Native serial UART protocol support for RaspBee and ConBee in Home Assistant without deCONZ software

[Gamester17]

Dresden-Elektronik should consider adding native serial protocol (UART) support for ConBee and RaspBee hardware to open source home automation software such as Home Assistant and its Hass.io (Home Assistant appliance OS for RAspberry Pi).

That is, make open source home automation software such as Home Assistant support using ConBee and RaspBee adapters directly via serial potocol over UART and CLI using existing open source Zigbee libraries without the need to the deCONZ gateway software.

Commercial motivation for Dresden-Elektronik; open source home automation software such as Home Assistant and Hass.io (Home Assistant embedded Linux OS for Raspberry Pi) are the very popular today and as they are already available and used by perhaps millions of people right now, Dresden-Elektronik would most likely sell many more devices if its RaspBee and ConBee hardware had native support them inside open source home automation software such as Home Assistant and Hass.io

Please checkout: https://home-assistant.io

as well as

https://home-assistant.io/hassio/

Home Assistant recently gained native serial protocol (UART) support for ZigBee Home Automation via the ZigPy (Zigbee for Python) open source library that currently can only communicate with XBee and EmberZNet based devices (competing USB adapter by Silicon Labs) via other Python modules which in turn communicates with different radios native serial protocol (UART) for zigpy, for more information see:

https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy

https://github.com/zigpy/bellows
https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy-xbee
https://github.com/doudz/zigpy-zigate

Update! @damarco and @Equidamoid have both independently started working on zigpy radio libraries a native serial UART protocol for Conbee/Raspbee here:

https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy-deconz

https://github.com/Equidamoid/pyconz/

See also:

https://home-assistant.io/components/zha/

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/tree/dev/homeassistant/components/zha

home-assistant/core#6263

home-assistant/core#12187

home-assistant/core#19664

home-assistant/frontend#2389

home-assistant/frontend#2421

[rtenklooster]

I agree native support would be great. However in the meantime you could use node-red to publish all events to HA by using mqtt.
dresden-elektronik/deconz-rest-plugin#159

I explained how it can be done here

[manup]

Dresden-Elektronik should consider adding native support for RaspBee and ConBee hardware to Home Assistant open source home automation software and its Hass.io (Home Assistant appliance OS for RAspberry Pi).

Hi @Gamester17 , Home Assistant is indeed a thriving system which we'd like to support RaspBee/ConBee. However our resources are currently concentrated on the deCONZ core, REST API and the new app.

Therefore we can only offer to provide software support for REST API and low level documentation for the UART protocol between deCONZ and RaspBee/ConBee (which would be required to use the driver of the EZSP module). Beside that we can provide Hardware for the devs which like to integrate it into Home Assistant, they should be visible somehow in the HA developer community though :)

[Gamester17]

FYI, rcloran who made bellows ( https://github.com/rcloran/bellows/ ) which is used by Home Assistant and Hass.io said here that he is planning on splitting out the ZigBee parts of bellows (soon -- work is in progress), which will allow you to use it with libraries that interface with others. Which means that you will possible be able to use the existing bellows implementation in Home Assistant to interface with deCONZ

zigpy/bellows#50

[abmantis]

Hey @manup . If you can provide the hardware (or a cheaper price), I would gladly work on integrating it with HA, using the REST API (I would probably make a python module for DeConz, and integrate the module in HA).
I've done a few contributions to HA already.
ATM I have some Xiaomi sensors and switches and will buy a IKEA lamp.

[donnib]

I have done exactly that albeit not finished.

[abmantis]

Any updates?

[manup]

Hey @manup . If you can provide the hardware (or a cheaper price), I would gladly work on integrating it with HA, using the REST API (I would probably make a python module for DeConz, and integrate the module in HA).
I've done a few contributions to HA already.
ATM I have some Xiaomi sensors and switches and will buy a IKEA lamp.

Hi @abmantis can you please send your shipping address /contact to support@dresden-elektronik.de and reference me (Manu) we'll then send you a RaspBee and ConBee which you can use for your HA module development. Thanks and regards :)

[abmantis]

Thank you @manup ! I just sent the e-mail! I'm looking forward to work with it! :D

[Gamester17]

@abmantis do you think that you will work on getting it to work with bellows by @rcloran ?

https://github.com/rcloran/bellows/

@rcloran said wrote here on issue # 50 that he will splitt bellows to make it modular:

zigpy/bellows#50

"I'm planning on splitting out the zigbee parts of bellows (soon -- work is in progress), which will allow using that with libraries that interface with other ."

Anyway, just mentioning that as Home Assistant implementation uses bellows.

Point being that it would be nice with a plugin for Hass.io that would be easy to configure.

[donnib]

So here is my preliminary NOT FINISHED work : https://bitbucket.org/mihaicph/deconz-custom-module

@manup i have invested in the raspBee myself, could i kindly ask for a Conbee to investigate further issues with IKEA that we discussed in other threads ?

[manup]

@manup i have invested in the raspBee myself, could i kindly ask for a Conbee to investigate further issues with IKEA that we discussed in other threads ?

Absolutely, please also send a mail to support@dresden-elektronik.de with your shipping address and reference me (Manu).

[abmantis]

@Gamester17 it depends on when @rcloran does it I guess. I still have to look at how bellows works.
Another option is helping @donnib to finish his component, if he is ok with that.

[corneyl]

It would be great to have native support for RaspBee/ConBee!
Will this also mean that we do not have to run the Deconz GUI software? Or is it still needed to run the REST API?

[manup]

Will this also mean that we do not have to run the Deconz GUI software? Or is it still needed to run the REST API?

This depends on which level the integration is implemented, both is possible. REST API or serial UART protocol (much more complex, documentation available on request).

[mariusmotea]

can i receive UART protocol documentation? I also want to see if i can improve zigbee integration because currently deconz get overloaded very easy with multiple i/o requests