Is the SMHUB NANO the best zigbee stick out there?

<p><strong>Title:</strong> Is the SMHUB Nano the best zigbee stick out there?<br><strong>Channel:</strong> HA Dashboards</p><p>I got another package. Let's look inside together. It is a new <strong>SMHUB Nano Mg24</strong> from <strong>SMLIGHT</strong> and their <strong>SLZB-07p7</strong> Zigbee stick.</p><p><strong>SMLIGHT</strong> actually sent me both devices to test on the channel. However, they didn't pay me any money or see the video before release, so all of the opinions in this video are my own. To be completely transparent though, I am already a happy customer of <strong>SMLIGHT</strong>, as I have bought and used the <strong>SLZB-06p7</strong> Zigbee adapter for quite some time now, so I might be a little biased.</p><p>Let's unbox our new Zigbee stick together, and I can tell you a little bit about the differences while we do it. The <strong>SMHUB Nano Mg24</strong> is, in my opinion, the continuation of their Ethernet adapters. However, besides working as a Zigbee coordinator or router, it is operating as a smart hub. This means you have the ability to actually install apps like Zigbee2MQTT or Tailscale on it. The benefit of it is that your Zigbee network stays up even if your Home Assistant server is down.</p><p>The <strong>SLZB-07p7</strong> is the exact opposite. It's a stripped-down version of the Ethernet adapters. It just features the radio and can be used like any other Zigbee stick connected to your Home Assistant instance. Perfect for you if you just need a good Zigbee stick and your Home Assistant server is in a central location in your house.</p><p>Before we dive into the new products, let me quickly show you my current setup. Here you can see my <strong>SLZB-06p7</strong> Ethernet adapter. I'm using it as a coordinator for my Zigbee network. This is the control panel for it. Here we can change the mode, and it shows us how to configure everything.</p><p>I'm using the adapter with Zigbee2MQTT, which is running on my Home Assistant server. It uses Mosquitto as an MQTT broker, which also runs on my Home Assistant server. I had to configure the adapter under options in the Zigbee2MQTT app configuration. Once it was set up, it has been working almost flawlessly for me, and I'm very happy with the performance.</p><p>When I moved to the new house, I noticed that my Zigbee network wasn't as stable anymore due to the fact that the new flat is much bigger. So, I reached out to <strong>SMLIGHT</strong> to try one of the new products. So, let's take a look, and at the end I will show you how I incorporated them into my current setup.</p><p>So, I set up the <strong>SMHUB Nano Mg24</strong> in my living room via a PoE switch, and I found the IP address through my router. When opening the IP address in my browser, this is a new dashboard we find. The first thing we should probably do is to check if there's any updates. You can do so by clicking the icon at the top. Let's update real quick.</p><p>I also rebooted the device once it was back up. I read the latest release notes on the dashboard page. We are welcomed to the SMHUB as an early adopter. <strong>SMLIGHT</strong> is still actively working on this device and not all functionality is here yet. However, even today it already has quite a lot to offer. I recommend you open the early adopter quick start guide, as it helped me a lot in the process.</p><p>Before we set up Zigbee2MQTT, I recommend also setting the correct time zone and upgrading the installed apps. We can set the correct time zone under settings.</p><p>I was impressed. I actually had some problems with installing or upgrading the apps. I would always just get an error and the device would be stuck rebooting for quite a while. I am not sure why this happened. What I did is I exchanged the Ethernet cable for a different one, and I afterwards upgraded all the installed packages. Especially upgrading SMHUB services seemed to help a lot. So, if you're running into the issue, try to upgrade the packages or exchange your Ethernet cable.</p><p>To upgrade the packages, we have to refresh the app page and then afterwards we can upgrade NodeJS, SMHUB services, and SMHUB web. If you're using Zigbee2MQTT, I also recommend to upgrade it as well. Once I did that, I could also install Tailscale as an additional app with no problems, which we will look at a little bit later.</p><p>First, let's check out how easy it is to get Zigbee2MQTT running in the SMHUB. [music] We already saw that it is installed, and to be honest, we don't have to do much more. Under Apps, when we click on Zigbee2MQTT, we get to the settings here. Everything is pretty much already configured for us: the correct serial port, baud rate, and adapter, and also Mosquitto as an MQTT broker is built in. I recommend that you turn on start on boot, but that's pretty much it.</p><p>When we go into Zigbee2MQTT on the sidebar, we can just start adding devices. Adding devices is super easy as well. [music] We allow joining on the left side and put our device in pairing mode. I'm adding a motion sensor as a test. Here you can see it already. We can change a name and we can see the state changes. Works like a charm.</p><p>To add [music] the entities to Home Assistant, we just have to add the MQTT integration. For that, we have to go back to settings and add a user and password under MQTT. With the login and the IP address of our <strong>SMHUB Nano Mg24</strong>, it is super easy to add them to Home Assistant.</p><p>So, what are the benefits of this compared to a regular Zigbee stick? The biggest benefit is probably that your Zigbee network is not dependent on your Home Assistant server. Even if your Home Assistant server is down, your Zigbee network stays up. If you are binding switches to lights directly in Zigbee2MQTT, this would mean your lighting system is completely independent.</p><p>Another big benefit is that you can install additional apps. Let's actually do that real quick and set up Tailscale. After you install it through the app page, we have to start it. I had a visual bug here where it always said that the app is stopped even though it was running. To set up Tailscale, we can use the starting guide. They have an easy-to-follow tutorial.</p><p>We have to start Tailscale. [music] It will print a login URL. Copy this and follow the steps to log into your Tailscale account. Now you can see my SMHUB is now part of my Tailscale network.</p><p>Another great benefit of the SMHUB is that it can work together with the Zigbee sticks. I added mine to the SMHUB, and here you can see it detected it under USB. We can now use the second antenna with another app like OpenThread, making the SMHUB even more flexible.</p><p>Lastly, I want to show you how I will be using the <strong>SMHUB Nano Mg24</strong> in my current setup. Ultimately, I will probably move Zigbee2MQTT and Mosquitto over. However, before I do that, I will use it as an additional Zigbee router in my network. To do that, we have to change the radio under settings. For radio one, we pick Zigbee router and check for updates. Now we select the latest firmware and install.</p><p>Once that is done, all we have to do is allow join in our Zigbee2MQTT instance and the SMHUB will join as a new router. Now my Zigbee network should be super stable again as I have another router that I was able to place at a central location because of the Ethernet design of <strong>SMLIGHT</strong>.</p><p>Ultimately, I'm really happy with the products of <strong>SMLIGHT</strong> and I have recommended them in the past. That's why I was very happy that they sent over some products for me to show you. I think they have a product for a lot of different scenarios. If you just want a Zigbee stick, an Ethernet adapter, or a smart hub, they got you covered.</p><p>I hope you enjoyed this video. It was the first tech review that I have done, so please let me know in the comments what you think. I hope this video gave you some inspiration for your own smart home setup. Let me know if you use <strong>SMLIGHT</strong> products before and if they worked well for you as well.</p><p>If you enjoyed the video, I would really appreciate it if you like the video and subscribe to my channel. If you need any help with your setup, feel free to join our Discord server. Check out my other videos in which I create custom cards, show off cool Home Assistant cards, and a tour of my personal dashboard. Right now, we are also doing regular live streams to design a new dashboard for 2026. It's a very fun way to engage with the community, and I'm always happy to see you there. Until then, thanks for watching. [music] [music]</p>