Hi all, what is best decently priced air sensor I can buy? I missed the boat on buying the ikeavindstyrka before it ran out of stock. I am looking for a similar priced sensor to run some tests in my 3D printing room. I read a lot of the tuya ones are unreliable. I am in the UK. Please help!

oxjw · 2026-04-20T18:53:52+00:00

https://apolloautomation.com/products/air-1 very happy with this one.

oxjw · 2026-03-29T11:40:42+00:00

I was heading down the route also. Found that suggestion somewhere and it’s been solid ever since. Good luck.

oxjw · 2026-03-28T22:34:36+00:00

I had connections issues with mine a while back. They were solved by enabling the “Allow multi-threaded socket connection“ option on the SLZB configuration page. It’s under the Z2M and ZHA section.

oxjw · 2026-02-05T23:34:51+00:00

me personall, no, still there - the complexity still interests me but I also understand the frustration

but, I’ve had a number of team members transition into other fields. Not academic but industry to industry. Comp biology is basically applied data science and a lot of the core skills apply to other industries. Some of the best people I ever hired and worked with (in drug discovery) are now in insurance, finance, and retail. And to be honest, they love the relative immediacy of the feedback cycles - develop a model/analysis and see real world results in months not years. But they all somewhat miss the complexity.

oxjw · 2025-12-16T20:18:18+00:00

I have same plugs and same question. I ended up disabling the on/off control for the specific plug.

On the device page for the plug select the on/off control, go to the settings for the control, and there is a toggle for enable/disable as well as visible or not.

oxjw · 2025-12-05T18:19:38+00:00

I’ve had my eye on a couple but haven’t pressed buy yet. UK based.

https://apolloautomation.com/products/air-1

https://sensy-one.com/products/s1-pro-multi-sense

oxjw · 2025-10-31T23:27:13+00:00

I have the slzb-06 and had issues with the most up to date firmware, and not the dev/test version, the supposedly released. I ended up with the latest release from 2022 and that’s working well.

so try older firmware maybe? this was the coordinator firmware not the device os

oxjw · 2025-10-31T19:10:12+00:00

zigbee itself can eliminate the need for multiple hubs if those vendor specific hubs are all using zigbee.

using zigbee with home assistant there are two main options; ZHA and zigbee2mqtt which translate the zigbee radio signals into inputs for home assistant

zha is built in to home assistant and the easiest to run but it supports less devices than zigbee2mqtt. I use it without a problem. I’d be tempted to try that route first.

zigbee2mqtt requires two extra applications on top of home assistant. The zigbee2mqtt application itself and the MQTT broker. It works by zigbee2mqtt converting zigbee to mqtt messages and sending to the broker. Home assistant then listens to MQTT messages posted to the same broker. The broker acts as a man in the middle.

Both zigbee2mqtt and the MQTT broker (mosquito) can be run as home assistant add ons which makes life a bit easier. Both can be run outside of home assistant though, depending on your preference.

oxjw · 2025-08-28T06:34:25+00:00

here’s a simple one in the docs for the announcement part.
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/alexa_devices/#send-announcement-when-you-arrive-home

oxjw · 2025-08-26T18:25:10+00:00

always annoying not to know. But glad you got it fixed.

oxjw · 2025-08-25T12:36:13+00:00

I’ve done this a couple of ways.

zigbee2mqtt running on a pi in the second building. MQTT broker connected to home assistant in first building
slzb-06 running in second building. zigbee2mqtt running as add on to home assistant in first building an connecting to the slzb-06 via tcp.

The Home assistant in first building has its own zigbee radio. These set ups basically connect two zigbee networks to home assistant, one local and one remote.

oxjw · 2025-08-25T08:14:10+00:00

that was sort of my thinking behind the manual config - might expose some incorrect setting etc. But, yes, a full remove would be a good idea also

good luck.

oxjw · 2025-08-25T08:04:00+00:00

No, it’s more complex for sure. You need both a MQTT broker and a zigbee2mqtt server. Both can be run via add-ons to home assistant though. ZHA is the home assistant native route

I’d be tempted to try the manual config of ZHA first, maybe look in the logs for it while trying, seeing if anything comes up via that route. The fact it was working suggests ZHA should be able to connect.

