I was going to suggest that before… but I forgot. lol
I have mine placed in pretty much the dead center of my house and a router at each end of the house (I have a small-ish house as well; Only 1150 sq ft). With just the coordinator, I can hit every one of my devices without even using the routers. With the routers, I can hit my mailbox sensor and sensors in my backyard shed that are both well over 50 yards (guesstimate) without any other routing devices needed.
Plus, I LOVE having the ethernet option as I don’t have to have USB dongles physically attached to a particular machine. I now have a disaster recovery script that shuts down the Z2M service, rsyncs the entire Z2M directory to a backup server, and then starts the Z2M service on that new server all without having to physically connect/disconnect a dongle. LOVE IT.
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Thread title updated. 
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Hahaha. Didn’t mean to change your whole business process here and rename the entire thread - but thank you
Thanks for the clarification!
On that note (and with the observation that @code-in-progress makes) - I know you appear to be heavy in the zigbee space - any suggestion on devices to so a similar setup with zwave2mqtt that anyone can point me in the direction of? (Or is that a space you will get into?)
No worries, I have been meaning to do it as this thread has grown more into a general support/questions thread on my devices, more general than my original semi-marketing post to announce the router.
I’m have not paid much attention to z-wave, I had a few devices and then went all in with zigbee. I still use the z-wave side of the Nortek Husbzb-1 for the few z-wave devices I have.
What kind of things are you looking to accomplish? I can make some device recomendations as well.
Thanks!
I have 4 total z-wave devices right now:
- A toggle/light switch on one of the wall switches to give physical access (power on/off) back when I was starting with SmartThings. My house wasn’t set up with Decora switches so I had to make it fit in.
- An industrial relay (also set up under SmartThings ad-hoc) to trip the garage door.
- Another of the same relay (spare because I thought it went bad but SmartThings nerfed the “momentary switch” operation.)
- A metering switch (monitor power draw).
All of them I had in SmartThings and could voice control with Alexa. Got them working in Home Assistant with z-wave2mqtt. I like the architecture Bill described of abstracting the “network” from the management layer. I don’t HAVE to pull it out - I’m somewhat insulated at present - hardware goes down I should be able to move or restore the VM (HA inside Proxmox) and map the USB through and off to the races… but his description of keeping the network separate got me thinking.
Honestly with the wide variety of zigbee devices it looks like only items that handle AC current directly are Zwave (I can’t find a zigbee light switch… yet) and the plugs I had for simple on off (one of them a Smartthings original Kickstarter edition wall plug which can’t be recognized by ZHA) that were 45$ 10 years ago now have 13$ replacements. Might be easier just to buy some new hardware.
@tube0013 If ever looking to branch out into devices… Was trying to find a simple Input based Zigbee device the other day. Literally just want a device that can read contacts from a couple devices and report if the inputs are open or closed. I could do it easily with ESPHome and some esp boards, but realized very few of the Zigbee players out there have anything like this.
look into Xbee modules or the custom fw for the cc2531 from pvto I think.
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Howdy - still struggling to unlock bootloader (or at least I think that’s what’s happening) on the router.
I’ve tried UART on pi, usb-ttl no brand adpater, adafruit usb uart adapter, tried across pi, ubuntu and windows boxes with no joy, still getting the dreaded ERROR: Timeout waiting for ACK/NACK after 'Synch (0x55 0x55)'.
Can i just triple check steps?
- Plug in usb - uart device without router attached
- Do not plug in power supply to micro usb
- Hold down bsl button
- Plug in jumpers to header on router
- Keep holding down bsl button for 10
- Release and launch command, e.g.
python ./cc2538-bsl.py -p COM5 -b 9600 -ewv .\CC1352P2_CC2652P_launchpad_router_20210128.hex
No specific baud settings required, default 50000 okay?
Thanks again.
That’s my procedure I use to initially flash and then reflash after testing.
Make sure you don’t have tx and rx swapped too, RX on the USB to serial should go to the tx pin and tx to the RX pin.
Is the button depressing? Did it possible come lose? (Have never seen this, trying to cover all bases.
Thank you! I had tx to tx, rx to rx - noob error Thanks very much, I’m past the ack/nack step now.
I mess this up all the time. Check out my efr32 GitHub page 
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Just wanted to add after some testing the compiled router firmware with 20db has been stable for me, and does give give a significant lqi boost (looking at z2m device page).
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Hey man I just ordered two routers and want to add a coordinator. I replied to you confirmation email. I assume that email is monitored? [email protected]. Thanks.
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You won’t be disappointed!
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Thanks. Hopefully this will sort the holes I have since removing the Tuya ones you and I talked about
Yup I just replied.
Hey Guys
Wow received the routers and coordinator. They look great so thanks Tubes.
Only one problem I cannot either of the routers to connect to my ZHA network. I have even tried to use the BSL button re reset at per the instructions. Have tried putting it really close to my Conbee II stick and tried adding them using various other devices. I have debug mode configured.
Ideas? What logs would be helpful?
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Sure post some logs on pastebin or paste.Ubuntu.com and I’ll take a look in the morning.
Usually they join the network straight away, and I actually test join each one to make sure they work before shipping. Biggest tip is to make sure ZHA is permitting joins first before plugging in/resetting.