I absolutely despise crap that enforces configuration, let alone usage via some touchy-swipy telephone garbage...

I've been deploying various Shelly gen4 devices recently. They are multi-protocol and work via Wifi, Zigbee and Bluetooth. Via the latter they can be used as a sensor and having wifi and zigbee is also quite neat as it offers reduncancy - e.g. for somewhat critical automations like heatpumps or heating elements for warm water and heating.
With a pair of shelly minis I spared myself the trouble of pulling another cable from the inverter down into the basement for the SGready signal. One acts as a sensor at the inverter and one switches on the heater element in the basement - I can either control them from automations via zigbee or wifi and as a fallback they are bound via zigbee directly.
Shelly also offers quite powerful scripting capabilities directly on the device, which can be used for fully local automations, triggers etc. without relying on some bloated or fragile home automation (and let's be honest - homeassistant is a rather fragile house of cards...)

Where zigbee2mqtt shines is away from Home Assistant. I use zigbee2mqtt and Zwave-JS UI, both feeding mosquito. All my automations are in Node Red, which is like comfort food for a wrench monkey like me. It's basically LabView for home automation. My HA instance just pulls from MQTT to give me dashboards I can pass out to the family. I absolutely hate yaml... using Node Red for automations is far easier imo.

True. I always wanted to dive into node red for exactly the same reasons. I absolutely HATE yaml and the weird and fragile scripting in HA - and with all their UI-fications lately it gets more and more in your way and configuration gets a lot more complicated (and finding stuff later is an absolute nightmare).