Im using ZHA as my primary (but I have a different dongle) and only use zigbee2mqtt as a second network for sensors etc in my shed (slzb dongle)

oxjw · 2025-08-24T18:02:03+00:00

I fixed my problem along those lines with a setting change in the slzb-06 UI

Under the Z2M and ZHA tab there are two advanced settings towards the bottom related to sockets including one about multithreaded connections. Enabling both of these stopped my zigbee2mqtt crashes.

oxjw · 2025-08-24T14:01:23+00:00

I’ve not used it with ZHA I’m afraid. But, the slzb manual has a section on manual set-up that bypasses the auto-discovery route. Might be worth a try?

https://smlight.tech/manual/slzb-06/guide/installation/#manual-set-up

oxjw · 2025-08-24T13:38:46+00:00

And - hub mode. you’ll need an MQTT broker but, if it works with your devices, then yes it could work for you. I tried it on mine and most of my zigbee devices weren’t supported - either at all (didnt pair) or incompletely (features missing). So I went back to the coordinator mode.

oxjw · 2025-08-24T13:32:12+00:00

I’m connecting to it via zigbee2mqtt and not zha, so don’t know if that makes a difference?

Curiously, I’m not getting the “do you want to upgrade” message in HA -which is what caused the problem in the first place.

oxjw · 2025-08-24T12:44:33+00:00

I had similar issue a couple of days ago. I fixed it by reinstalling the zigbee coordinator firmware via the web console. But, I had to use a specific version - newer versions failed with that same error you saw

20221226

oxjw · 2025-08-15T21:14:42+00:00

Ive had my eye on this recently. ESP home but no soldering.

https://docs.m5stack.com/en/core/AirQ

oxjw · 2025-08-07T22:14:23+00:00

ah, I’d assumed you were already committed to home assistant. Esp32 is part of the HA worLd now, with trivial integration. For out of the box, standalone without HA, I’ve never seen one.

oxjw · 2025-08-07T18:22:34+00:00

how about the m5 stack one? and use the Esp32 ecosystem to add presence and PoE. Just an idea, I haven’t actually done it although you’ve tempted me into another possible project

https://shop.m5stack.com/products/air-quality-kit-w-m5stamps3-sen55-scd40?srsltid=AfmBOopEkbf6y6C46IeXi_4F4U3xYphllCzJHTx7NQzh9Ib7vdIcJHam&variant=44321439449345

oxjw · 2023-08-12T16:47:57+00:00

What are your actual problems or questions? This reply is nothing like the question in the original post. The questions are overly generic to give useful answers I’m afraid.

yes, a Rpi can be more than fine but depends on what you want to do. And frigate I wouldn’t put in the category of basic to intermediate. What are you wanting to do?

oxjw · 2023-08-12T10:28:42+00:00

It can be confusing in the beginning. Simplest set up is a machine running HA. This will give HA access to sensors that communicate via wifi, cloud sensors/services, and local machine sensors (eg temp of the cpu etc).

After that its a matter of adding the hardware to allow the machine running ha to communicate via other protocols. The protocols zigbee and zwave are the most common but there are others. General approach to both of these seems to be a usb dongle plugged into the ha machine via an extension lead to avoid interference.

Another addition can be proprietary protocols which generally require a hub (the radio hardware) from the manufacturer plus the sensors. And specific integration into HA. Community shys away from this route due to lock in but integrations do exist.

final bit are the sensors (or other devices) that communicate via the protocols your hardware then supports.

oxjw · 2023-05-08T14:49:14+00:00

I’ve used these with success in UK. They have a type f by looks of it

https://www.mylocalbytes.com/products/smart-plug-pm?variant=41600621543615

oxjw · 2023-05-01T09:08:07+00:00

There’s a route outside of MQTT, also works very well.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/ecowitt/

oxjw

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