Hello I am relatively new with Zigbee on HA and setting up a network on couple cottages across a 5 acre farm. My goal is to use eero as my wifi network with a powered signal amplified CAT5 wired between 2 farmhouses about 2000feet apart. And with HA and zigbeee stick on the main house. The secondary house with also have a wired Eero hub.
So my question is how do I get my HA to see my zigbee devices on the secondary farmhouse. Is there a way to get the HA to see the zigbee devices hooked into the eero as the same zigbee network on HA?
Or are there any devices that act as repeater of zigbee and send it over wifi/lan network from the secondary house to the primary house/HA ?
Or to put it simply. And way to set up one big zigbee network between two separate distant locations on a LAN?
PS: my eero is eero 6 which can also acts as a zigbee hub, but I read that integrating it to HA can be challenging ….
No. Each ZigBee network needs a coordinator that the devices can talk to directly… but you can setup multiple ZigBee instances in HA with a network based coordinator in each location.
I haven’t used any of these devices so I’ll leave it to others to make a recommendation there.
Excuse my lack of knowledge but your suggestion of a coordinator on each of the two zigbee networks. The primary zigbee coordinator I assume to be the sonoff zigbee stick on the raspberry pi with HA
So what would the secondary zigbee coordinator look like ?
There are ZigBee coordinators out there that connect directly to your regular IP network. HA communicates with it over the IP network as if it were directly connected to HA (a little oversimplification). So you would have your main USB coordinator running one ZigBee network in the main house. Then a second network based coordinator running a second ZigBee network in the secondary farmhouse.
Alternatively, you could even setup a Raspberry Pi in the secondary house, with it running something like Z2M with a USB ZigBee adapter.
Thank you. That’s gets me n the a start in doing my own research. Very helpful
I see a few wifi zigbee hubs. Is this what you mean by coordinator over Ethernet ? Would it work ?
SONOFF Zigbee Bridge Pro Smart Hub, WI-FI & Zigbee Dual-Protocol Supporting https://a.co/d/d4K1GUh
From my experience, you are in a quadrant of wireless signals / technology that is yet to be well served.
There are couple of ‘emerging’ techs that might be in your future, however that does not serve you in the ‘today’.
These are:
‘lora wireless’
sounds good, however I cannot figure out why the prices if these ‘end devices’ continues to be so high. Something is not right/there yet.
IEEE 802.11ah: sub GHz Wi-Fi
This appears to be coming in the WiFi space, however currently it is pricy and has limited vendors, pretty ‘bleeding edge’ not sure you your risk profile, but IMHO too new for the value.
As is shown in link below, I think you will be best served by a ‘standard’ 2.4 ghz wifi mesh setup. This is still going to be higher maintenance than a ‘off the shelf’ 2.4 or 5 ghz mesh wifi, however IMHO still the most reliable and lowest maintenance cost.
On top of this wifi setup you will need to add a couple of separate zigbee networks, important to understand that each of these zigbee networks will be separate if you go the route.
I am not familiar with how Eero sets up zigbee network, however I am ASSuming it is not in away that will be open and useful with multiple distant ‘hubs’.
If you are needs a number of battery powered end nodes connected to these distributed ‘hubs’ then paying the price for a multiple zigbee hubs connected via mesh wifi might be a good path. If the need for battery power end nodes is not there, then just setting up a wifi mesh network using existing ‘long range wifi’ technologies might be a better path. UniFi (link below) seems to be a quality path (though spendy) I have one of the single hubs, however have not ventured into their products that allow for the kind of larger space that I think you have.
If you do not need the battery low power end node, there are plenty of espHome and Tasmota end devices that you can connect reliably to each of the remote wifi hubs.
Awesome info guys. Eventhough I like tinker with this stuff, unfortunately I am busy setting up the farm , so the bleeding edge will be too time consuming. May just start with wifi smart devices on the secondary hub for now and tinker with mesh devices on a secondary zigbee or other mesh also allowing time for the latest mesh IOT tech to settle down a bit.
@francisp as I wrote below, your statement ‘Don’t use WiFi, it is unreliable.’ is not really good. IMHO, there is yet to be solid (price point, data rate, reliable) solution for a larger property setup. IMHO, there are there 3 (maybe 4 if you consider 802.11ah or 5 if you consider z-wave long range), wifi, zigbee and lora. Each have their pluses and minus in a physical space as described. This type setup can be done with all of the described technologies (including wifi), however all IMHO will be of higher maintenance cost. Which is the ‘best’ depends on very specific requirements. And this is hard up front and costly if done wrong, however to make blanket statements about one technology does not help the OP to get to a solution.
Network adapters connected via WiFi might have reduced stability as the serial protocol does not have enough fault-tolerance to handle packet loss or latency delays that can normally occur over WiFi connections. If cannot use a locally connected USB or UART/GPIO adapter then the recommendation is to use remote adapter that connected via Ethernet (wired) to avoid issues.
And just a single data point to add. Physically connecting the zigbee coordinator device to the ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT server ‘quote un quote’ is IMHO the best setup. That said, I ran a Sonoff wifi connected coordinator to a Home Assistant ZHA ‘server’ for 2 years with no ‘end user issues’, did it throw a ‘CRC’ error message once or twice every couple weeks, yes it did, however this (from the ‘significant other’ perspective) never gave me the ‘eye ’ .
This is complex, not doubt, so the first lesson is KISS!
What are the distances involved between the two locations, this will define the setup you will be going with to manage your farm locations.
Edit: I think this may be the solution you are looking for when it comes to zigbee over long range or remote locations managed through a single location:
So once you setup the point to point Wifi backbone nodes between your locations you can connect that router to a switch at the location you want the devices to connect through to talk over network back to your HA instance.
’ 
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is complex, not doubt, so the first lesson is KISS!