If you are spoiled by wifi (range, pentration, availabilty, update frequency, resilence,…) you might have a hard time with ZigBee. Not only do you need to create a new infrastructure from the ground, it’s repeater also have much lower range/penetration compared what WiFi repaters/AP are capable. Eventually you will also find out that not all zigbee AC powered devices actually act as routers.
Yes, and if you have esp32 based espHome devices that could act as BLE receivers/proxies that might be some easy additional path without building everything from ground
Zigbee is a low-power protocol and easily overwhelmed by nearby devices on the same frequency band. It’s called desense. It’s like trying to hold a quiet conversation during a touchdown at a football game. This is where routers are useful.
My home network has over 100 WiFi clients and a couple of dozen Zigbee, plus a few Z-wave devices. My Home Assistant server and the Zigbee (and Z-wave) dongles are in the basement, and I have eight of these routers (about $10 on Amazon) scattered about the house. No Zigbee end device is more than three meters from a router.
The number of WiFi clients is mostly irrelevant. Most of the time they are radio-quiet. They only send data when asked for it. Like a command to turn on a light, or the light responding with a status. (Zigbee likewise is a “burst” protocol). WiFi cameras on the other hand are constantly sending data, but I have eight WiFi cameras around my house and my WiFi and Zigbee networks are working fine.
You were correct. They are routers because they participate in deciding on the best route for signals to reach their destination. A repeater, like a WiFi repeater, simply receives a signal then resends it.
This has never been an issue here as long as your coordinator (USB Dongle) is operating on Zigbee V3 protocol. The protocol is backwards compatible with older Zigbee devices.
Tips:
USB3. The data rate of USB3 generates harmonics in the 2.4GHz frequency range. This is why it is recommended for the USB dongle (coordinator) to be at least one-meter from the host computer.
Pairing. Whenever possible pair new devices directly on the coordinator- not through routers. Every hop through a router cuts the data rate significantly and can cause a pairing failure.
Updates. Don’t. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Like pairing through routers, updates transfer a lot of data to the end device and every hop through a router slows the process. If your end device is three or four routers from the coordinator, forget it. An update takes hours and is likely to fail. device_firmware is an entity, just set it to off and you won’t ever be told of updates available.
You need to have enough Zigbee routers for a stable Zigbee signal. I’ve been using Z2M and ZHA over the past two years and have been flip-flopping between the two and have also ran both at the same time, both with their own coordinators.
For Z2M:
TI CC2652P is great and most stable, also works great for ZHA.
Good coordinators: Sonoff ZBDongle-P or SMLight SLZB-06.
For ZHA:
SL EFR32MG21 is great and stable.
Good coordinators: HA Connect ZBT-1, HA Yellow, Sonoff ZBDongle-E or SMLight SLZB-06M.
Be sure to use an USB2 extension cable if you are using an USB based coordinator. To prevent interference from the USB3 bus.
You also need to separate the channels of your 2.4Ghz Wifi and Zigbee to not overlap. I have all my four Unifi AP’s across my house and garden at 2.4Ghz Channel 1 and my ZHA network on Zigbee Channel 20. Had Z2M before on Zigbee Channel 25.
This way there is ‘zero’ overlap between the 2.4Ghz channels. Of course I still have neighbours that still overlap, but their signals are a lot weaker so they don’t cause issues for my networks.
It really depends on the types of devices how stable the whole network is, one device can take the whole network down if it is glitching. I am not using any of the Tuya Zigbee based devices as many of them can cause quite some issues. Especially in ZHA, as almost all of them need a special quirk as the Tuya Zigbee devices are rarely following the Zigbee spec.
All my 102 Zigbee devices have been rock solid since the last move back to ZHA two months ago. I only use Philips Hue for lighting, they are great routers for the Zigbee network.
There never will be just a repeater. That’s not how Zigbee, Thread or Zwave is designed.
You just need enough Zigbee routers.
Almost any mains powered (110V/230V) Zigbee product is a Zigbee router and will enhance the Zigbee signal. Of my 102 Zigbee devices 67 are routers.
