Setting up Zigbee network on 4 floors: ZHA or HA supported Zigbee GW?

Configuration Zigbee
#1

Hello,

I am now setting up a new system on a 4 floor house and this is my first Zigbee project of such size.
So far I have only configured and used few Zigbee devices with GWs of various brands (Hue GW, Silvercrest GW, Tradfiri GW).
I also played a bit with HA on a dedicated x86 machine I have, but haven’t integrated Zigbee yet.

Planned Configuration:

  • Brick walls house (also internal walls 20cm deep)
  • 4 Floors (50sqm, 100sqm, 100sqm, 100sqm) with dedicated Network cabinet in the bottom floor
  • 20 light bulbs average on each floor
  • 20 smart switches
  • 10-15 motion sensors
  • 10 remote sound buttons
  • 10 windows/door sensors

For the highlighted configuration I identified

The identified gateways are either:

  • IKEA Tradfiri - one GW on each floor. Most items are available on IKEA smart home line except the windows/door sensors.
  • Silvercrest - one GW on each floor. It is still compatible with better light bulbs from IKEA and HUE, while it includes all other buttons and sensors, including the windows/door sensors (but no integration with HA?)
  • Using a compatible ZHA dongle for the main x86 Gateway with HA, plus add Zigbee extenders or additional GW with ZHA dongle (or else) to support the large amount of devices on multiple floors (if needed).

Ideally I would like to have a central control on my HA Gateway, but also trying to keep the system simple and possible considering the size, I prefer to have stability and consistency above freedom to add any type of device/brand.

Suggestions?

#2

This! Use either the ZHA integration or Zigbee2MQTT addon with a Zigbee Coordinator adapter…

Understand that a limitation with Zigbee is that Zigbee devices only support connecting to a single “Zigbee Coordinator”, and you can not have more than one “Zigbee Coordinator” in a Zigbee network mesh. So if you would setup more than one Zigbee solution then each “Zigbee Coordinator” / Zigbee network will have no knowledge of each other at the Zigbee level.

The general recommendation is to only have one single “Zigbee Coordinator” and connect all devices to it, that way you build out your one Zigbee network mesh.The goal will usually be to build up a single large Zigbee network mesh with as many mains-powered Zigbee devices as possible because most of those will act as a “Zigbee Router” device and as such extend range and coverage.

Recommend try to locate the “Zigbee Coordinator” in the middle of the house on the main floor if possible, then start by adding mains-powered devices that can also act as “Zigbee Router” devices before adding any Zigbee End Device (like example battery-operated devices).

In order to place the “Zigbee Coordinator” adapter in the middle of the house you could use either a very long USB extension cable or you could buy a network-attached adapter like Tube’s Gateways, see → https://www.tubeszb.com/ and https://community.home-assistant.io/t/tubes-zb-coordinators-and-routers-was-zigbee-router-on-steroids/280896/228

The simplest is to buy a USB adapter like → ITead's "Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus" based on Texas Instruments CC2652P +20dBm radio MCU now sold for $14.99

Personally, I suggest also buying a few “IKEA Trådfri Signal Repeater” and placing at least one per floor.

PS: Recommend read → https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/18864 and https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#best-practices-to-avoid-pairingconnection-difficulties

#3

Thanks for your suggestions, I read the articles/information and at the moment I will proceed with the following in order to setup the system as soon as possible and upgrade/extend in the future.

Buy one IKEA GW (coordinator), buy one “IKEA Trådfri Signal Repeater” per floor. This can work with HA using the bridge: IKEA TRÅDFRI - Home Assistant

Later moving the control to ZHA once found a suitable coordinator.

I was looking for the options on tubeszb, but first it is US and shipping to EU will incur in high shipping cost and customs fee, second the new and more powerful Coordinator seems to not be available for months, while the POE version with other mcu is available.

I have read that the CC2652P2 may have some problems with the pairing (discussed also on reddit), not sure if solved already. Do you or anyone else have some feedback?

At home I have already a Lidl/Silvercrest GW/Coordinator (which seems to be based on Tuya GW). I have seen from this website that it is possible to use with ZHA: Lidl SilverCrest Zigbee Gateway (TYGWZ-01) Zigbee compatibility

Can you or anyone else confirm that this is also a viable option?

