I just bought an smlight SLZB-MR2U zigbee POE adapter for Zigbee2MQTT to use with HA, but I’m considering giving Homey a try but was wondering if there is any tradeoff to using Zigbee2MQTT vs using a Homey Bridge? I know I’ll have to add/adopt new devices in Zigbee2MQTT before adding to Homey, but I just don’t want to run into features or functionality that only works with specific hardware or coordinators?
Hi Michael, and welcome!
Good choice → Keep the z2m setup I’d like to advice, this is superior to Homey Bridge (and Homey zigbee in general) in many ways.
You can use the Homey zigbee2mqtt community app to add the zigbee devices to Homey;
An other option is to use the Homey Home assistant community app.
Yes, you won’t be able to use Homey Zigbee. Firmware updates will be missing. You won’t be able to use Homey apps that use Zigbee, BLE, Z-Wave, IR and RF without the bridge.
That’s a positive, not a negative.
Z2M supports firmware updates.
That’s your opinion then.
Good luck finding the OTA files from the manufacturers 
I mean some of them provide those freely, but Homey has updates for more devices since the OTAs don’t have to be publicly available in case of Homey, so manufacturers are more willing to provide them.
What are you basing this on?
For example: Sonoff. I can’t find any results online looking for “Sonoff OTA files”. Homey does have updates for Sonoff.
Then I wonder where you got the file from, since I can’t find them anywhere.
Perhaps this library: zigbee-OTA/images at master · Koenkk/zigbee-OTA · GitHub?
Yes that appears to be the official firmware, since it got uploaded by Sonoff. However, I also see firmware for Hue, Tuya and Aqara in there which I’m sure would never publish their firmwares voluntarily. So some of them might not be official. Homey only has official firmwares, so you can be sure that they’re actually from the manufacturer.
All OTA files are downloaded from public manufacturer HTTP endpoints. Also, if the manufacturers would have issues with this, they would have issued a takedown request long ago.
You don’t know that. Athom or the app developers could just as well have downloaded the OTA files from KoenKK’s repository. Just because a Homey app is marked “official” doesn’t mean that the manufacturer is involved in its development.
I also use this Zigbee2MQTT approach with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W that is specifically designed for Z2M (a dedicated headless server). This works much better than Homey Zigbee. Homey has had a problematic relationship with Zigbee from the start. The Z2M approach also makes it possible to integrate the Zigbee devices with other hubs (such as Homey, HA, etc.).
In my case, Homey’s Zigbee works just fine. Most of my devices are on vendor-specific hubs though (ThirdReality Hub, Innr Bridge, Tuya gateway, Hue bridge and eWeLink CUBE for Sonoff), so I’m not sure how it would perform with larger networks
Maybe a bit more latency and a bit more work to maintain, with vendor hubs; One large Z2M network may be more centrally manageable and better diagnosed?
Not really. In my case, everything is still very fast, even though most of them get routed via a cloud server. Third Reality publishes the energy readings of the smart plug every 10 seconds, even when connected via their hub via their servers. I didn’t notice any differences in latency with Tuya’s bridge/cloud (compared to direct connection to Homey). Hue is also very fast.
Management isn’t very different either. I have them all connected to Homey still, just via the vendor hub. So it’s like this:
Zigbee device ↔ Vendor hub ↔ Vendor’s cloud ↔ Homey
This means that when Homey is offline, I can still control the device using the vendor’s app:
Zigbee device ↔ Vendor hub ↔ Vendor’s cloud ↔ Vendor’s mobile app
This works independently of Homey, so there is no single point of failure in that case. But this also means that you can still use the device in your Flows, since in Homey you can use it like any other device.
The advantage to using vendor hubs instead of Homey’s direct Zigbee is that you can update your devices via the (official) OTAs. Note that each hub has its own separate network, so you need to make sure each of them is on a different channel (to prevent interference) and has enough routers.
Very interesting …
… very good you do not run into latency issues.
Do you use a different Zigbee channel for each hub?
Did you notice any interference between Zigbee and 2.4 GHz Wi‑Fi?
Yes. If I don’t, it will cause interference issues because all the hubs are right next to eachother on my desk
Not really. But I live in a very dense environment, so there are no “good” 2.4Ghz WiFi channels. 1, 6 and 11 are all so crowded that it doesn’t matter which one you choose. I set my main network with phone, tablet, laptops, etc. to 5Ghz only and set it to a DFS channel. Most networks nearby use cheap ISP routers which don’t support DFS, so my network is the only one on that channel.
So you created a special setup that works quite well!
Well, your internet connection is. And the vendor hub is also a single point of failure.
