Generic Zigbee questions

Hardware
1

Hello,
my new bathroom will get some smart lightning, which will be zigbee devices.

Some questions about zigbee:

  1. I have an Ikea Tradfri Gateway and several bulbs. As far as I know Tradfri is talking Zigbee. Can I connect any other zigbee devices to the tradfri gateway, or is it limited to devices from ikea?

2.1 On the other hand, is there any advantage / improvement when using a native zigbee gateway like a conbee2 stick that people are talking about, instead of an ikea tradfri gateway? Lately I´m having trouble with the tradfri integration, as it will not load on startup sometimes. I wonder if the Conbee Stick is more reliable.

2.2 If a conbee stick is the better choice, can I use my existing ikea bulbs with it?

Thank you
Philipp

2

Some non-ikea devices can be added to the IKEA gateway, but supported is limited.

Yes you can.

Any Zigbee stick used with HA will give a better experience then the IKEA gateway. I personally would buy a CC2652 instead of a conbee.

3

Trank You,
One thing i forgot: can I also still use the tradfri remotes when using another gateway?

4

Yes, you can

5

Depends on the remote, the integration and zigbee stick, I have noticed.
Which ones do you have?

6

I have these ikea remotes:

image

I would buy the Stick Francis recommended, i found this one on Amazon: USB Stick CC2652P2 ZigBee 3.0 for ZigBee2mqtt, iObroker, nodeRed, Home Assistant

Not sure about the integration though, never used Zigbee before (Except the tradfri Integration).
Any suggestions for that?

7

That one works fine.

But here is the list: Zigbee2MQTT seems to be more compatible but I can’t get that working. It refuses to start so I use ZHA.

Database of Zigbee devices compatible with ZHA, Tasmota, Zigbee2MQTT, deCONZ, ZiGate and ioBroker (blakadder.com)

8

Thanks for the anwers, I´ll give it a try with that Stick and the ZHA integration

9

Ok, my Zigbee Stick arrived today. Is it possible to use the Tradfri Gateway and THA Integration both at the same time to migrate from tradfri to ZHA?

10

Yes it is, but keep in mind: a Zigbee device can only be connected to one coordinator at the same time. And while you move devices from tradfri to ZHA: power down your IKEA gateway, so they don’t try to re-pair with that instead of with ZHA.

11

Thanks a lot, I will try it this evening.

12

OK, I have my ikea devices connected over the ZHA integration. For the last 7 days it worked as it should. Howeber, my wife wrote me this morniing when I was already at work, that she wan´t able to turn on the light with the tradfri remotes.
I was looking on my phone and was able to turn on / off the light via the lovelace dashboard.

1.) Are there any log to debig the state of the remotes?

2.) Is the last seen value from the zigbee devices a hint to see something is wrong when the value is more than an hour old?

3.) Below is the device info from the Zigbee Stick. Is this OK regarding the Firmware date and the “unknown” RSSI value?

CC1352/CC2652, Z-Stack 3.30+ (build 20210708)
by Texas Instruments
Connected via Texas Instruments CC1352/CC2652, Z-Stack 3.30+ (build 20210708)
Zigbee info
IEEE: 00:12:4b:00:25:8f:1e:5c
Nwk: 0x0000
Device Type: Coordinator
LQI: 255
RSSI: Unknown
Last Seen: 2021-12-22T07:05:28
Power Source: Mains

Thank you again.

13

Perhaps the integration or HA needs to be restarted.
That is what I would try first.

Next I would go to developer tools and events and listen for zha_events if HA responds/hears the remote.

14

Thanks, I will check it when I get home.

What I forgot to mention is that I´m using a hass-os VM within esxi 6.5 with the usb device passed-through.
I´m already doing this with a z-wave stick for about a year without any issues, I wonder if this could be an issue, as I don´t if (yet) how zigbee devices like that configuration.

15

Well…i spent 3 hours and now it seems I fried everything. I can´t get the remotes working again, nor can I re-add the bulb I accidently deleted.

I want to give me a second chance before I reinstall the tradfri gateway…Is there any way to start from scratch? I assume deleting and readding the ZHA integration won´t do it, as the stick holds the config?

16

No I’m quite sure it doesn’t.

But sure, restart HA.
Do a hard reset of the devices and worst case delete ZHA integration.

17

keep in mind it’s possible to bind remotes directly to devices being able to monitor/control all of those devices using HA at the same time
Thanks to this, lights remain operating even if other parts of the system fail

18

Well, for my own safety regarding my marriage and the peace around christmas, I reconnected the tradfri gateway to keep the livingroom running.

As I asked before, it should be possible to run 2 Zigbee Networks at the same time? My plan is o run the tradfri gateway for itself apart from home assistant, and for testing purposes, I use some Ikea bulbs and a remote with the ZHA integration.

19

I read about it, too. Sadly it was after i fried the whole Network.
This is on my list for the holidays when trying agan

20

Technically it’s possible but both networks have to use different network settings. I know zigbee2mqtt allows such reconfiguration but you have to read what settings are used by IKEA Tradfri to configure other network differently.
Also if device is connected to one zigbee network, it requires full reset in order to connect it to another one.