Need a hub for Home Assistant?

[Manjesh Khanal]

I know this will probably be on Google but would like to get some expert opinions. I currently don’t have an Aqara hub and was looking at buying around 10 zigbee sensors and switches all together. If I setup HomeAssistant with a zigbee dongle is that enough to control my devices without an Aqara hub?

[denis.w]

Yes, that should be fine but a dongle is needed

[JohnD]

Without an Aqara Hub, there are a few minor limitations regarding OTA updates. Please see the following forum post for more information:

Aqara 3rd party OTA

Does Aqara provide OTA firmware updates via 3rd party products like Home Assistant? If not, is there a chance they will start doing this? With the still quickly evolving standard, I feel this is a mandatory feature, as each new version adds functionalities that most devices already expose via ZigBee