Just started to work with Zigbee devices in Zigbee2MQTT, reading throught settings and yaml configurations and after switching to channel 15 I managed to have stable enough network to perform OTA updates for HVAC valves.
One of the reasons to go for Zigbee for me is an option to use 868Mhz frequency, or Channel 0 in Europe. After reading some of the specs, there should be definitely support, but I havent found much resources about it.
Why bother in the first place?
The problem I have is high Wifi 2.4Ghz congestion. I live in a flat with neighbours who are not into technical stuff, and most of the channels in Wifi 2.4 is used. In order to make my own Wifi 2.4ghz to work, I had to retreat to channel 13 and use only 20MHz, and use majority of networking on LAN or 5GHz.
Zigbee in 2.4Ghz is similar, albeit working solution. 868MHz would allow me to avoid this frequency completely.
At the moment I am realizing that:
Multiprotocol RCP does not seem to support Zigbee channels below 11, and IF I want to try Thread from same dongle, I have to stay in 2,4 range for compatibility
Does the Sonoff ZBDongle-E support it?
To find out I probably have to switch firmware back to EZSP/Ember. So far, Multiprotocol RCP isnt exposing this channel
Does Zigbee2MQTT supports it?
I can try to set Channel 0 in settings, but I dont expect to work it now.
Does the devices support it?
If the device supports Zigbee 3.0 and its intended for sale in Europe, it should.
There is one limitation to 868Mhz channel, it has much lower bandwidth compared to 2,4GHz, and also that If i want to add better antenna to ZBDongle, I already have plenty of wifi 2.4Ghz antenna available.
There have been sub-GHz Zigbee devices, but not consumer products. The sub-GHz Zigbee devices I’ve seen are all industrial products or product lines that are purposefully incompatible with the consumer tech or devices made by other brands/manufacturers.
@Offler if you need wireless devices that aren’t 2.4GHz your best current option is ZWave. You might also take a look at LoRa-based devices; the selection of available devices has been widening over the past couple years.
Multiprotocol thread /Zigbee is not supported due to issues with Silicon Labs. They stopped developing the multiprotocol stack because of it. I wouldn’t try.
As I understand it, it would require that you build and develop every device you want to use from scratch. The Zigbee3 standard used by the majority of currently available devices is explicitly constrained to 2.4ghz as part of device validation.
As I mentioned in a different topic, I walked into a dead end with washingmachine by Haier. Apparently a Matter device, with questionable policies to open software.
Me and my wife would like to retain all the functionality of custom washing programs in case the HON software would not work for whatever reason, while at the same time I realized that automated heating and fan in bathroom would resolve bunch of problems with moisture in near future.
Getting MultiPan and try to run Zigbee along with Thread either on SkyConnect/ZBT-1 or Sonoff ZBDongle E looked like a good opportunity to start with HA and learn things and run two different standards next to each other.
I already got those issues answered, and probably will just try whether Matter integration works with washingmachine with current setup (ZBDongle-E with MultiPan) and move forward to EZSP/Ember in few weeks.
I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. You won’t know if you’re fighting multipan (yes, yes, you are) and if you run into any issues your first response will be turnoff multipan.
Just stick it out until you can afford a second dongle.
That said, OP, if you understand what others are saying (that it’s not a good idea), and you know what you are doing, I’d say go ahead and try… even though you probably would not get much help from here.
And… report back your progresses along the way and your setup in the end. All of those tinkering would be part of the fun isn’t it?
Personally I also have concerns that your plan might not work, but hey, if you get it working I’m interested to know.
The issues are with the firmware at the SL level and the HA team rightfully so didn’t have time to both develop the addin and chase buggy firmware so they stopped work on multipan sometime (I want to say as long as February last year maybe earlier…) but yes we’ve been recommending don’t multipan for quite some time now.
After few hours of reading, sub-ghz Zigbee isnt typically used on home consumer devices.
Could be found in certain devices, in EU or UK, sometimes still being called zigbee, but in solutions which are not open.
For example a radio operated alarm, or a power grid accesories, industrial grade or radio operated gates. Nothing for home automation…
I will stick to 2.4GHz band, besides i have plenty of compatible antennas for ZBDongle.
MultiPAN
Should not be as bad, but i do believe that its not working well. The info about end of experiment did not arrived to resellers of Skyconnect / ZBT-1, my choice of Sonoff was due availability.
Haier/Matter
Washing machine does not appear to be a Matter device, or the integration did not worked, while HON integration seems to be blocked by Haier.
Honestly I expected the HON integration to work locally, but even then, having faster GUI would help.
Atm, Home Assistant on Zigbee allowed me to better manage heating and ventilation… So far worth the effort and money.
I know one commercial device that has MultiPan enabled (Homey), and once its Zigbee network grows (like: more than about a dozen devices), it begins to fail in all kinds of unpredictable ways: devices stop responding, massive delays, unable to pair devices. I’ve seen a lot of its users moving back to their original hubs (IKEA, Hue), or to Zigbee2MQTT, because of it (the Homey device was shipped as “supporting Zigbee and Thread” and only one EFR32 chip onboard, and no support for external USB dongles, so they have to use MultiPan).
These chips work fine for a single protocol, but when you use multiple protocols there’s a lot of juggling that has to be done, because the radio can still only handle one protocol at a time. Which means a lot of protocol processing has to be done off-chip, in software, and that’s where things start to fail (AFAIK any MultiPan implementation depends on software created by Silicon Labs, and AFAIK that software has never been reliable). Not to mention that all the Thread/Zigbee data has to be pushed over a serial connection, with its inherent limits and bottlenecks.
But if it’s “just a thing of sw development and bugfixing”, I’m sure you will come up with a working MultiPan implementation in no time, everyone will be thankful.
Went for fw 7.4.4.0 on ZBDongle-E, uninstalled Multiprotocol plugin, had to figure out how to properly configure Z2MQT, switched to Ember.
Now LQI is properly reported, HVAC valves do not lit up randomly, MQTT protocol now does not run on version 2 (value from multipan autoconfig) but 5, no random loss of connection.
So just have to check logs for certain random errors, but for sure the operation is more stable.
