Since the Home Assistant Yellow was discontinued, the Open Home Foundation (link) only has one smart home hub of its own on offer: the Home Assistant Green (link). It lacks the integrated Thread Border Router, but the radio can be retrofitted. Nabu Casa, sponsor of Home Assistant, recently began offering a product called Connect ZBT-2 for this purpose (link).
The external, tower-shaped station with an 18-centimeter high antenna (image above) connects via USB to the Home Assistant Green – or to another computer running the open-source smart home software. Home Assistant detects the Connect ZBT-2 upon connection and offers to integrate it. According to the manufacturer, the radio station does not work with other operating systems or platforms.
Usable with either Thread or Zigbee
As with the predecessor ZBT-1, which resembled a USB flash drive, users have a choice: They can use the external hardware to set up either a Thread or a Zigbee network. Currently, Zigbee 3.0 is supported, but Nabu Casa considers a later update to 4.0 possible. Matter over Thread should not be a problem anyway, since Home Assistant is Matter-certified.
The Silicon Labs wireless chip used (MG24) operates faster than the one in the ZBT-1 and is said to provide advantages, particularly with weak signals. The upright rod antenna helps provide better radio coverage for the smart home regardless. The included 1.5-meter USB cable further contributes to improving performance – because it allows the Connect ZBT-2 to be moved out of the radio shadow of walls and furniture or away from the interference of other transmitters.
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