Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 + ZHA The most brainless native Zigbee gateway connects (almost) all Zigbee devices – Home Assistant Step-by-Step Tutorial EP 16

Following the previous article Plug and Play Home Assistant Green Setup Tutorial After that, today we will introduce Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 with ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation), a native Zigbee connection solution that is also beginner-friendly.

With the combination of Home Assistant Green + Connect ZBT-1, you no longer need to be afraid of using Home Assistant as your smart home central system because "setting up Home Assistant seems complicated", nor do you have to succumb to other cloud central systems. "You want to HA after all, why not do it from the beginning?" Right🤣

If you want to know about Home Assistant Green installation-free plug-and-play Home Assistant, you can refer to:

Even if you don't use Home Assistant Green to set up Home Assistant, Connect ZBT-1 is also a good choice. Let's take a look at how to use Connect ZBT-1 to connect the Zigbee device in Home Assistant!

Glossary

After writing the preface, I found that there are many similar nouns. Considering that this article may be the first few that you come into contact with smart home, you will be confused. I will first make a simple explanation of the nouns and attach reference materials. I hope it can help you learn more. Understand soon😁

  • Home Assistant: HA for short, an open source smart home hub system. Different from the common HomeKit and Google Home, Home Assistant provides a completely local construction solution and provides a high degree of privacy and customization. Related references:
  • Home Assistant Green: Home Assistant officially launches a plug-and-play HA host that requires no self-installation system. Related introduction:
  • Home Assistant ZBT-1:Old name Home Assistant SkyConnect, since 2024/06/13 announcementRenamed "ZBT-1" to allow Home Assistant to connect to Zigbee and Thread devices, commonly known as "gateway".
  • Zigbee: A smart home device connection method, characterized by the ability to expand network coverage between devices through mesh topology. With proper configuration, a single gateway can open up a whole building.
  • ZHA: Zigbee Home Automation is one of the Zigbee connection solutions in the Home Assistant environment. In addition to ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT is also a common connection solution choice. Reference:

The difference between ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT

ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT are both ways to connect Zigbee devices in Home Assistant:

  • ZHA: It is part of Home Assistant and is jointly maintained by the Home Assistant development team and open source contributors. It prefers the official, built-in stable integration solution and mainly relies on the core technology and architecture of Home Assistant.
  • Zigbee2MQTT: An independent open source project, also maintained by open source contributors and led by the open source community. It is powerful and flexible, but requires more manual settings and learning curve.

特性

ZHA

Zigbee2MQTT

安裝與設定

Native to Home Assistant, no need to install additional services.

Additional installation of Mosquitto (MQTT Broker) and Zigbee2MQTT tools is required.

易用性

The user interface is simple and you can start using it directly through Home Assistant settings.

需要更多手動設定,適合進階使用者。

裝置支持

Supported devices are limited and depend on the integration provided by Home Assistant.

Supports more devices, almost all Zigbee devices can be supported (need to check官方支援清單)。

If you want to learn more about the devices supported by ZHA and Z2M, you can refer to the unofficial information jointly maintained by netizens:https://zigbee.blakadder.com/

※ 注意!因為是非官方資訊,所以資訊更新未必即時。

協議靈活性

Using the standard Zigbee protocol, functionality is limited by Home Assistant.

提供更多細緻的功能,如固件升級、自定義裝置名稱、細節參數調整等。

穩定性

穩定性較高,適合家庭使用者和初學者。

Relies on MQTT and external services, stability depends on environment, but powerful.

操作界面

Manage directly from the Home Assistant interface.

Through Zigbee2MQTT's web interface or command line management, the functions are more diverse.

社群支持

官方社群提供基本支持,但資源相對較少。

擁有活躍的開源社群,提供詳細文檔和問題解決支持。

進階功能

The functions are basic and mainly suitable for general Zigbee automation needs.

支援進階功能(如群組控制、裝置指令測試、自定義訊息處理等)。

Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 unboxing

Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 盒裝
Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 盒裝

I'd like to apologize first, I only took the boxed version and forgot to take the actual one😅 But it's easy to imagine that what's inside is actually the Connect ZBT-1 body plus a transmission line. I'll explain why the transmission line is needed later.

