Home Assistant beginners

LuckyBenski · 7 Dec 2025 at 12:51

+1 for only using the ZigBee controller attached to HA. Never owned a Philips/Tapo etc hub, everything just works directly with HA.

Also +1 for Z2M, I moved to it a few months after starting with HA and haven't looked back.

Dr House · 7 Dec 2025 at 15:35

Thanks again I have ordered the SLZB06U

I did not know you can’t use the hub with HA. But that saves me a bit of money away.

Subliminal Aura · 7 Dec 2025 at 16:03

Dr House said:
Thanks again I have ordered the SLZB06U

How much was it ?
I remember when these first came out there were only a few and around the £40-45 now there are so many variants costing up to £80+ :confused:

Which is the best one to go for ?

I understand the network dongle offers a degree of redundancy but is it worth it ?
If I do have to migrate my HA instance to a new machine it's a simple mater of migrating the VM and swapping over the Zigbee dongle. Everything just works

Dr House · 8 Dec 2025 at 00:36

£30 inc vat and delivery

cokecan · 8 Dec 2025 at 10:09

robj20 said:
I had and people keep telling me to go that route but it's just more to learn. My Plex machine is plenty powerful enough it runs windows 11 and just Plex, works perfectly (I struggled getting it working under Ubuntu)

I've gone down the rabbit hole of reading about entity ID naming conventions and best practices not using device id instead use entity. Just getting Home Assistant working is proving challenging enough I don't then need to with about learning about virtual this and docker that.

I get that, but if you're already running Windows and are comfortable with that, it's almost nothing extra to learn if you know how to install an application. You literally just need to download/install VMware Workstation (it's free now with a free VMware account) and you can visually create/start/stop/pause/snapshot virtual machines from within the Vmware Workstation GUI. HA even have a Vmware Workstation image ready to go that you just power on with no HA setup to do: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/windows/. It's a tidy solution because you don't need to mess with Hyper-V (which has it's drawbacks with HA) or start learning Docker and everything in the VM is contained and will have no impact on your existing Plex server. The virtual machine OS in the HA image is HAOS and is managed by Open Home Foundation, so they push both HA patches and updates as well as HAOS patches and updates which are all installed from within the HA GUI itself. You don't need to worry about learning and maintaining Ubuntu or some other flavour of Linux. It really is a no brainer

robj20 · 8 Dec 2025 at 10:27

cokecan said:
I get that, but if you're already running Windows and are comfortable with that, it's almost nothing extra to learn if you know how to install an application. You literally just need to download/install VMware Workstation (it's free now with a free VMware account) and you can visually create/start/stop/pause/snapshot virtual machines from within the Vmware Workstation GUI. HA even have a Vmware Workstation image ready to go that you just power on with no HA setup to do: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/windows/. It's a tidy solution because you don't need to mess with Hyper-V (which has it's drawbacks with HA) or start learning Docker and everything in the VM is contained and will have no impact on your existing Plex server. The virtual machine OS in the HA image is HAOS and is managed by Open Home Foundation, so they push both HA patches and updates as well as HAOS patches and updates which are all installed from within the HA GUI itself. You don't need to worry about learning and maintaining Ubuntu or some other flavour of Linux. It really is a no brainer

Okay I'll take a look, and it will just see the ZigBee USB that's plugged into the pc? I thought you needed to do things like route then through to the VM?

I'll have a play on my gaming pc first see if I can get it up and running.

Little confused already, it says if you are already running a VM follow the guide, what if you are not already running one?
These seem to be better instructions.

How To Install Home Assistant using VMware Workstation

In this guide, I will show you how to migrate Home Assistant from a raspberry pi to VMWare Workstation 16 Player. Or, if you don't ha

smarthomepursuits.com

Then to get it all auto starting on bootup.

cokecan · 8 Dec 2025 at 11:13

For USB devices, you select the VM config menu, then Removable Devices. It should list all removable devices you have plugged into your computer and you just select which one you want to passthrough to the VM. To make that passthrough permanent which will persist through restarts etc, you just modify one line of the VM config file in notepad.

I'd just follow the official guide: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/windows/#hypervisor-specific-configuration. Select Vmware Workstation from the tabs

robj20 · 8 Dec 2025 at 11:43

Could actually work out well this way, Its easy to tempt access this machine with the windows remote service, even using the app on my phone.
It has a few tweaks such as auto user login so it goes straight to the desktop when it boots up. Plex runs in the background.

I'll definitely have a play tonight on my other machine get home assistant running and the network stuff.
Then I'll try it on the Plex server.

How much resources should I allocate it?
It's a Core 5 120U (2 perf, 8 efficient )and has 32gb RAM and a 1TB m.2.

cokecan · 8 Dec 2025 at 11:57

That's great to hear

You can set basic startup scripts that run when the computer auto logs in which will start the VM if you ever restart the computer to save you having to manually start them with something like:

Code:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\vmrun.exe" start "C:\VM\HA.vmx"

in a simple bat file. Just place the file in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

My VM is using almost nothing; 4GB RAM, 2x processors, 32GB storage. I'm running a HP EliteDesk 800G4 Mini with an i5-8500T. I think HA say you can run 2-4GB for general use and maybe 4-8GB for heavy HA use or lots of add-ons etc.

robj20 · 8 Dec 2025 at 16:11

Well so far so good, looks to be up and running. Nothing added to it yet though, but at least its running and the networking working. Set it to startup with windows and added nogui to the end so it just runs in the background.

