HI,
About the USB dongle capacit to manage devices, the USB3.0 sonoff is capable of managing several dozens of devices. It was the reason for to migrate from the Sonoff bridge (wifi connected) to the dongle - I’ve more than 70 devices.
Is there any limit on number of devices the dongle will be capable to manage ?
Yes, I also want to purchase it but will await for reviews to see how well it works for Zigbee and Thread coverage and how many devices it can handle. But it looks really great on paper
And maybe more international sellers…
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I would hope that we’d eventually be able to use Zigbee2MQTT with this stick. Would there be any reason that couldn’t be possible?
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Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick pre-order is now available at a few selected resellers globally!
https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect/
Their webpage not only says that it will support the ZHA integration for Zigbee but also mentions Zigbee2MQTT compatibility as well, though it does not currently warn or mention there that Z2M support for EZSP based adapters is still in “beta” development stage because even though it has matured since implemented last year it does not quite yet have feature parity with Zigbee2MQTT support for ZNP adapters (e.i. Texas Instrument CC2652/CC1352 based adapters), as most notably Zigbee2MQTT’s EZSP adapter support is missing the backup/restore and ZGP (Zigbee Green Power) feature support, however, this fact being lifted up will hopefully lead to more testers and developers helping the Zigbee2MQTT/IoBroker/zigbee-herdsman developer working on EZSP adapter support by finding/reporting bugs and testing or improving new code for it, see → https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman/issues/319
@agners Do I understand correctly that by default the Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick will initially only ship with a standard EmberZNet Zigbee NCP firmware image and not an RPC firmware?
Do we have any information that SkyConnect will be support BLE from the beginning or in the future?
Zigbee + Thread are the same radio (IEEE 802.15.4) with different addressing.
BTLE is a completely different technology.
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I asked and while ÉFR32MG21 based hardware could maybe technically act as a (dedicated) Bluetooth adapter with an independently built/compiled custom firmware image from the community got a reply that Nabu Casa / Home Assistant founders will not at this time be looking into providing Bluetooth firmware images for it, see related discussion → Bluetooth controller firmware for EFR32MGxx compatible with Home Assistant's new native Bluetooth integration? · Issue #31 · grobasoz/zigbee-firmware · GitHub
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Thanks for the datasheet extract - it explains the question which initially looked odd. My Bad!
My understanding is Matter/ Thread SoC have Bluetooth radios for initial client device provisioning (pairing / key exchange with a phone) rather than for on-going support for multiple real-time protocols.
NabuCasa Yellow has a “SilLabs IoT Accelerator” logo on it which this hard-bitten engineer reads as marketing speak for “this is Beta, but we are working on it”!
The 2022.10 release party video gave me the impression that getting Zigbee and Thread radios to interleave both low-level real-time protocols on the uP AND communicate via USB to two separate software protocol stacks was rather a challenge - and partly the reason for launch with Zigbee only.
Taken together, my guess would be Zigbee + Thread + BTLE at the same time still seems very unlikely, but firmware will get optimised over time to support larger numbers of client devices.
Same chipset at the HA Yellow which I am running Z2M on so no reason to think you couldn’t run SkyConnect with Z2M.
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Again, be warned though that EZSP adapter support in Zigbee2MQTT’s zigbee-herdsman library is still in the “beta” stage of development so it is still lacking some features (most notable backup and ZGP support for Z2M) though right now they have one developer that is currently looking into bringing Silicon Labs EZSP adapter code up to feature-parity with Zigbee2MQTT’s mature support for Texas Instruments ZNP adapter support, however, take note that they like to have both more developers and more testers, so if you are willing to be a tester or developer for them see → https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman/issues/319
I’m having issues with my conbe2, should I buy the skyconnect or the itead stick?
Hi
I bought a Sky Connect. Wanted to help contribute something back.
5310
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Any thoughts on where to preorder for a dutch customer?
I placed pre-order from m.nu (located in Sweden) since ordered from them many times before ocer the years and they always offered great post-sale support. Believe they ship globally however probably only without custom fees within the European Union:
In my opinion you can not go wrong with bying both to get started now and the migrate to the one you want to use, because you always have the option to reflash these with Zigbee Router firmware which makes them into a great dedicated Zigbee repeater / range extender. Personally suggest getting 2-4 good dedicated Zigbee Router devices regardless in the beginning to act as the backbone of your Zigbee nerwork. Highly recommend read and follow this general best practice guide which also covers that → Generic best practice tips on improving Zigbee network range and general stability · zigpy/zigpy Wiki · GitHub
It would be great if it comes with a migration tool from deconz to zha. Is that possible or is it to reconnect all my zigbee devices?
As it is the same radio as used in the Yellow, the same migration process released in 2022.10 is likely to work with SkyConnect.
My migration from a Sonoff USB 3.0 to a Yellow Zigbee radio was far from seamless, but worked in the end.
I’ll pre-order one.
Just to clarify, when it arrives I will be able to easily migrate my Zigbee 3.0 mesh and devices over to this stick right?
I set up the new stick to run both Zigbee 3.0 and Thread at the same time.
I Will be able to continue to use my Zigbee devices and start buying new thread ones and everything will continue to work (old devices and new thread ones).
I currently have about 20 Zigbee devices.
I am running ZHA using HAOS on an Intel Nuc
Is all this correct?
Cheers
Hopefully…
As of today, SkyConnect only claims to be Zigbee out of the box.
Thread is nothing more than good intentions at this point. I believe them sincere intentions, but I’ve not bought anything based on promises in decades.
There are no Matter/Thread mentions at all the in beta 2022.11 release notes, but things might change. I’d expect we’ll here something more in the “State of” stream on the 13th.
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