Please clear something up for me, these are “bridge adapters”, right?
A zigbee gateway is a different thing and it’s like a router for zigbee devices but zigbee2mqtt cannot talk to these. It can only talk through adapter/bridge, is this correct?
Are these adapters all USB based or are there any standalone that works over wifi ?
Gateway, adaptor, coordinator, these are all the same thing. The device that interfaces zigbee devices to z2m.
Routing devices (generally mains powered) can extend your zigbee network mesh by communicating with each other and the coordinator. Having a lot of routing devices makes for a robust mesh network.
End devices (generally battery powered) need to connect to a routing device or directly to the coordinator.
I don’t know of any wifi devices but there are PoE network devices. e.g. https://tubeszb.com/ (I can recommend these highly). Handy for positioning your coordinator centrally in your house in a favourable location away from interference and shielding metal.
Tubes does ship internationally. It the coordinator you want is out of stock, jump on the waiting list. Usually it’s only a day or two before you can order. It’s a small operation and they are made to order.
So in case you buy in europe (and don’t import from overseas) you have all legally binding warranties that by law apply. In the EU that mostly means a vendor needs to grand warranty for hardware even when the owner changes/alters the software. Obviously if a hardware failure is directly caused by the modified software and the vendor can proof that () no reimbursement applies.
I’ve read that article twice, and that directive doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The mention of software is a reference to software blocking, where the software will detect that a piece of hardware has been replaced and throw an error.
A broad example of this is printers (HP) which will not print if the ink cartridge is a third-party one. A more specific example is some iphones will not let you replace the screen yourself (even if you’re using an original part) - you get a permanent notification and features like auto brightness are disabled unless you take it to their repair centre.
Flashing your own firmware or software is definitely not covered by this, and will never be.
The scope of this legislation only applies to some appliances and a smaller subset of electronic products (TVs, phones, tablets & servers).
You could try to argue that a PC might be considered a server, given it’s suspiciously missing from that list. However I doubt you’d manage to convince anyone how an IOT product (even a zigbee bridge) could be considered as being in scope.
Scroll down to the last paragraph of the analysis (Notes section 7) and it says specifically that home automation products are not covered by this.
Just because the directive was adopted doesn’t mean it is in effect. Individual countries have up to 2 years to transpose this into their own laws. This means that anything you currently own and anything you buy up to the next couple of years will not be covered.