HomeAssistant Yellow: How good is the Zigbee antenna?

Hardware
#1

I am lately thinking about buying a HomeAssistant Yellow to replace my Blue. However, I use an external Zigbee USB stick (Slae.sh - CC2652R stick - slae.sh) with antenna and external Z-Wave stick.

Now I know that the new board has Zigbee on the board. However, I wonder how good the antenna of the Yellow is, compared to an external device with extra antenna. I can’t find any comparison, and wonder how strong the signal will be, as there is no external antenna. I can’t stop thinking, it will be less good.

Hopefully someone has some comparison information or information about how well the onboard antenna is.

#2

I have just migrated to #Yellow, notwithstanding issues with migrating some 100 devices, most of my zigbee devices connected with no problems at all and have been rock solid.

I do have a problem with Aqara battery powered devices e.g. door switches, motion sensors etc. They are showing relatively low quality connections (LQI ~ 170 and RSSI ~ neg 60) and keep dropping off the network or will not connect in some cases even through an intermediate router.
Similar Sonof devices have so far been good and Tuya won’t connect as well. But I only have a small number of these so not a good sample on which to base an opinion.

1 Like
#3

This video mentions the possibility of adding an external antenna to the Yellow.

Home Assistant Yellow - Home Automation for Dummies - YouTube

#4

Thanks. Will look at it. Never heard before you could use an external antenna.

#5

Hi jenx, I am about to migrate to Yellow and I have around 30 Zigbee devices. What do you recomend to migrate them?
Do I need to remove them as well as the Zigbee integration, make a backup then transfer it to the Yellow and add back my devices one at a time or is there a better way?
Many thanks.

#6

Hi Patrick, from memory I made a backup, used the backup to populate the yellow, using the change radio feature partially worked but a lot of my devices migrated with generic names rather than those I had given them.

I ended up starting from scratch with a new network. Added the routers first. It seems that while lights are routers they don’t generally route non light traffic. so add in routers like electrical plugs and dedicated routers first. Then add in lights and battery powered devices.
My network has been ok, Aqara are still unreliable and I have moved away from buying them in favour of Sonoff. The network is generally lower LQI then I got with the antenna on a USB cable high up on the wall, but acceptable.

Good luck

1 Like
#7

Thanks for your reply, I will follow your advice. Do you use a UPS for your pi? We get a lot of short power cuts in winter often just a momentary loss so I want to get sups do the pi doesn’t shut down but I can’t find anything that looks suitable.

#8

I see, he mentions this external antenna, Do you know if there also is a video showing how to attach this one.
and what antenna to use,
ATM I’m still using my sonoff stick as I read a lot about poor zigbee reception but I really would like to migrate.