Zigbee high availability and best coordinators

Hardware
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Hey,

I’m curious to know how people are achieving at least some kind of high availability with Zigbee networks with Home Assistant.

I started to wonder this after my Zigbee network has started to slow down at times where none of the devices respond but zigbee2mqtt only shows errors. This usually fixes itself after some time. But I have started to suspect that my Slaesh zigbee USB coordinator is starting to wear out.

Naturally, after I started to suspect the problem might be the Zigbee coordinator, I started to browse new ones. Luckily Zigbee2Mqtt docs list multiple choices so it is easy to pick one.

But then I started to wonder should I order two coordinators? What if the new one breaks in the first couple of months and I have zero working coordinators? But there is no point of having two coordinatros running in the same network, it might even make some devices to work poorly if they are not sure which coordinatro to connect to?

So how has people here made sure thei zigbee network won’t fail on them? Have you set up a second Zigbee network (don’t think devices can be connected to multiple networks at once?)? Do you have a spare coordinator lying in your closets? Are you sure it is actually working after 1 year of being unused?

Also, do you prefer USB or Ethernet coordinators?

Of course, achieving high availability would mean duplicating Home Assistant instance too with another mqtt broker etc but I think those are a bit different story and I should start on Zigbee HA as that is the most fragile part of the ecosystem.

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There is no point because you can’t do it. Only one per net is allowed.

Having a spare ready for a quick swap is about the best you can do.

I can imagine potential high availability configs, but they would be convoluted, custom, and time consuming to implement.

Long term, Thread will support multiple border routers to help eliminate the single point if failure.

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i have a slaesh coordinator a year ago, after a Texas Instruments CC2531 that was really bad with more than 20 devices…

After a couple of weeks my Zigbee network start to be slower and slower, some device doesnt respond anymore, light take sometimes 10 seconds to turn_on…really a big mess…really you dont expected to from a good mesh network.

So i make some research on the subject and found that the really cheap was the best :wink:

Usually the cheapest is not the best…almost…

So, i have now a full-working Zigbee network for 1 year now, its responsive, and just work as expect :

Sans titre
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and my winner is :

SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus ZBDongle-P

CC2652P based USB connected adapter pre-programmed and with enclosure.

Note before buying that ITead slightly confusingly now sells both the Dongle Plus “ZBDongle-P” (based on CC2652P), and the Dongle Plus V2 “ZBDongle-E” (based on EFR32MG21). This section is about the “ZBDongle-P”, for “ZBDongle-E” see below.

Router firmwareFlashing instructions (PDF version* ) or see “Flashing CC1352/CC2652/CC2538 based adapters” below

index

so there is probably better, but sure there is worst!!

and it cost about 12€, what is awesome! i have a spare one for these price! lol

1 Like
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I’ve been playing around High Availability for Zigbee coordinators during some months… please find my prototype approach in the following repository:

Any feedback is welcome!