#4

That does not meet your requirement of different brands as IKEA Gateway only support IKEA devices.

Suggest instead that you just buy → ITead's "Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus" based on Texas Instruments CC2652P +20dBm radio MCU now sold for $14.99

Tip is that you could even buy several of those as they are already great as Zigbee Router if flashed with different firmware and uses in with a standard USB power-supply. They are just not as as nice looking as the IKEA Trådfri Signal Repeater product. Flashing firmware is done relativly easy over USB port.

That is, start out with cheap USB adapters that can later be repurposed as a Zigbee Router once you have decided if you want to go with ZHA integration or Zigbee2MQTT, or both which is also an option.

#5

Another similar product is ZigStar LAN Gateway

https://zig-star.com/projects/zigbee-gw-lan/

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigstar-zigbee-coordinators-and-routers/338586

https://www.tindie.com/stores/zigstar/?ref=offsite_badges&utm_source=sellers_mercenaruss&utm_medium=badges&utm_campaign=badge_small

No such known issues with latest firmware, but yes you will need to upgrade the firmware regardless.

Yes you can but it has a Silicon Labs chip so not recommended if ever want to try Zigbee2MQTT later. Function-wise it would once hacked work similar to Tube’s Gateways and ZigStar LAN Gateway.

Still, I would not recommend something that requires hacking for first time setup when a USB is very cheap and can be re-purposed as a Zigbee Router with different firmware if want to upgrade later.

#6

That would be a short term solution to setup most of the devices and have a partial integration with HA.

Considering the current chip shortage and the fact I am still learning about HA/ZHA, it is not my priority to setup immediately multiple branded devices on the zigbee network (at the moment the only different one is the windows/doors sensor).

Can I use the Ikea Zigbee router (with a ZHA compatible Zigbee coordinator already installed) with ZHA without reflashing?

#7

I am ok to open the silvercrest GW and re-flash the firmware to have ZHA support, it is not a big deal.

But I agree with you it might be a good option to consider the Zigbee2MQTT, reading from the comparisons available (especially for OTA capabilities for more brands but also for not being dependent on HA to keep up the Zigbee network).

So for that I could go with Zig-star once available and do some testing before installing/replacing the current setup.

thanks for the valuable help and input! I will keep you posted on the project in the relevant section and if still any question I will raise here in the community.

#8

Yes. Though you might still consider upgrading its firmware once everything is setup as has bug-fixes.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#ota-firmware-updates

Personally, I currently use two CC2652 based USB adapters (one Sonoff Plus USB dongle and one ZZH USB dongle right now) to the same Home Assistant instance myself at home in order to utilize both the ZHA integration and Zigbee2MQTT for different Zigbee devices, (so one USB dongle per Zigbee platform).

I primarily use ZHA for the majority of my devices because its component is natively integrated into Home Assistant (so do not have to deal with MQTT for it) and only use Zigbee2MQTT for a couple of newer non-standard devices that do not yet have full support in ZHA.

Because Zigbee2MQTT still has a larger community it does tend to get faster and broader/wider support for less common and odd devices that deviate further from Zigbee standard specifications.

#9

By the way, if you can code/script and prefer Python over JavaScript/TypeScript then suggest you use ZHA instead of Zigbee2MQTT, and vice versa, that way you can at least edit your own quirks/converters and contribute them back to the community, but if you can not code/script then suggest that you try out both, even at the same time.

#10

Perfectly right.

However, if you don’t need to move your ZB devices from one ZB network to another(eg. Motion sensors from garage will never need to connect to the roof ZB bridge), then you can link multiple ZB Bridges(each with it’s own network) to HA using multiple instances of Zigbee2MQTT. This is perfectly doable, and I have described almost everything, including config files here: Zigbee ZHA, are multiple coordinators possible? - #11 by mccasian

#11

While not supported you could in theory also have several separate instances of the ZHA integration component. At least you should be able to do so today as a workaround in order to have multiple instances of the ZHA integration component, but it would be a very hacky solution as users would need to manually copy the zha component to a new folder/directory and edit the manifest JSON file on the second copy so that both its domain and name are named something else which are unique, which in practice would make it into a completely separate integration component, (though I believe doing so might mess up the USB discovery and Zeroconf discovery functions for initiation the config flow).