Now is there an easy way to add all my zigbee sensors back or will i have to reset them one by one? They are Sonoff ones. If i delete them all from the current one will they show up in the new HA?

Subliminal Aura · 8 Dec 2025 at 16:19

robj20 said:
Now is there an easy way to add all my zigbee sensors back or will i have to reset them one by one? They are Sonoff ones. If i delete them all from the current one will they show up in the new HA?

Restore from the old backup

iamgigglz · 8 Dec 2025 at 16:26

Has anyone managed to get the Aqara door sensor or leak detection sensor working without an Aqara hub? I have the Sonoff Zigbee bridge (ZBBridge-P) and it's not picking up the door sensor at all

I bought it as it said it used Zigbee so I thought I was golden.

Off the back of that, is the Aqara hub (M100) a decent bit of kit? Or do I just return the Aqara stuff and go sonoff?

robj20 · 8 Dec 2025 at 16:37

Subliminal Aura said:
Restore from the old backup

no suitable backup for that

cokecan · 8 Dec 2025 at 16:56

robj20 said:
no suitable backup for that

I haven't tried it but pretty sure you can go to HA - Settings - System - Backup on your old HA setup, then perform a backup there and download it. Take that backup and load it into your new HA VM and everything should carry over. At a guess you might see some oddness with zigbee because the adapter will be in a different USB port but I'm fairly sure that's easily rectified with the add-on/integration

robj20 · 8 Dec 2025 at 17:02

cokecan said:
I haven't tried it but pretty sure you can go to HA - Settings - System - Backup on your old HA setup, then perform a backup there and download it. Take that backup and load it into your new HA VM and everything should carry over. At a guess you might see some oddness with zigbee because the adapter will be in a different USB port but I'm fairly sure that's easily rectified with the add-on/integration

I have taken a backup, but concerned what ever keeps going wrong with that has also been backed up.

Ill do the rest of the migration at weekend when i have more time.

Thanks guys, definitely one of the more helpful threads on here, steep learning curve.

Just seen there is a Backup option within the ZHA config, and a migrate option. Ill give that a try and see what happens.

Subliminal Aura · 8 Dec 2025 at 17:36

iamgigglz said:
Has anyone managed to get the Aqara door sensor or leak detection sensor working without an Aqara hub? I have the Sonoff Zigbee bridge (ZBBridge-P) and it's not picking up the door sensor at all
I bought it as it said it used Zigbee so I thought I was golden.

Off the back of that, is the Aqara hub (M100) a decent bit of kit? Or do I just return the Aqara stuff and go sonoff?

Oh the irony is running so strong at the moment, I've literally just sat down after spending around an hour faffing around with trying to fix my Aqara door sensors

Yes they normally work perfectly with ZHA. I've had them running perfectly for years until recently when they just decided to go offline without any warning.
Batteries were at 63% so decided to install fresh ones - This wasn't the issue as I've previously had them run the battery down to less than 30%. Google told me to repair and I wasn't having any of it. Bizarrely what worked was to reboot HA and put ZHA into discovery/add device mode and it picked up the old already configured door sensor which was a relief

To pair from scratch hold the reset button on the Aqara for 10 seconds until the led starts flashes and hit add device from ZHA

iamgigglz said:
Aqara door sensor or leak detection sensor working without an Aqara hub?

I suggest you unpair from the Aqara hub first as you can't have a device paired with multiple coordinators

Subliminal Aura · 8 Dec 2025 at 18:33

Interesting couple of threads about the Aqara sensors - So like me, they seem to work perfectly for years until they need a kick up the backside

Xiaomi Aqara Door/Window Sensor no longer working

The sugestion above worked for me too. After enabling joining I started to stress the sensor clicking in the button repeatedly and it worked… It’s alive!!! Info MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/bridge/response/device/configure', payload '{"data":{"id":"DoorSensorWaterMeter"},"error":"Device...

community.home-assistant.io

Aqara Door and Window Sensor T1 - sensor not working

hello all i have recently bought Aqara Door and Window Sensor T1 ( MCCGQ12LM / lumi.sensor_magnet.agl02 ). Am able to connect the device to hassio over ZHA, however the sensor it self does not work - always shows only “closed” status. I believe the problem is not with the sensor, as I have...

community.home-assistant.io

iamgigglz · 9 Dec 2025 at 12:59

Subliminal Aura said:
Yes they normally work perfectly with ZHA.

Maybe this is my issue. Up until now I've just used the eweLink app for the pairing process, then my Sonoff integration magically picks up the new devices. This is the first time I've tried adding a non-Sonoff device though...
I can't even remember if I'm running Tasmota on it or not; it's just been quietly performing brilliantly for years.

Yay, time to tinker!

andy_mk3 · 9 Dec 2025 at 13:04

I had an Aqara door sensor drop out recently. Faffed about with it loads but wouldn't re-pair. Got a replacement off Aliexpress for a few quid, not really worth much time messing about with when they are so cheap.

Subliminal Aura · 9 Dec 2025 at 13:35

andy_mk3 said:
I had an Aqara door sensor drop out recently. Faffed about with it loads but wouldn't re-pair. Got a replacement off Aliexpress for a few quid, not really worth much time messing about with when they are so cheap.

Surely you'll end up with the same problem in the future ?

Your post prompted me to test my procedure from yesterday

- Device - Old Aqura sensor that dropped out last year
- Pop battery in
- Wake it with the reset button
- ZHA Add new device
(important : DO NOT PUT THE AQARA INTO PAIRING MODE)

and lo and behold HA recognises it as the device that you originally configured years back - No changes were made to the entity id or having to update automations etc