Zigbee2mqtt is tempting but would that co-exist with my existing ZHA inegration?
I have multiple IKEA repeaters and Zigbee power outlets (acting as repeaters) too.
I have moved the Wi-fi out of contention with the default Zigbee channel frequency of the Conbee II stick.
I’ll check out the general tips and best practices though.
There is no harm in trying, you can set it up and gradually add device per device. I guess the main challenge is where to place the 2nd stick
z2m does add one additional piece…you need mqtt and maintain that as well but for me this has never been much of an issue
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Thanks for the advice…I will look into this.
I have HASS on an Intel NUC that is dedicated to HASS…my Linux is a bit non-existent mind.
I use also the intel nuc but with Ubuntu and then docker for HA, with the docker version I can easily install a dev/test container next to it and try things out
EDIT: ’ easily’ …if you know a bit about docker
I run two zigbee networks by using ZHA and deConz. (I do this because I have 14 zigbee GU10s that are powered by an in-wall zigbee switch so when the switch turns them off I immediately lose 14 nodes in the nesh. By putting those on another network I don’t mess up the nodes that don’t get powered off.)
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Yes they can coexist fine but you will need a dedicated Zigbee Coordinator adapter per implementation.
Each Zigbee Coordinator adapter will run its own Zigbee network and have no knowledge of the others.
Any Zigbee device will obviously only pair/join/connect to a single Zigbee Coordinator / Zigbee network.
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Hi David,
That’s useful to know. Which Zigbee sticks are they?
Did you have to do anything special to add the 2nd Zigbee stick?
Thanks.
Maybe you missunderstood, you can not add a second Zigbee dongle to an existing Zigbee solution. You will instead need to add a new seperate Zigbee solution, and which Zigbee dongles it support depends on which solution, hardware compatibility is listed on each solutions webpage.
Thanks for the advice. I think I see what you and others are saying.
My intention is to add a second Zigbee dongle to which I can move devices from my existing zigbee dongle to lessen the load on the existing Zigbee dongle.
I’m ok with multiple Zigbee networks and expect that I’ll have to adjust the Zigbee channels of the two dongles so that they don’t overlap …or overlap my existing wi-fi too!
I hope to add the extra dongle and expect to see within my Home Assistant - Configuration → Devices & Services page, just an extra dongle to which I can add devices too.
Hoping that this is correct and people agree with this approach?
No, you missunderstand. Again, yes you will need another Zigbee Coordinator adapter but you will also need to add a new separate Zigbee solution/integration for your second Zigbee Coordinator adapter, however, there are limitations there as some Zigbee solutions/integrations don’t allow you to run multiple instances of the.
Home Assistant’s ZHA integration for example only supports one instance, so you can not add another ZHA integration instance to an existing Home Assistant installation if you are already using ZHA in that installation. So that means that adding another Zigbee Coordinator adapter will not work with the ZHA integration. The only option there if you absolutely want to use two instances of ZHA would be to install a whole separate installation of Home Assistant, meaning that you have two totally separate installations of Home Assitant with each having its own ZHA integration installed as the then you could setup MQTT between them to make them see each other’s entities.
I don’t use deCONZ/Phoscon but believe that it too might only support one integration instance Home Assistant, (and regardless deCONZ/Phoscon also only supports one Dresden Elektronik ConBee/RaspBee Zigbee Coordinator adapter).
Zigbee2MQTT is much flexible there allowing multiple installations as it integrates with Home Assistant via the generic MQTT integration which means that you can technically install multiple instances of Zigbee2MQTT on different computers connected toi your home network or even the same computer (as long as each installation of Zigbee2MQTT have their own dedicated Zigbee Coordinator adapter and is separated so they do not know about each other) and then make all of them communicate with one and the same Home Assistant installation via the MQTT integration.
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Thanks for the clarification. I’m still quite new to HA.
It looks like I’ll need to ‘bite the bullet’ and extend my existing HA installation to use Zigbee2MQTT. I take it that Zigbee2MQTT will work alongside my existing ZHA integration?
Alternatively, I notice you say that I can install Zigbee2MQTT on to a host other than my existing HA installation and then I guess, that I would then point my existing HA installation to the Zigbee2MQTT installed on my other host?
What piece of hardware would the new Zigbee dongle plug in to?
I have various options for hosting Zigbee2MQTT, such as other lightly loaded NUCs or one of my Synology NAS drives.
By the way, be sure to follow all the general tips and best practices to make set up avoid interference:
https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/18864
and
Zigbee signals are weak so reply on a strong Zigbee network mesh (meaning many Zigbee Router devices) and are very sensitive to RMF/EMI/RMI interference so it makes it much easier to troubleshoot and find the real root cause if have already optimized your setup and environment to work around that.
