I started with ZHA, but moved to Z2M because there was an automation blueprint I needed that was only coded for z2m.

Gotta say, I’m a much bigger fan of the z2m interface. There’s nothing wrong with ZHA but unless something major changes, I don’t see the need to ever switch back.

RatGDO can do this without the need for a magnetic switch. It’s a simple ESP32 board with easy-to-terminate wire terminals. It also lets you control the lights on your opener, see the current status of the door, and even open the door to an exact in-between position (if your door supports it).

You can program your own ESP32 if you like, or buy one from the guy that made it directly for ~$40.

Still - props to you for making your own solution! I know it’s extra satisfying when you can homebrew your own smart home solutions from scratch - just wanted to share another solution for people who don’t have the same skills.

I’ve never dug into this personally but can’t you set certain dashboards to be admin only? That way you can hide those entities on a dashboard only you have access to.

I assume this wouldn’t prevent someone from going into the full list of entities in the settings menu though.

This was a surprisingly well thought out and educational article - thank you! Was expecting a super basic article for the masses, but this had a number of quality suggestions, pros and cons of the different options, and even the authors personal opinion on preference of Z2M in case the reader wanted a real suggestion.

Thanks so much for this!

Only thing I think I noticed that could be corrected is OTA updates are no longer exclusive to Z2M - ZHA recently added this too, though I haven’t tried it yet and don’t see a reason to ever switch back from Z2M.

FYI- I received an email the other day that sonos officially added voice control for Spotify!

Fingers crossed! I know one YouTuber I follow mentioned it in his “2024 predictions” - wasn’t sure if he was pulling ideas out of his butt or if there had been actual commitment to this idea. Your comment gives me hope it’s the latter!

I don’t have an answer for you, but this comment reminds me how badly home assistant needs to add subfolders for organizing and grouping our automations

I never thought I’d be the kind of person to use voice commands, but it is so nice to tell it to turn on the radio while I’m cooking dinner!

I had something similar (although probably unrelated) happen last week. All of a sudden my router went offline and nothing was getting an internet connection. Sonoff coordinator lost connection with all zigbee devices went unavailable at the same time. Tried rebooting my home assistant pc, router, unplugging sonoff antenna, switching Ethernet ports, etc without luck.

Power cycling my Ethernet switches fixed it immediately. No idea why that did the trick. This has never happened before. I’m on Verizon fios if that matters.

Posting here in case it helps someone identify a common thread/root cause for OP and me, because I thought it was bizarre that an Ethernet switch would ever need to be power cycled!

Can confirm timer works - set a 5 minute timer for playing music in the family room).

Spotify does work with Sonos now (I don’t use it but I have my account set up with it), but voice control does not work with Spotify.

Ok - agree to disagree! Just wanted to share my experience with the community on a quality local voice control that’s available today while the home assistant community works on these exciting developments.

I think an important correction here is that they say they will only commit to a minimum of 5 years of software updates after they stop selling a particular model.

Even then, there is no reason the speaker wouldn’t still work. To me, that sounds perfectly reasonable. There’s posts about a 15 year old play 5 speaker getting a firmware update within the last year even, so I think Sonos deserves credit where credit is due. They have a proven track record so far, but no doubt it’s something to keep an eye on going forward.

I don’t think Sonos gets enough credit for their local voice control capability. It can’t be integrated into home assistant to do anything beyond controlling the Sonos speakers, but I have been ABSOLUTELY blown away by how responsive the voice commands have been. Literally a 100% success rate after using it for a couple months now. It correctly interprets if you want to start/stop playing, can find music by the artist I want from Apple Music (not sure about other streaming services), and will correctly adjust playing status for a specific speaker if you say to adjust music on that speaker only - even if you command it from another room.

The best part - no bullshit worst responses about “by the way….” Like on Alexa. At most, you get a short response like “good choice” or “ok”.

Sonos isn’t cheap, but I would 100% buy them again every time because it just works.

Thanks for confirming you had no issues (along with everyone else’s responses!). I took the plunge and updated yesterday and so far no issues apart from my inovelli switch triggers still missing. Luckily someone made an automation blueprint that circumvents this issue but it would still be nice to have that back! And to be fair, idk if that’s an MQTT issue or an issue with the 2.15 firmware on the switch.

Seems like a big update - do most Z2M updates include this many fixes/additions? I’m new to Z2M and am hesitant about updating unless I see a fix that will directly affect me positively.

Can anyone here report if they’re having any issues after updating? Looking at the comments, a number of people are reporting their devices not working shortly after updating, but idk if10 or so people posting is a large or small percentage of the user base.

Adding another vote on the inovelli blues. Zigbee network has been rock solid for me. Integration with homeassistant has been flawless too - could not be happier with my purchase. It also helps that the company has a great track record with transparency and working with the community to improve their product.

One detail I don’t see mentioned often is the zigbee switches are a little smaller than the zwaves, making them easier to fit into the junction box. My house is old and has very small boxes - not sure these would have fit in some places if they were any bigger!!

4th vote for Reolink, with one caveat: the live video feed takes several minutes to load in home assistant for me, but is pretty instant when viewing through the Reolink app. I’ve spent several evenings trying to get it to load faster without luck, so for now I’m content just using the Reolink app.

I looked this up a while back. Someone wrote code to try to replicate it in homeassistant on their forums. If I recall correctly, it didn’t work quite as well as the hue version but I haven’t have a chance/reason to try it yet. Maybe someday soon.

I see those types of coffee packets in almost all hotels across the us, so they’re around but I’ve definitely never seen them outside of that.

Omg measuring power to detect when the washer and dryer are complete is genius. Gonna flag this as a future project when I get around to finishing the rest of my smart home projects