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 :-)
Where have you seen that Z-Wave devices are iffy? I've never had one that didn't work with my setup, and I've even swapped my controller out (now, that was a pain). I have 51 nodes in my network, from many manufacturers and a 6 or 7 different types of devices. Where are you reading about Z-Wave compatability issues?
To be honest, I might have mixed something up reading up on all those standards. After researching a topic, my browser usually ends up having a hundred Tabs "just in case I need that information again" and honestly... in all that information I can not find it specifically. My consensus reading all that information was: "Make sure for each device you buy that it works with your specific gateway, even if it says it works with protocol X".
Ignoring Matter, Zigbee and Zwave are the two radio protocols while Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA are your two options in Home Assistant to interface with Zigbee radios (pick one or the other).
I used to use a HUSZBZ dongle which had both Zigbee and Zwave radios integrated into a single dongle, but it's older now and didn't support newer devices. I've now switched to the Sonoff 3 Zigbee dongle and a separate newer Zwave dongle (can't recall which brand).
As far as which integrations to use, I'm running Zigbee2MQTT (switched from ZHA when I added the new dongle to try it out) with little issues and running the default ZWave integration in HA.
As for devices, I've ran into some issues with Ikea Zigbee devices which is what lead to me buying the new Zigbee dongle and switching to Z2M, but those have all been resolved in the switch. Zwave devices have been pretty rock solid since day one but are generally much more expensive to buy.
I'd personally run both protocols so that you have more options when buying devices. I have numerous Aqara Zigbee devices and they've all worked without issue.
That's always good advice, but IME it's not necessary with Z-Wave. And it's only my experience, which is why I was interested in where you read it.
I wasn't trying to attack you; I was simply curious.