I have husbzb-1. I went out of my way to find out more about this device. I contacted both Nortek and SiliconLabs for help, which is not that helpful.
It turned out that husbzb-1 is mostly a z-wave device. The zigbee is just something the OEM threw in as “added value” and the OEM themselves doesn’t know much about it.
As result, you can expect this thing work well with z-wave.
Zigbee, on the other hand, is a bit tricky.
Much of the tricky part is due to zigbee standard itself. Unlike z-wave, which is practically all-in-one, so as long as there is the word “z-wave”, it should work with each other within a country/region.
Zigbee, on the other hand, by itself doesn’t mean anything from an user’s perspective, because much of compatibility rely on zigbee PLUS some libraries built into the device.
if you have a zigbee device (e.g. light bulb, sensors, etc), you kind of need to know which library that device uses, and you need to make sure your zigbee dongle (husbzb-1) has that built-in as well. These library, though mostly software, can not be added or delete once the device is out of factory.
For our purposes, home automation, there are THREE libraries that may be relevant:
- home automation
- light link
- smart energy
The worse part is that zigbee allow vendor to create their own proprietary library, renders device from that company incompatible with anything else on the market.
The best example of such is Xiaomi. Xiaomi devices are zigbee devices, but they uses proprietary library thus none of xiaomi devices will work with anything else from other companies out of box. Security companies such as ADT probably also uses proprietary zigbee devices so you won’t able to connect your husbzb-1 to their devices directly.
As result, when you buy a zigbee compatible light bulb, for example, you need to know if that bulb uses “light link” profile or “home automation” profile. and you need to compare with that with the dongle(husbzb-1) you have.
And here is the frustration part, being an owner of husbzb-1: the OEM nor Siliconlabs (the maker of zigbee chips inside husbzb-1 dongle) knows for sure what zigbee library does husbzb-1 contains.
The closest answer I have gotten is from Siliconlabs, after I told them which chip and what software stack does this dongle contains (in case you are curious: chip used is Silicon Labs EM3581, and software stack is EmberZNet Pro Release 5.4), the tech support says that it MOST LIKELY include
Home Automation version 1.2
What does it mean?
It means that it is UNLIKELY that zigbee light bulb which uses light link profile would work with husbzb-1 out of box.
And here is where this community comes in: if someone got a light bulb uses standard zigbee light link profile (ikea tradfri… kudos to ikea for using standard profile) and managed to get it to work without ikea hub, then, it means husbzb-1 has light link built in.
if someone got a zigbee smart energy monitor device (many utility company in USA is selling such device at heavy discount to promote energy saving) and managed to get it to work with husbzb-1 out of box, then, it means husbzb-1 also contains “smart energy” profile.
but it means someone has to be willing to take the chance and buy the product and see it connect to husbzb-1 or not.
I am hoping if someone already spend the money and bought these devices, he/she can share the result with us so rest of us don’t need to waste our energy and time on it.
then, we will have a clear picture of what devices we should get to make this work.
good luck… and do let me know if I made any error so I don’t accidentally mislead anyone.
ps. I have not find any way to upgrade the firmware of this husbzb-1 yet. if anyone knows there is an upgrade, please share that with us.