The new SNZB-02UL caught my attention, although not because I personally need another temperature sensor with a display. I already have Inkplates, which give me much more freedom in what and how I display.
What I find more interesting is the approach behind the product. SONOFF is now quite explicit about Home Assistant, ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT support, rather than simply saying that a device is “compatible with HA”.
I’ve been suggesting something along these lines on the forum for quite a while: keep developing the eWeLink ecosystem, of course, but design the hardware so that Home Assistant is a first-class option as well. There is no reason these approaches have to compete.
This actually opens a much larger market for SONOFF. There are plenty of HA users who don’t want another proprietary cloud ecosystem, but are perfectly happy to buy well-designed Zigbee hardware. If word gets around that SONOFF devices offer proper, native HA support, that’s a pretty strong selling point by itself.
So, yes, I’m a little late to the party with this particular product - I suggested something similar here before I bought my Inkplates. But the more interesting part is that SONOFF seems to have finally understood the broader point: you don’t have to give up your own ecosystem to make your hardware work really well with someone else’s.
That’s a direction I’d be happy to see them continue.
I have been running Sonoff hardware with HA for almost all hardware, save for the hibs (RP5- because of Sonoff delayed release of new Ihost); Door locks and wall sockets (because Sonoff doesn’t produce them) .
All along Sonoff has worked natively with HA. What Sonoff needs to do is to get an official badge of “working with HA”, just a label, because Sonoff has been working pretty fine with HA.
And above all the reliability of Sonoff products is great!
I think we’re talking about two slightly different things here. Yes, SONOFF hardware has often been usable with Home Assistant. But that is not the same as SONOFF explicitly designing and positioning its products as first-class Home Assistant devices. For example, community integrations could make them work, but that’s a different thing.
With Zigbee, many devices worked because they followed the Zigbee standard closely enough, or because the HA community added the necessary quirks/converters. Matter devices are, of course, interoperable by design.
What caught my attention with the new SNZB-02UL is that SONOFF is now explicitly presenting Home Assistant, ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT support as part of the product story.
That’s the change I was talking about. Not “can I somehow make this SONOFF device work with HA?” = we’ve been able to do that for quite a while. The interesting question is whether SONOFF is now starting to treat HA compatibility as something worth deliberately designing for and communicating as a feature.
If so, I think that’s a very positive direction for them.
But the more interesting part is that SONOFF seems to have finally understood the broader point: you don’t have to give up your own ecosystem to make your hardware work really well with someone else’s.