Hi everyone,
I am reading up on that topic for a few weeks now and the only conclusion I have so far is: There is nothing that works perfect and you need to check for each device if it works with your setup.
So I am asking about your experience so far, what you use, if you plan to change your setup (for what reason?) or what you would do different. Or do you use multiple gateways / protocols at the same time?
I run HA in Docker for a few things, but I have nothing connected yet via one of the protocols mentioned above. Yesterday I came across SkyConnect and thought I found the holy grail of dongles. Zigbee? Check. Zigbee2MQTT? Check. Matter? Check. But then looking at the details… Zigbee2MQTT is experimental and in a few review (although none was younger than 9 months) people report that it works unreliable. Matter support also is not there yet it seems. And to add insult to insury it seems that it officially does not work with a Dockerized HA setup.
So whenever I think I found "my" solution, there is something that does not seem to work, is unreliable or not compatible with all devices. I even ran across reports that said if a device Support Zigbee or MQTT it might still not work with your particular setup because… well… not everything that has a specific protocol stamped on the package seem to work in the same way.
So I feel like running in circles. I wanted to start with a few simple things like Temperature / Humidity sensors and Door sensors like for example the ones from Aqara. But if I throw money at someone my highest priority is reliability. So I want to go a route that (at this moment) is the most stable, reliable and future proof in your opinion.
So I am very curious about your setups and the experience you made with it :-)
I use zigbee2mqtt myself and I've been very happy with it. I haven't tried ZHA, but I believe z2m supports more devices. (I use z2m's supported devices list to choose which ones to buy.) The downside is that it's a bit more work to set up initially, as you need an MQTT broker as well. But in return, I feel like z2m is more reliable since it runs (and is updated) separate from HA core. I use it with a zzh! dongle and even though I got one of the bad ones with a faulty amplifier chip, it's been rock solid.
As for Thread(+Matter), I'm waiting for things to settle down. Support in HA is still experimental and there are very few products out yet that use Thread. I'll probably prefer Zigbee for as long as they sell them so all my devices will share the same mesh. Also, unlike Zigbee, Thread devices are not guaranteed to be local-only, which is my biggest worry. Thread/Matter won't free us from having to check a device compatibility list before buying.
Thanks for your input! MQTT is not an issue, I have Mosquitto running on both my installs (one with HA + Frigate on a remote location, the other one HA for me which is also used by Owntracks), so MQTT is not a problem. I will even set up a second one and connect them together to have 2 Brokers for the setup where I need Internet access (Owntracks) to MQTT and I do not want to share this MQTT instance with the devices for my home.
My impression about Matter was too that it is not "done" yet and device support is poor. On the other hand you read at every corner that it will be the future. This is why the SkyConnect Adapter looked very interesting to me at first, but since most of the features I would use now (Z2M probably, Docker compatibility) do not seem to work yet, or at least not reliably.
This is my impression as well. I'm keeping an eye on how this space develops and I'll probably buy a second dongle just for Thread when I need it (i.e. when some product I really want comes out that only supports Thread.) I believe most zigbee dongles are theoretically capable of supporting Thread, since they both share the same physical layer protocol.
I'm curious to hear people's experiences with Thread/Matter devices. Ideally, I'd like to use my HA box as the border router and configure it to not allow any external Internet connections. Will this break any functionality on devices with a Matter logo on them? Ideally it shouldn't, but given the track record of manufacturers so far, my expectations are low.
Matter and whether external connections are needed or not will be interesting to follow. My HA instance is internal only too, since it does nothing that needs me to access it over the internet. And Owntracks delivers to a separate MQTT instance that will have no internal devices. So my HA is shut off from the internet and I will pay attention to everything Smart Home I will buy, that it does not require an Internet connection too.