zigbee2mqtt VS vernemq

Have you considered Zigbee2mqtt[0]? You'd be running an extra program, but the docs are really good, it's pretty lightweight, and MQTT is incredibly easy to talk to from python or basically anything else.

[0] - https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/

For Zigbee, I can recommend using the Zigbee2MQTT (https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/) integration instead of HomeAssistant's built-in ZHA system. It might be a bit more complex to set up, but it's very powerful and works fantastically. (User "simon42" on YouTube has some good videos about the topic, but they're in German.)

This is definitely better than many of the alternatives but still not perfect. With Zigbee etc you end up locked into one or more of the ecosystems, not to mention some manufacturers implementing it in a way that has weird quirks (see [1]). With esphome you have a limited choice of devices (would love to see more), but you also usually end up locked into keeping a 2.4GHz WPA2 AP for your devices (and you miss out on mesh, but also the problems when it doesn't work...)

1: https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/issues/16717

I can recommend this: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/

You can keep your Hue bulbs and devices but threw away the app, hub, and need to work with hue as an institution at all.

I got a $30 USB zigbee stick to replace the hub. works great!

It looks like it uses zigbee? If you have a server you could run zigbee2mqtt. You'd also need a zigbee dongle / adapter.

\also posted on the z2m* github device discussion board

If you want to use HA on your phone, you would need to install it on the pi, along with either ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT for the Zigbee network interface. Debian alone won't be able to interface with most of your smart devices.

I still haven't understood if the devices will change the path using the better route or not (since I've just tested a bTicino switch K4003C and it keeps using the worst path with 1 or 0 signal quality over a near Ikea repeater with a signal quality of 50).

Shameless plug since i'm a contributor but VerneMQ [1] is a pretty programmable one. You have options from using webhooks to writting your plugins in Lua or Erlang/Elixir.

* https://github.com/vernemq/vernemq

I do know a real world use for Erlang (it also surprised me when i investigated about it), but two of the biggest mqtt brokers are coded in erlang: emqx, vernemq

The VerneMQ bugtracker scares me. Especially this one: https://github.com/vernemq/vernemq/issues/1663. I'm running one instance but I'm on the lookout for an alternative that can more reliably save messages if a subscription client goes down.

vernemq: https://github.com/vernemq/vernemq