Network split between house and garage

Configuration
1

Hi All,

I am a complete newbie to all of this so please bear with me!

I live in a relatively new house which has pretty much ‘zero’ wifi coverage once you step outside the door.

I have a BT Smart Hub 2 and a CAT 5 cable that extends into the garage. We have the BT Complete Discs dotted around to provide good wifi in the house. In the garage/gym I have a very basic 1G Netgear 4 port switch which has a BT Complete Disc connected to it.

This set up solves my dead wifi issues when I step out of the house. I now have very good wifi in the garage which allows things like our Hypervolt EV charger, Ring camera, PS5 and any smart switches etc in the garage to all connect to the network.

Over the last few days I have configured a RPi4 to run Home Assistant. This (for convenience) is connected to the Netgear switch in the garage attic as it keeps it out of the way (keeps the wife happy as less ‘tech’ on show).

So far so good. All the devices I previously had visible through Alexa are now showing in HA (plus a few extra, like the Hypervolt charger).

I have been reading about Zigbee and from what I can determine it needs a USB hub (I assume to be connected directly to the RPi).

My question is - do all the Zigbee devices I want to use have to see and connect to the hub directly? I expect they do. If so then I’m stuck as nothing in the house will see it due to the apparent faraday cage that I live in.

Is there a way around this?

2

In the case of zwave you can run zwavejsui on raspberry pi at remote connection and connect it back to HA using network (websocket)

ZigbeetoMQTT allows similar I believe.
Install on raspberry pi and connect back to home over ethernet.

Personally in remote building/locations I am now trying to move the devices in these remote ares to use ESP devices running esphome. This remove need for a “server” at the location and simplifies the overall management. Since these devices run their own local web interface this also give backup connection option.

3

Search for Zigbee over Ethernet devices here - I don’t use one, but I’ve read about them here.

And: no, there’s no need to have all Zigbee devices connected to the hub directly. Zigbee devices create a mesh network all by themselves; if you have devices that are on mains power, e.g. light bulbs or power plugs, they’ll be used as routers back to the Zigbee coordinator.