I’m planning to put HA on a pi, with a usb antenna

I can’t decide which bulbs to use, Philips hue looks great but it’s pricey and I’m pretty sure it’s got too much “phone home” crap. I don’t want anything to leave my network. If I can use Hue bulbs without the hub, or block the hub from phoning home I would consider it?

I found some Sengled bulbs that look fine, but I don’t know if they are any good.

Can someone recommend some decent bulbs? Colour ones preferably, but white is OK too.

Any other advice? Got a home server, so can host just about anything to get this working together.

  • @GiuloEnglish
    7•1 year ago

    Hey there, I’ve got the same Zigbee dongle in HA through Zigbee2mqtt and it runs flawlessly.

    Zigbee by design is fully local and can’t phone home, and everything that uses Zigbee will be able to pair directly with your dongle without using the Hue hub. Check Zigbee2mqtt docs to ensure compatibility of the items you’re planning to buy, but almost all of them should work.

    I’ve got Hue and Ikea bulbs along with other Zigbee switches working perfectly. If Hue is too pricey, check Ikea Tradfri or any other recommended by Zigbee2mqtt docs.

    • EntropyOPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Thanks for the advice, I’ll look at the docs.

      How’s your RAM usage for HA? The pi I have is only 2gb, already runs pihole but I can buy another/run HA on my server, but if I don’t need to, then I won’t.

      • @GiuloEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        I ran HA on a pi 3 and then upgraded to a NUC with a Celeron using 4gb of RAM mostly because I used Plex at that time and needed better transcoding.

        You can try running HAOS supervised on your Pi. Running supervised will let you run addons within HA such as pihole, Zigbee2mqtt, Mosquitto, Node-RED and others. After that, you can verify if you actually need to upgrade your hardware. You’ll probably be fine with that amount of RAM.

        • @fluxxEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          When you switched from pi3 to NUC , did you notice any performance improvements? I’m asking because I run my setup on a rpi3 and it mostly works ok, but the latency is sometimes high, so I’m wondering if upgrading the host will improve things.

          • @AwkwardPenguinEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            For me i did. It was buggy on a rasp all the time. Plus from time to time memory would clog up and the instance would stop functioning. Haven’t had any issues since upgrading to the nuc. It just works and I migrated all devices to USB radios. So Bluetooth, Zigbee, zwave, serial power meter, serial heat meter, serial ups, everything just connects without hubs or anything.

            Would definitely recommend! Just get a cheap second hand one on eBay or so.

          • @GiuloEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            I didn’t, but because the pi already worked fine and didn’t have many addons running. I have since introduced tailscale, diyhue, frigate without a tpu, etc and the nuc has been rock solid (even with 4gb of RAM and a Celeron J3455).

            I think it comes down to what addons you run and what type of storage you use (if you’re using an SD card on your pi, you might want to boot from an SSD instead). Also if your zigbee dongle is old like the Nortek one, you might see improvements in responsiveness when upgrading to a zigbee 3.0 stick.

            • @fluxxEnglish
              2•1 year ago

              I have a newer ZigBee 3.0 dongle and run a few add-ons, but nothing big - z2m, nodered, mosquito is all I use. I will upgrade anyway, but I’m not in a hurry, it works fine, apart from an occasional delay in switching, which might be network related.

        • EntropyOPEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Just wondering how you set up the Hue bulbs, did you need any workarounds or the bridge? Do they just link up to the dongle?

          • @ilikedatsyukEnglish
            3•1 year ago

            I have about two dozen Hue bulbs paired to my Sonoff Zigbee stick using Zigbee2MQTT. No workarounds or Hue hub necessary.

          • @fluxxEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            Any ZigBee device should just be able to pair with the dongle directly and no other settings or hardware is necessary. Check out the https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/ , find the particular device/bulb/switch and read the setup steps. If it has any quirks, it will be listed there. If not, you can be sure it will work without issues. I have a lot of Ikea tradfri bulbs, switches and also cheap Chinese devices such as tuya, they all work without issues.

            • EntropyOPEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              I don’t see any B22/Bayonet Hue colour bulbs that are supported, but other kinds like E27 are there. Is there something about B22 bulbs that’s different? All but 1 of my bulb sockets are B22

              • @fluxxEnglish
                1•1 year ago

                Wouldn’t know, I only have Ikea bulbs. Those all work. But I think hue is better, since Ikea ones don’t dim very low, whereas I’ve heard Hue ones dim very low. Maybe give the b22 ones a Google search?

                • EntropyOPEnglish
                  1•1 year ago

                  I’ve asked in the discord, if I can’t use hue b22 bulbs it’s not an issue, but I would prefer them due to their quality, even though they are more expensive.