I have a 3 year old Conbee II as my z2m radio. I’d like to get rid of it for a more mainstream well supported device. Better yet an ethernet based one. Is there a current device that I can use without losing my devices and entities?
Mine is 4y old too and I have no issues at all and I am of the opinion to not change a running system. But… I would be interested to understand what you expect to get from a ‘mainstream’ device, is there anything that Conbee II dus not support?
Ethernet for more central positioning.
ah, you need zigbee over IP. I cannot comment on your surroundings but in a majority of cases, the zigbee mesh itself is pretty good if you have zig-routers well positioned. Anyhow, if you search the forum for migrating zigbeen stick you will find loads of posts on if you can migrate the devices, from what I recall it can be done but I donot know the conditions and depending onthe number of devices, repairing may be a lot quicker
What do you mean repair? Do you mean add al those devices from scratch, add groups, re-do automations? Not anxious to do that. The goal here is to take the most community accepted chips/coordinators so that I have long-term support without worrying about this if my conbee should break .
Have a look at other posts on this topic, many people wanted to move to e.g. sonof coordinators or others and asked questions about ‘keeping’ their existing Z2M setup.
But … your first reason to change was a technical capability, now you want (also?) long term support and/or reduce risk of breakdown? All valid but different to cover. A breakdown can happen at any moment, even new sticks may have issues…and then, even LTS on that stick will likely still have you re-pair with the replacement (probably no one/provider will fix a coordinator/stick at the low prices they come at, not sure but guessing)
Z2M change of coordinator - Configuration / Zigbee - Home Assistant Community
I have 2 Conbee II that are plugged into Raspberry Pi 3B and can be placed anywhere via hardwire Ethernet or WIFI. These were originally HomeSeer Z-Net devices so they also house a Z-wave controller. I’ve had no issues with this setup for 2 years. They user ser2net to connect to the Conbee and Z-wave.
There are likely cheaper devices that support ser2net as well.
If you have a well spread out, stable mesh, it doesn’t really matter where your coordinator is placed.
Switching to an Ethernet connected device gives you the option to position it where you have a networkconnection and apart from your HA server (or via a RPi that functions as a networkadapter for a USB version)
Be aware that changing your coordinator requires to re-pair all your devices and possibly other extra work.