That is absolutely amazing

Let’s say you have 2 scripts that do some stuff:

• script A: turns a light pink for 20 seconds and then through a smart speaker you can hear 30 seconds of La Macarena.
• script B: send 25 notifications to your phone, spaced by 30 seconds, in which each notification is a different letter of an encrypted message.

If you want those things to happen independently you must parallelize them.

So think about an automation that at a certain point you want to launch multiple scripts. I’d always parallelize, even if initially these scripts were “instantaneous”, because you might change these and add more complexities in the future.

Parallel stuff is also used for… Well, some sequences you want to run in parallel.

Also, test your automations! Specially those critical. It’s very essy, you can virtually trigger them.

I use ZHA. As I have a Pi, I prefer the less addons the better, and there are ZHA devices for everything. It simply narrows down the spectrum, but overtime it’s coming closer and closer to Z2M in terms of device support and features… So…

There is also Matter and Thread on the horizon, so I wouldn’t bother complicating things further.

Also bought an ESP and some components but haven’t yet done anything.

Just make sure you have a prototyping board.

I hate soldering, so I will only cross that road once I have a very solid project and idea.

Are those shortcut buttons? How?m

That is for waking from sleep, or from shutdown?

It’s just qBitTorrent (except I think the Qt dependencies are gone and it’s full webUI) + some easy OpenVPN configuration if you are into that.

Why I have it as an add-on? Well, I run HAOS in a Raspberry Pi, very low consumption device, so having qBitTorrent seeding 100% of the time with such low consumption makes me happy as I am making everyone happy too.

So far so good. I honestly use it because I bought a couple of things before realising the world of ZHA existed.

I don’t use Zigbee2MQTT, I just buy appropiate ZHA hardware to keep things simple.

Addons: qBitTorrent, VS Code, File Browser, Advanced Terminal

Integrations: Google Cloud (Text-to-Speech), Haier hOn, Samsung SmartThings, Tuya.

https://zigbee.blakadder.com/

I was surprised by this, but if you care about the environment and need some coin cell sensors (or simply already have them) there actually exist rechargable coin batteries.

Did you check the ZHA compatibility list? Find it, and stick to it.

I suggest limiting yourself to ZHA, which is natively supported by Home Assistant, specially in these early stages.

I am doing that, and essentially waiting until Matter becomes the bigger protocol.

I guess you are asking this question because you want it to be a Zigbee router (or whatever it’s called).

Yeah, I just started and the fact that ZHA was “already there” was a huge plus for me.

I just hope Matter catches up before I find a limitation in ZHA.

• I am sure you have at least a couple of instances in a week where you go “damn, I forgot to switch the lights”.
• You are tired on your sofa and wanna watch a movie but the lights are too bright.
• You want to simulate someone is home so you don’t get robbed.
• meeting mode: warning them with a red bulb in the living room, and lowering the TVs volume all in just a click, while ensuring that your robot vacuum stops cleaning and resumes later.
• get a warning that your room’s humidity level is high, and directly offering a button for launching AC.

All those things I have not done, yet. I don’t even have the Zigbee dongle. But surely through the following months and years I will find little things that I could do that sum up to a lot of comfort and saving time.

Also, relay switches and sensors are so cheap it can simply be a fun hobby.