I had been using zigbee2mqtt (from Koenkk see https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt) for some time as my Zigbee network of devices slowly expanded, and noticing that the Hive SLR/SLT devices were at last supported, I decided to take the plunge and move away from relying on BG's cloud for control of my heating in Domoticz/Hive Heating plugin. I had already migrated a few Hive smart bulbs and a Hive smart socket over to my Zigbee network, so migrating the heating/hot water controller seemed the next logical step.
My heating/hot water was/is controlled/scheduled with a dzVents script, so this would need some tweaking. Also, I noticed while researching other user's experience of migrating the hive controllers away from the BG cloud, that there appeared to be very little documentation from other home automation users who had undertaken this migration.
I, therefore, went down the path of purchasing used Hive controllers to allow me to experiment with the Zigbee/MQTT side of getting them to work with my existing network and dzVents heating/how water script. This would allow me to 'play' with a test system without incurring downtime on my existing Hive equipment resulting in a cold house/water!
After some days finding the combination of MQTT publish commands and many changes to my dzVents, I finally had a test system that seemed to mirror my live hardware that was still connected to the Hive cloud. So, at the end of December, I took the plunge and swapped my test and live Hive hardware. So far, I have experienced very few issues with the hardware. Mostly I have had to sort out LUA coding errors.
For anyone else interested in doing something similar, I have documented my experiences at https://github.com/roadsnail/Hive-SLR2- ... h-node-RED. I have also documented a few dzVents snippets there showing MQTT publish topics to switch CH/HW relays.
So...
Do I have any regrets in making this move away from BG?
No, my heating continues to work as it did before I made the change but without the worry that BG changes/cloud outage may cause issues.
Is it reliable?
It is no less reliable than the previous setup using the BG Hive Hub. On occasions, my Hive boiler controller and/or thermostat when paired to the Hive Zigbee Hub would go offline requiring a power-cycle. Since the end of December and the migration to my local Zigbee network, I have been monitoring the Zigbee connection to the Hive equipment and have experienced just one Zigbee network dropout which I believe was caused by my Zigbee USB dongle (CC2531) locking up. My hunch is this was due to a poor quality USB extension cable and after soldering a capacitor directly across the +5V dongle pins (see https://github.com/roadsnail/Hive-SLR2- ... -stability), have not experienced any more Zigbee network 'glitches'.
Pre-requisites for this solution:
0. Domoticz
1. A working Zigbee network. In my case I use Koenkk's zigbee2MQTT software and a CC2531 Zigbee USB dongle programmed with Koenkk's firmware
2. MQTT Broker software. This acts as the software bridge between zigbee2mqtt and Domoticz. It is loaded and runs on my Domoticz RPi4.
3. Optionally node-RED software. I used this to allow me to experiment with MQTT sequences to switch the boiler controller relays. node-RED is not essential to this project, however, it is tremendous fun to programme in and runs quite happily on my RPi4 alongside Domoticz and MQTT Broker.