Step 1. Installation

There is only one important point in the installation part (maybe one of the few shortcomings of Connect ZBT-1), which is that you cannot directly plug ZBT-1 into the host. Instead, you need to use an extension cable to keep ZBT-1 as far away from the host and the host as possible. Any WiFi 2.4 GHz device will cause mutual interference and is specifically noted in the enclosed manual.

Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 安裝注意事項
Image credit: Home Assistant

Step 2. Configure Connect ZBT-1

  1. Go to "Settings > Devices and Services"
  2. Find "Connect ZBT-1" and click "Add"
image 2
  1. Click "Zigbee" (I won't introduce the Thread connection today, I'll talk about it later😜)
image 3
  1. Click "Send" and "Finish"
image 6
  1. Added "ZBT-1" to the integration
image 7
  1. Click "Create Network" (if you want to restore the original Zigbee network, select "Upload Manual Backup")
image 5

That’s it!

Step 3. Add Zigbee device

There are two paths to operate:

  1. Settings > Devices & Services > Integration > Zigbee Home Automation > Add Device
  2. Settings > Devices & Services > Devices > Add new device

Remember to switch the Zigbee device to pairing mode, and then you can see the Zigbee devices that have not yet joined the network~

image 8

Conclusion

Although ZHA does not support as many devices as Zigbee2MQTT, the installation steps are much simpler, and it is officially supported by HA. Newly launched Zigbee devices are also adding support quickly. If you are not very confident in installing software and debugging yourself, Connect ZBT-1 would be a good choice.

Then you are welcome to join the smart home!

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2 COMMENTS

  1. How to use zha or even z2m to access the device into HA
    Will there be fewer functions?

    For example, after my switch (Aqara z1) is connected to zha
    The switch function cannot be set to lock the relay to switch to wireless switch mode, and the extra wireless switch cannot be used.

    Is there anything else to set?

    Thanks

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recent discussions
  • Jerry 2025/04/14Thank you very much Neil for your selfless sharing. The websites you provided are of great help to me. I will save it first and digest it slowly^^ I also look forward to Neil's industry news and teaching articles in the futureHome Assistant Floor plan A new experience in smart home control with visual floor plan! – Home Assistant step-by-step tutorial EP 6
  • Neil 2025/04/13Hi Jerry, I usually get information about HA from these places: Website: – Home Assistant official Release notes – Automata – Home Automation Community – Weijia Home Intelligence FB Group: – Taiwan Home Assistant enthusiasts exchange – Home Assistant YouTube channel: – Smart Home Solver – Everything Smart Home – Home Assistant Programming language: Strictly speaking, YAML is not really a programming language (let me make this clear in case some people mind 🤣), but if we include these data formats or style languages that “look like” programming languages, and sort them by depth of use in HA (the deeper the bottom, the deeper the bottom): – YAML (data format): a language for configuration files used in many places in the HA environment. – CSS (style language): used to adjust the interface style (font size, color, image, position, etc.). – JSON (data format): If you use Node-RED, you will probably come across it. – Jinja2 (Python template syntax): You may encounter it when you explore automation or Dashboard in depth. ※ But in fact, even if HA does not know the above, it can still make a smart home complete. You don’t have to put so much pressure on yourself, but if you are interested, it is also good to know more. It is actually difficult to generalize about the support of devices. Now, even if the home appliances themselves do not support it, there are still many different ways to connect traditional home appliances to HA. In addition, cases like Haier do require in-depth research. What I usually do is to crawl a lot of information on the Internet, and usually find attempts made by others. It just so happens that when I was looking up other information recently, I saw someone sharing how Haier water heaters were connected to HA. But it is indeed like what you said, if you get involved for a while, you will understand these details more and more. 🤣Home Assistant Floor plan A new experience in smart home control with visual floor plan! – Home Assistant step-by-step tutorial EP 6
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