Indeed! It would be very interesting to know the performance of the new dongle with EFR32MG21, after an antenna mod.
@digiblur Can I ask whether you remember if your craptastic CC2531 USB-stick was a model with an integrated circuit board antenna or a CC2531 USB-stick with SMA-connector and an external antenna?
Again the antenna quality, as well as antenna position and orientation can make a huge difference. This is very important to consider so fairly compare apples and apples and not compare apples and oranges.
Would be interested to read about a fair real-world comparison between different models and antennas.
- EFR32MG21 with a circuit board antenna versus CC2652P with a circuit board antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with external antenna versus CC2652P with an external antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with a circuit board versus CC2652P with an external antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with external antenna versus CC2652P with a circuit board antenna?
- CC2652P with a circuit board antenna versus CC2531 with a circuit board antenna?
- CC2652P with external antenna versus CC2531 with an external antenna?
- CC2652P with a circuit board versus CC2531 with an external antenna?
- CC2652P with external antenna versus CC2531 with a circuit board antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with a circuit board antenna versus CC2531 with a circuit board antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with external antenna versus CC2531 with an external antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with a circuit board versus CC2531 with an external antenna?
- EFR32MG21 with external antenna versus CC2531 with a circuit board antenna?
- CC2531 with integrated circuit board antenna versus CC2531 with an external antenna.
I think that to be a fair test you should set some prerequisites, test same antenna and they should really have same position and orientation, and Zigbee coordinator should also be used away from WiFi APs. Preferably also use a 1+ meter long USB extension cable to get the Zigbee away from the computer.
Please note that some external antennas are so bad that are worse then some circuit board antennas. If you want to a really serious article on the topic of antennas then maybe buy an AAI N1201SA:
Also known as a RF Vector Impedance ANT SWR Antenna Analyzer Meter Tester:
And apart from some antenna testing (good ideas above), would it be possible to connect the new Zigbee EFR32MG21 dongle via its USB connector and a USB-to-UTP adapter to a wired LAN for its communication to a computer (running your HA)?
Then the dongle can be placed at any good location is the house (where you have a LAN connection available).
So, ideally I think you would want to have a good external antenna mounted to the new ITEAD Zigbee EFR32MG21 dongle, and the dongle connected to your LAN network via a USB-to-UTP adapter and then assess the performance.
It has the “TX” and “RX” solder-pads needed for serial communuication on the back so yes it is possible to combine it with example a ESP32 based Wireless-Tag WT32-ETH01 which has a wired Ethernet port or a TTGO POE Board by LILYGO if also want PoE (Power over Ethernet) but it should be more cost-effective and easier soldeering to instead use EFR32 and/or CC2652P Zigbee radio module boards if you can find them.
@tube0013 has already demonstrated that you can build such products in a few ways and today he makes and sells small batches of such Zigbee bridges/bridges based on EFR32MG21 and CC2652P:
https://github.com/tube0013/tube_gateways
https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy/discussions/584
https://www.tubeszb.com/shop/coordinators/2
I think Tube’s Zigbee Gateway’s uses different Zigbee module boards from ex. Ebyte and/or RF-star:
https://www.ebyte.com/en/product-view-news.aspx?id=1002
https://www.ebyte.com/en/product-view-news.html?id=842
MattWestb also posted about his projects which use EFR32 modules ripped from IKEA Trådfri devices:
https://github.com/MattWestb/IKEA-TRADFRI-ICC-A-1-Module
On the ESP32 (or ESP8266) you run a firmware that has the capability to act as a Serial to IP server.
Yes but note that all the EFR32 and CC2652 MCU chips/modules have native serial interfaces and not native USB interfaces. Zigbee USB sticks/dongles all have a USB-to-serial converter chip on them that makes your computers USB-port able to connect to the serial interface on the Zigbee MCU. If want to use a ESP32 (or ESP8266) based server as your gateway/bridge to keep cost down then remember that those only have native serial interfaces themselves, thus they want to talk serial-to-serial and not go through a USB-to-serial converter chip to create a Serial-to-IP server and not USB-to-IP server, as such you need to by-pass the Serial-to-USB converter chip if you choose to base your project on a USB-dongle instead of a Zigbee module.
PS: Probably better to discuss all such questions about DIY bridges in this other thread instead:
Also see New Zigbee to Ethernet "DIY" Corrdinator · zigpy/zigpy · Discussion #584 · GitHub
By the way, one easier option without soldering is to use a Raspberry Pi server as a remote adapter:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/how_tos/how_to_connect_to_a_remote_adapter.html
With that solution, you basically just connect a Zigbee USB stick or Zigbee GPIO HAT/Sheild adapter to a Raspberry Pi with Linux installed and setup a serial to IP server using ser2net or similar application.
