I have aqara human body sensors (zigbee pir’s) that the battery lasted over a year, and still going. The ikea Zigbee pir’s batteries seem to faster. Can’t tell yet about the Sonoff Pir’s, the one I put into service is only working 6 weeks, but the battery still shows OK.
How many of the Sonoff ZB Bridges can be added into Home Assistant?
I’ve been following 2 how-to pages on loading the Sonoff ZB bridges into Home Assistant:
I just tried to add a 2nd bridge so I could have better RF coverage in the far part of my house and the Home Assistant Integration process wouldn’t let me add another bridge.
Is that expected behavior?
Yes. You can only add one ZHA coordinator. You can try Tasmota2Zigbee on the other one.
I think it obviously also depends where they are installed - I run FIBARO Motion sensor FGMS-001 ZW, AEOTEC MultiSensor 6 and the NeoCoolcam PIR all zwave but the size of the sonoff made them very interesting but the battery capacity is really poor for at least where I planned to run them - I think I get 10 days out of them while my zwave run for moths and months (probably around a year) in the same area …
ZHA currently only supports one Zigbee coordinator which in turn can only have one Zigbee network. As far as I know, the ZHA developers have no plans to add support for more than Zigbee coordinator.
It should be noted that the Zigbee specification only supports one Zigbee specification only support one Zigbee coordinator per Zigbee network. That is a hard limitation in Zigbee. There can be only one!
ZHA could, in theory, add support for more Zigbee coordinators at a higher-level but each Zigbee coordinator would still only be have their own seperate Zigbee network and none of the Zigbee coordinators/networks would have any low-level connection or even any knowledge of each other. Any connection between them would have to be done at ZHA or Home Assistant application level and not at the Zigbee level.
Feature request for a possible solution = [ZHA] Support for more than one Zigbee coordinator in ZHA?
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I’d be satisfied with some Zigbee devices that would repeat the Zigbee signals from device to device, in a mesh network fashion.
I thought Zigbee was supposed to act as a mesh network, where the devices performed a relay/repeater function and thus allowed for an extended RF footprint of the network.
As-is, the Sonoff temp sensors I have ALL connect back to the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge rather than performing a relay function for the more distant sensors. See the ZHA map.
Battery powered Zigbee devices never act as a repeater in a mesh network bcs that would consume too much power and running the battery low quickly. Only mains powered devices, like a Zigbee power plug or a Zigbee Mini switch has the repeater function.
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”Zigbee router” devices (which most AC mains-powerwd devices are) do support acting as Zigbee routers (also known as Zigbee signal repeater or range extender) if they follow the Zigbee standard. ”Zigbee end devices” (which most battery powered devices are) do not support routing signals rhemselves but can be routed if they support the Zigbee specification standard. Unfortunatly not all Zigbee router devices and end devices support the Zigbee standard and some brand of devices are infamous for not working with other brands. Xiaomi/Aquara is a such brand that is infamous for not being routed or capable of routing devices of other brands. Tip is to get Texas Instruments based devices as routers as they have a firmware that is know for being compatible with most brands.
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Yes, that is correct. I have a Tuya Mini switch (the one you can install in the wall behind a normal light switch) and that device is ‘according to Tuya’ compatible with Zigbee 3.0.
I tried to pair that many times to the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge (also 3.0 Zigbee), but never got this working.
It may work if you flash the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge with Tasmota, but I haven’t tried that.
Here you have the real problem with Zigbee : although Zigbee 3.0 is a real standard (much more than Zigbee 1.2 which left space for interpretation by the vendors) there is one caveat : the standard does not force Zigbee 3.0 coordinator ( often called bridge/Gateway/hub/…) manufacturers to support devices from other manufacturers. That is up to them. So an ikea tradfri bulb might work on an philips hue hub, or a hue bulb might work on a tradfri gateway, but that is goodwill between those 2 manufacturers. It is not a reason for the Zigbee alliance not to certify a coordinator as Zigbee 3.0 compatible if they don’t.
The inter-operatebility between the different Zigbee device manufactures is far from perfect, also for Zigbee 3.0. Is that mainly caused by the different ESP chip sets used among the manufactures of the Zigbee devices, or is it mainly bcs firmware non-compatibility issues?
Does anybody know if flashing a Zigbee Hub in a network with the Tasmota FW resolve most of these issues?
And of course, if you are willing to spend a bit more on each sensor/device, then you could swap it all out with z-wave devices, those for sure are working much more reliable between different manufactures.
Router compatibility is due to firmware on that device and firmware on the device it is to route as if eithet or do not work well with the other then you can not really do anthing.
Issues with the coordinator not being compatible when talkinng directly to a device can often be solved by the developer of the hub/bridge/gateway, such as ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT.
Do not know what you mean by ”ESP” and ”BCS” in reference to Zigbee chips and/or firmware. Those acronyms are not used by any Zigbee chips or firmware as far as I know.
Zigbee coordinators (bridge/gateway/hub/…) have to know (the behavior of) the devices that connect to them. For opensource coordinator software, they know a lot of devices. Zigbee2MQTT has devices.js where all the devices it knows are defined. ZHA has ‘quirks’. Multi-device, multi vendor, proprietary coordinator firmware as Deconz will add device support if enough customers ask. Single vendor proprietary manufacturers as Hue or Ikea add new device support normally through firmware updates, and normally only when they bring out new devices themselves, or reach an agreement with a competitor for cross support (e.g. Ikea and Hue)
ZHA already know standard device types and as such only need quirks for devices that are not standard or do not follow the standard specifications exactly. So ZHA does not need quirks for all devices but only for those specific devices that deviate from the specificification standards that it support.
What I find particularly bad is that various Tuya 3.0 Zigbee devices (like the Mini switch) are not working (= not pairing) with the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge, out of the box.
I am wondering if this can be solved by flashing the Sonoff Zogbee Bridge with the Tasmota FW, and if somebody already has tested that.
can’t comment on other devices from tuya but i am using this scene switch and it works perfectly with sonoff zigbee hub using tasmota (ZHA)
OK, it is great to hear that this works with the Tasmota FW. Did you try to pair as well this Tuya device with a Sonoff ZBBridge with its factory FW?
I just got a Sonoff S31 Lite Zigbee outlet.
https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-s31-lite-zb.html
I looked inside and it has a Texas Instruments CC2530 chip in it.
It easily paired with the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge (Tasmota FW).
It didn’t appear to automatically act as a repeater for Temp2, the farthest Sonoff temp sensor in my house.
Is it supposed to automatically act as a repeater for other ZB devices?
Its been about 6 hours since it joined the ZB network with a new ZB address, and it still hasn’t started acting like a repeater.
That is a kind of weird: that device should act as a Zigbee repeater since it is mains powered.
Could you move your Zigbee Temp sensor closer to the S31 Zigbee and try again? The Temp sensor might still be out of the Zigbee range of the S31.
Otherwise I would open a support ticket with Itead to ask if the S31 Zigbee has the repeater feature or not.