There are some Zigbee routers that only provide the routing function like you are looking for. But the easiest are probably still a power plug or light (bulb).
The later ones can cause quite some troubles when not permanently powered. Actually some brands already stopped completely shipping ZigBee bulbs with router capabilities
3 meters away from a repeater should/could still work with ZigBee
Just had a quick look at my zigbee network and the nearest device to the coordinator is just over 4m away. All devices are at least 2m apart. There are 28 devices and the network spans 25m x 7m over 2 floors. It is rock solid these days, but when i first started the network it was quite flakey. There are 15 routers in my network. According to the map one of my plugs has a direct connection to the coordinator from 12m away.
My network was sorted out by a combination of channel management and use of more routers, which in its self remove some of the WIFi plugs from the situation. The wifi plugs have since been repurposed around the house with no effect on the zigbee stuff.
Just found out that a brand I have several devices from has started selling a Zigbee Range Extender, it’s a Zigbee 3.0 router with built-in backup battery:
It is basically a stripped down version of this one, without the siren part:
I tried their siren in the past, but I found the sound to be lacking volume for a siren. For a Siren I am using one from Bosch, which is very loud, especially when put inside:
For me, home automation is Zigbee first and WiFi if the device doesn’t exist in Zigbee. Zigbee is much more suitable, WiFi quickly becomes problematic (change of SSID, password, router failure, etc.).
Personally, I have 51 devices currently connected to WiFi via 4 WiFi antennas and 73 Zigbee devices (via Zigbee2MQTT), and I’ve never had any problems.
My light switches are Zigbee and therefore act as routers, I even have devices outside 10m from my house and there again no problem.
You have to check whether there are enough routers. After that, I generally avoid cheap Zigbee devices from AliExpress…
Most of my peripherals are Aqara, Philips Hue, Sonoff,… A few no-name devices, some of which work well and others which have never wanted to work.
Just to close out my issue here - I took delivery 2 weeks back of two ‘repeaters’ little USB things, placed them strategically, and no zigbee issue since. They were only 7 buchs each (aussie). The map seems to show lots of routes between stuff now which I suspect is by design. I also added a zigbee downlight to the outside so they all only go on when a person is seen from the cameras, not just leaves and branches like the dumb doorway downlight had.
Yes ZigBee uses a mesh network to facilitate communication between devices. Some devices have the ability to extend the mesh(just like repeaters) and others are simply End Devices.
Adding repeaters to your network was a good call and helps with network stability.
Zigbee devices do not have to be that close to the coordinator or a router. I have end devices that are at least 25 feet or more from the closest router that is dependable day in and day out with zero issues. I honestly wouldn’t want to go much farther however. Yes it is important to fill your mesh with repeaters. That is a fact. A good rule of thumb is 5 end devices to every repeater /router give or take a couple.
I have three separate zigbee meshes in my home (long story) and on each as repeaters I use plugs and bulbs as repeaters. Third Reality makes a good repeater in both plugs and bulbs. Innr bulbs are good repeaters. Sengled by design does not repeat. If you need MMWave sensors the Linptech sensors are excellent repeaters.
One of the biggest things is channel selection and that will make a world of difference. Wifi will win over zigbee every time if their channels are overlapping and will destroy your zigbee performance. My wifi is on channel 11. I run my three zigbee meshes on channel 20, 15, and 11. 20 and 15 catches the wifi channel end lobes but I have no issues. Zigbee Channel 11 is on the other end of the spectrum.
Another good rule of thumb is don’t increase your coordinator power no higher than absolutely necessary. Sure you will broadcast it’s signal father but you have 2 issues. One issue is you get the signal out there but the end device may not be able to get its signal back. The second issue is if you crank the coordinator power up you are making the entire mesh louder and can disrupt the transmission channels causing instability.
Moral of the story is zigbee can be a very stable and well performing mesh once it is set up and maintained. It can just take a little trial and error and patience to get there.
