I am a bit late for the review, but I finally found some spare time to test it (sorry)
The price is more than fair, the shipping (considering me being in Austria as well) was fast, and h4nc started working on the order as soon as he got my request!
The way he secured the package, the mailman would be able to play golf with the package and the inside would not be harmed at all. (he also did not skimp on the bubblewrap )
To test it I was writing a quick automation to send me a telegram notification on the push of a xiaomi button.
I live in an older apartment with thick walls. Before I was using a self flashed CC2531 without antenna. The range of it was barely going out of the living room where the pi with the CC2531 was stationed.
When I tried the one that h4nc sent with the antenna, I had good coverage all over the apartment. I was going as far as going outside (I live in the 2nd floor) and still was able to receive the telegram message on the push of a button for more than I imagined!
All in all, happy costumer here. Can only recommend him - thank you
I made some changes to the milight hub too. The model with the external antenna got an LED which shows the the state of the hub (does the same like the internal LED, so it is configurable in the UI). The LED blinks through the logo (letters Mi). The Antenna outlet is on the side now (not on the top any more). Both the USB cable and the antenna went to the same side. I also added the option to get a white antenna for the Milight hub. Mind that the NRF module isn’t always red (could be black too).
Additionally I made another version of the hub. It has a pcb antenna and therefore the hub gets smaller. The range might be a little bit worse, but I got no range issues in my house with that.
Hi can I get shipping and pricing info for the stick to Norway? @h4nc
I’m new to home automation, but the zigbee router you have here, is just a signal repeater/extender? Could I get any zigbee router to do this, of does it have to be zigbeemqqt compatible?
Most Ikea bulb are routers as well, right?
If I ever needed to upgrade firmware on the stick, can it be done through any linux machine, or is it done through one of them cables and raspberry pi connectors?
Nearly all non battery powered devices will work as router. However due to the external antenna of the modded CC2531 the range should be better than most other routers (like bulbs).
Yes, the coordinator is all you need to start (and of course something like a raspi running your home automation system), but as I mentioned in my first post of this thread, it’s always good to have a CC Debugger in case you want to flash a new firmware or something fails. However as mentioned in the first post too, flashing is also possible without the debugger, but I don’t have experience with that.
@sliddjur general questions blow up this thread. So for those kind of questions this thread might be a better choice.
So please let’s continue via pm.
I’ve been reading this whole treat.
All nice developments
I am new to zigbee (using z-wave voor more then 8 years) but looking into the smart windows blinds of IKEA.
I have a question and that is:
Is this device, the zigbee2mqtt stick the best way to go when i want to control zigbee divices directly from HA?
Or should i buy some other device for that?
from a fellow Austrian: Your stuff looks exquisite in the pics in this blog! i still work with a ‘naked’ stick, can you pls PM me with pricing/ delivery info for a controlleriflashed stick, incl antenna?
Best, Franz
Sorry but I can’t make that decision for you, so you might have to dig in to find what seems to be the best solution for you. There might be other solutions that do the same as well but as you can see I choose z2m for myself. I like it and of course I recommend it.
You can find a list of the supported devices here.
So if you are interested, you can contact me via pm.
That’s kinda like asking a linux board whether linux or windows is better
Anyway, there are many threads about pros and cons of different types, like this one
I for myself have not tried anything else than zigbee2mqtt (well, I had the xiaomi hub before with less than OK performance honestly, and a selfflashed zigbee2mqtt stick as per my review a few posts up), but I am more than happy with it.
I am running everything in docker, and with the autodiscovery, adding devices is as simple as longpressing the button on my sensor/switch/whatever and in a matter of seconds the device is in home assistant.
I made another zigbee device. Mind that this won’t be compatible with zigbee2mqtt, because it’s a different project.
The project is called Zigbee2Tasmota (Z2T) and again I want to mention that all the credits about the software go to the developers.
Again I made a PCB and a case. The device is based on a nodemcu and a CC2530. Of course I will preflash the devices, but if needed it is possible to flash the CC2530 (maybe because of an update) with a CCDebugger or with the Nodemcu itself (you can find how to do that in the attached link above).
I for myself will still stick to zigbee2mqtt, because it works fine and never change a running system
However I think it is an interesting project and I’d like to see where it goes. Currently not many devices are supported, so for now I would recommend this project for tinkerers only (who are ok with facing issues in a new developing project).
The main benefit compared to the Z2M sticks is that you can place the Z2T (Zigbee2Tasmota) stick where you want because it doesn’t need something like a raspi running z2m to it.
Digiblur made an interest video on the project, but whilst reading another thread I realised that you can use this same setup you’ve produced here with z2m.
Difference is the esp8266 bridge runs on ESPEasy but the cc2530 runs normal z2m.
)
