[REQUEST] Zeroconf support to cyijun OpenZ3Gateway for Home Assistant ZHA network discovery

[Hedda]

Please consider adding Zeroconf support to cyijun OpenZ3Gateway firmware for automatic ZHA network discovery.

Home Assistant OS (formerly HASSIO) support automatic network scanning and “Service Discovery” via Zeroconf and when a whitelisted Zigbee serial gateway is discovered it can pass along that to a domain like the ZHA integration component in Home Assistant.

For more details see:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zha-automatic-discovery-of-zigbee-coordinator-bridges-gateways-ethernet-wifi-network-devices-that-support-zeroconf-or-ssdp/293300

As a proof-of-concept this is now supported by Tube's Zigbee gateways (based on ESPHome firmware):

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#discovery-via-usb-or-zeroconf

https://github.com/tube0013/tube_gateways

Once support for Zeroconf has been added to the firmware you also need the firmware to provide DNS TXT records for passing along setting parameters to integration config flows.

DNS TXT records could be used to pass along recommended settings parameters config flow to Home Assistant's ZHA integration:

radio_type=znp
baud_rate=value
data_flow_control=software
tcp_port_serial_gateway=value
Zeroconf DNS TXT records could also be used to pass along hostname, versions, location, MAC address, and more, etc..

http://www.zeroconf.org/Rendezvous/txtrecords.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-configuration_networking#DNS-based_service_discovery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TXT_record

More information about idea of using DNS TXT records for passing along setting parameters in https://github.com/thegroove/esphome-zbbridge#1 and https://github.com/thegroove/esphome-zha-ezsp-zeroconf

[cyijun]

Thank you! It's very interesting, I will have a try😋

[Hedda]

FYI, Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) looks to have been changed and improved in the Home Assistant 2022.02 release:

home-assistant/core#62133

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

This change is only a concern for custom integration developers.

Currently zeroconf matching only allows matching the macaddress, model, and manufacturer properties along with the name from the ZeroconfServiceInfo.

Since properties are arbitrarily defined by the zeroconf service, the list of named properties has grown over time.

Matching now allows for any arbitrarily defined property. All property matches must be lowercase, wildcards are supported

The top level keys model, manufacturer, and macaddress are now deprecated from components manifest.json file and should be moved into a properties dict.

For example:

-    {"type":"_airplay._tcp.local.","model":"appletv*"}
+    {"type":"_airplay._tcp.local.","properties":{"model":"appletv*"}}

[cyijun]

Thanks, I am coding the new one, what a coincidence😄

[Hedda]

By the way, Home Assistant founders/leads now explicitly said this year they will prioritize focus on features like these types:

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2022/01/19/streamlining-experiences/

Check out this video at around 11 min 55 sec in where talk about that focus point about making it easier to get started, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_2D_KoFIfU&t=710s

Hopefully, it should be a greater chance of getting more help from other Home Assistant developers with this if ask them.

[Hedda]

FYI, PR for ZiGate's Zeroconf has been merged in Home Assistant core making it an example for adding additional more readable:

home-assistant/core#68577

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/dev/homeassistant/components/zha/manifest.json#L85-L88

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/dev/homeassistant/components/zha/config_flow.py#L198-L201

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/dev/tests/components/zha/test_config_flow.py#L80-L107

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/blob/dev/homeassistant/generated/zeroconf.py#L384-L389