You can have Zigbee2MQTT in the same operating system as Home Assistant that will communicate with Home Assistant via the MQTT integration regardless if it is installed locally or installed on another computer on your local network at home.
If you are running Home Assistant OS or a Supervised Home Assistant instance the easiest way to install Zigbee2MQTT on the same computer via their addon, however that might not be the best option.
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/03_ha_addon.html
It is instead generally recommended to install Zigbee2MQTT on a separate computer (like its own Raspberry Pi or its own virtual machine) so that it can be managed completely separate.
Again, Zigbee2MQTT is really a stand-alone application and not officially a part of Home Assistant or Home Assistant Operating System so all help and support should still preferably go through Zigbee2MQTT’s own community first, see support section at → https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io
I currently only use the ZHA integration myself right not but before when I ran Zigbee2MQTT I ran two separate instances of it, where one instance was on a Raspberry Pi with Raspberry Pi OS (previously called Raspbian) and one instance was in a virtual machine under Synology Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) on my Synology NAS.
Note that you should preferably only connect Zigbee USB adapters in USB 2.0 ports because using USB 3.0 causes interference on the same frequency, so if you NUC and/or Synology only have USB 3.0 ports then recommend buy a powered USB 2.0 hub and connect the Zigbee USB adapter through it.
Again see https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/18864
PS: This will be my last reply to help with this as I think you getting too off-topic from the original post, better if you post a new thread with a new topic that is specifically asking for help on your new set up.
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Thanks very much…super reply.
A project for a weekend I think. 
If you bought a preflashed tasmota version of this device like I did you just need to:
- Flash this over OTA .
- Go to the console in the web UI of the device and run
backlog template {"NAME":"ZHA-bridge","GPIO":[0,0,5472,0,5504,0,0,0,5793,5792,320,544,5536,0,5600,0,0,0,0,5568,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,608,640,32,0,0,0,0,0],"FLAG":0,"BASE":1} ; module 0
backlog rule1 on system#boot do TCPStart 8888 endon ; rule1 1 ; tcpstart 8888
- In Zigbee2MQTT configuration, under the serial section add
port: tcp://<your-bridge-ip>:8888andadapter: ezsp
This will disable the default zigbee2tasmota setup, so if you paired anything to that it will need pairing through zigbee2mqtt again.
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got a question on this topic…
I purchased 2x - SMLight [SLZB-06 ] zigbee PoE devices.
I have the 1st one online and connected to HA using the Z2M Dev addon.
When I did this, I noticed all my devices in MQTT integration disappeared, so thinking I just have a misconfiguration somewhere.
I set a new topic
Main device → USB Zigbee MQTT = zigbee2mqtt
2nd device → PoE Zigbee MQTT = zigbee2mqtt_1
Also have the port separated, which was required to even start the addon.
Anyone have a suggestion on what else I could check?
I have a Schneider Electric Wiser Hub (gateway/coordinator) that does WiFi and Ethernet. And two FESH gateways. I think they are all based on Tuya. In the wiser software I can discover and add the FESH gateways (coordinators) - they just plug into mains and are WiFi. Then I can add devices to all of them and devices will be in the app ready for automations across the Zigbee networks.
I have just setup a RPI5 with the Sonoff Dongle E. Neither using ZHA or Z2M can I discover it connect any of my other coordinators to extend the Home Assistant automation.
Can it really be tru that this is not possible? Can it really be true that I would need to plug in multiple USB dongles to the raspberry pi and have one do ZHA and another do Z2M? This seems kind of odd.
It seems like the Wiser/FESH follows the normal way networks work by allowing you to attach a switch/hub/gateway to a port in another switch and all devices can see each other provided correct NAT and routing table.
But HA does not or is there something I’m missing.
The IKEA TRÅDFRI gateway do show up though.
A Zigbee network can only have one coordinator. This has nothing to do with Home Assistant, ZHA or Z2M - it’s the way the specification works.
HA can support more than one Zigbee network using different integrations - ZHA and Z2M, for example, or ZHA and a Philips Hue hub - but they each have their own coordinator and there is no direct crossover between them. HA entities derived from each integration can interact via HA, but they’re separate networks.
“Gateway” is not a Zigbee term. Manufacturers use it to describe their own proprietary hubs and these may also combine Zigbee with other connections like wi-fi and ethernet to give the impression that devices are interacting. But they’re not doing it directly. A device can only be paired with one Zigbee coordinator.
HA is not Zigbee exclusive. My TV, Apple devices and everything network connected do show up. As far as I’m aware Zigbee is a wireless protocol - but all things LAN/Wifi shows up in HA. So all Zignee coordinators (gateway/hub) that is on the network should be able to be integrated (just like the IKEA Trådløs).
If the devices on the Network are Tuya devices Can they be integrated then? Of Courses withoit using the Cloud part which is what IM teying to avoid.