Zigbee Controllers: Questions on controllers & integration

Configuration Zigbee
1

Hello, all! I’m new to HA and IoT protocols, so I’m trying to hit the ground running. My wireless AP has built-in Zigbee coordinator functionality, and I’m trying to figure out how to connect that to HAOS.

The Zigbee documentation for HA lists coordinators that are compatible with HA, which confuses me. From my understanding, the Zigbee standard is explicitly specified and thusly, should be uniform across Zigbee devices. If the Zigbee standard is explicit, then why do all Zigbee coordinator modules not work with HA? If the coordinator has routing functionality, shouldn’t it be able to simply route Zigbee traffic to HA?

If I’m ultimately unable to get my AP’s Zigbee coordinator to interface with HA, how do I go about creating the necessary module (integration?) in HA to make this happen? I’m not a professional programmer by any means, but I’ve certainly written my share of bash/powershell scripts, so I’m assuming this is in my realm of capabilities.

My AP is an Aruba 655. The documentation for Zigbee doesn’t seem great, but here’s what they have.

2

Zigbee standard is explicit about communication between Zigbee devices and their coordinator. There is no universal Zigbee coordinator stack, that still needs to be programmed.

Compare with Ethernet. Ethernet is pretty much standard, you can plug any Ethernet device in any Ethernet switch or hub, and it will work. But Ethernet network cards all need their own drivers in Windows or Linux, because communication between the card and the OS is far from standard. Same with Zigbee coordinators.