I have zigbee pretty much everywhere around the house. However as the house is reinforced concrete with triple glazed windows, it is not usable outside. I would like to use some zigbee devices outdoors. What is the best way? A repeater in a ip65 box?
You could look into a POE based cooridnator and setup a dedicated zigbee network for the outdoor area you need to have the devices in if you can’t use a repeater/relay via wall sockets that can have the meshing reach through to route the signal through.
This is also assuming you don’t have an attic with crawlspace to install a repeater or two in to try route the signal that way to the outside where there is power you can use to use them.
I have a similar issue.
Luckily, I have a weatherproof box for my pool equipment.
I put a smart plug on the inside of that wall, and then a plug on the external side of the wall but inside the box. It connects enough to route zigbee and i have the added bonus of controlling the pool lights with it.
if you have somewhere you can back-to-back them it might work in your case.
Otherwse as already suggested a second zigbee networking using an ethernet controller would work, but you need to introduce either a second z2m instance, or use one on zha and one on z2m.
That’s the great thing about just doing it the simple way with relays and smart plugs… you get control and are able to monitor usage over the power points and devices you normally plug into those sockets anyways when there is enough for it to connect each routing based connection.
I recently had a Aqara T2 Relay installed behind a power socket that is coming from my unit in the shared laundry room of my block (having it also validated it is actually the one for my unit was worth it too) which gave me more peace of mind in tracking usage when I want to use it for maintenance work and to prevent it from being abused should someone break the lock on it that holds the cover in place since I have it in decoupled mode so even if its physically turned on it won’t unless I turn on the relay.
That relay is currently using my corner and bedroom lamp hue bulbs as one of the routing devices to my zigbee network and I may add the spare zigbee plug I have to the socket just to give it another router option when the network self heals and updates its routes.
Hello xofer,
What I have done is put a smartplug on an outlet outside the house and make sure there is one close inside the house. They need to be routing devices. That should extend your mesh outdoors.
Yeah, I know it SHOULD do the trick. House is built too well.