If you are more interested in that type of solution then check out the upcpoming Zoe2 by Electrolama:
https://electrolama.com/projects/zoe2/
Zoe2 by Electrolama Zigbee and PoE HAT is based on CC1352P and repolaces CC2530 based Zoe
https://electrolama.com/projects/zoe/
CC1352P is equivalent to CC2652P but has multi-band freqeuncy support so is a little more expensive.
Thank you for that link (Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet bridge/gateway (wired not WiFi) inexpensive DIY project for ZHA - #5 by Hedda)
I was not aware of the existence of that thread.
With the new ITEAD Zigbee EFR32MG21 dongle now on the market, I was just interested if an external antenna can be mounted and it can communicate (via a USB-to-Ethernet adapter) hard-wired to a LAN network.
That would already deliver a substantial performance improvement versus the standard Sonoff Zigbee Bridge.
A 3rd benefit (next to a good external antenna + a wired LAN connection), would be that this set-up with the dongle can be powered directly from the LAN network. There is then no need for a power adapter delivering the 3.3 vdc as needed for most of the shelf Zigbee bridges.
And the whole solution will be very cheap and very stable.
I don’t actually use the ebyte module. I use SiLabs MGM modules when I can get them. Supply seems low.
Many thanks for explaining this, that’s positive again about this hardware
And it could be probably pushed even further: use one of these very cheap Zigbee radio dongles, get an external antenna screwed to it (via a soldered connector to the dongle), mount it in a little plastic case together with a lite-touch server like a simple Pi, etc with HA and/or NodeRed onto it.
Guess you missed ead my “by the way…” above about Raspberry Pi server and Zoe2 by Electrolama?
Electrolama are charging more than fair prices for their previous Zoe HAT/Shield (and Zzh) so think that will be hard to beat that pre-packaged solution in price and effort if want to use it with a Raspberry Pi.
Yes, I saw that, but I assume that solution will likely be a bit pricier; and I have no idea about the Zigbee radio performance of that device.
I was more thinking about using this new very cheap ITEAD EFR32MG21 dongle mounted in a plastic case together with a lightweight server having a UTP LAN port + your HA app; and the external Zigbee antenna at the outside.
And even better if this set-up can be powered as well with PoE.
Don’t assume that. Electrorama does not charge much for their previous Zoe series of products today. And as a bonus you would get integrated PoE support if you do not go with their “Lite” version of Zoe2. Also, consider other stand-alone PoE solutions for a Raspberry Pi will alone set you back around $30.
https://www.tindie.com/stores/electrolama/
CC1352P should have exact same performance as CC2652P according to Texas Instruments specs.
CC1352P feature multi-band so it supports some sub-1GHz frequencies in addition to the standard 2.4GHz frequency range for Zigbee so that makes it a slightly more expensive chip/module, (and the software we use do not support sub-1GHz frequencies because it is mostly used by commercial Zigbee Smart Energy devices), but you can still fully utilize its 2.4GHz frequency just like if it was a CC2652P based device.
OK, thanks. What about this one (on top of a lite version of a Pi) + the new ITEAD dongle + external antenna?
Or just forget the whole PoE and use local small power adapter 
Please post constructive feedback in home-assistant.io/issues/17170 if think Sonoff ZBBridge should be lísted in ZHA integration documentation as in the top of the list of “known working radio modules” or not:
I know the above is related to the WiFi connectivity of the Sonoff ZB Bridge, but do we already know about the connectivity performance E2E when using ITEAD’s new EFR32MG21 dongle?
Has that been well tested by someone?
I don’t have one yet but FYI, there is a separate dedicated thread about ITead’s new Zigbee 3.0 dongle:
Maybe continue there if want to discuss using that USB-donge as a remote adapter over Serial-to-IP:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/how_tos/how_to_connect_to_a_remote_adapter.html
Again, please understand and remember that Zigbee network range depends on your Zigbee routers.
Hi,
I just have an IKEA Bulb explode a few days ago. I took it apart and found a capacitor burned in the mainboard. I decided to make use of the ZigBee module from the bulb so I de-soldered it from the mainboard it appear to be Trådfri ICC-A-1 Module
The following is what I have done so far
- solder wires to the module on the pads swdiotms, swclktck, VDD, GND
- Connect the wire to a jlink clone pcb I bought cheap from aliexpress
- Flash the icc-a-1-bootloader-combined.s37 I found from IKEA-TRADFRI-ICC-A-1-Module/Firmware at master · MattWestb/IKEA-TRADFRI-ICC-A-1-Module · GitHub
- Solder wires to the module PB14, PB15, PA0 then connect it to a ttl serial to usb module
- connect to the module from putty with 115200,n,8,1 it was connected after I short PA0 to GND then I presented wit boot loader screen. I then upload gbl file NCP_USW_115k2_F256_678_PB14-PB15-PA0.gbl via xmodem
at this poit everything look ok but I can not connect it via bellows
Any Idea what I did wrong, how can I test the connection with bellows to ensure it is working