HA/Zigbee coordinator question

Configuration Zigbee
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Hello everyone - hope your weekend is going amazing so far!
First, I have a Franken-setup. It’s weird, a bit chaotic and will probably one day take over the world and destroy us all. I have HomeKit, Homey Pro, Home Assistant - all topped off with an Aqara M3 hub (and a bunch of Aqara child devices). I even have a single Alexa device thrown in, for good measure, I guess. I know - weird, strange, stupid - choose whatever adjective ya like. There are reasons, but it is also becoming sort of “let’s see if I can make all this work” type of thing.

My HA is in the form of a Home Assistant Green. I also got the SkyConnect Zigbee USB thing - but it is NOT currently hooked up at all. Right now, the “main brain” of my Smart Home is Homey Pro.

There was a point to posting that part. Not too long ago I tried HA and it went very VERY badly. About 12 hours in and I was literally gonna walk away from HA forever. I posted a question about it - I think it was actually on this forum, and one of the answers I got was along the lines that my problem lay in the fact that I had the Zigbee stick installed on my HA Green and I had attached my M3 hub (which ALSO has Zigbee) to HA - that two coordinators were causing me issues - maybe not all of them, but some of them.

Soon thereafter I bought the Homey Pro, which (as you know) ALSO has Zigbee. Now, Homey and my M3 hub both have Zigbee - both have Zigbee devices directly attached to them, and the M3 IS attached to the Homey. Everything works fine. Perfectly, in fact. They are buds, they get along great. The both even play nicely with HomeKit.

I think I would like to setup the SkyConnect on my HA green. I intend to start attaching devices to HA and make more use of HA, and some of those devices would probably be Zigbee.

So, is HA gonna have problems? Everything else is working fine - even though I have two Zigbee coordinators on the same network - two Zigbee coordinators working together perfectly. Can HA join the Zigbee party?

Or did I, perhaps, misunderstand what I was told?

Right now, HA IS up and running. It is part of my smart home setup - it’s just not doing much at the moment as I am going slow and trying to learn how to use it correctly. Obviously, EVENTUALLY, HA will probably outright replace my Homey - but that time is still a good ways away…

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Two Zigbee coordinators, three Zigbee coordinators, all possible. BUT: Zigbee is a mesh network with low transmission radios. The more coordinators ( and thus Zigbee networks), the more chance of interference. Ideally, you want one big, strong mesh on one Zigbee network, not 3 weak meshes in 3 Zigbee networks.

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Hi,

To attempt to create a clear and concise question (so most folk don’t TL;DR and move on).

Is your question?:

Can a single Zigbee mesh network have 2x coordinators?

If so, the answer is no.
Two coordinators would fight and break a single mesh, so I don’t understand your Aqara M3 / Homey setup.

There could be two Zigbee RF meshes, with some form of Homey support to control the Aqara M3 (Homey → Matter → M3 → Zigbee → device) as The M3 hub can expose Zigbee devices (and other) devices connected to it via HomeKit / Matter.

ASCII diagram…

     /--> Homey Zigbee -> Zigbee Mesh 1 --> device
    /
Homey --> Matter --> Aqara M3 Zigbee --> Zigbee mesh 2 --> device

You could create a third mesh network for HA, and gradually move devices from one to the other, but as the multiple meshes would likely be on the same RF frequency, there would likely be interference and poor coverage (which may be happening already…).

Dual-running can work for protocols like MQTT, but typically not RF-protocols, and especially not mesh (which have complex controls).

You can also connect the M3 Hub to HomeAssistant as a Matter device, and control devices (e.g. Zigbee) connected to it indirectly (HA → Matter → M3 → Zigbee → device). This may allow both HA and Homey to control devices paired with the M3 at the same time.

ASCII diagram again…

     /--> Homey Zigbee -> Zigbee Mesh 1 --> device
    /
Homey --> Matter --> Aqara M3 Zigbee --> Zigbee mesh 2 --> device
            /
HA    -----/

There seems to be a few ways to connect a Homey to HA, but as that’s not in my experience, try a forum search for the details.

If this helps, :heart: this post!

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