I like to introduce myself. I am a IOT hobbyist or maker. I have been playing around with other hubs. I have been reading some post here as passive observer. I make a Zigbee Environment Sensor that I have tested with Smartthings and Hubitat. At this point, I have manufactured small quantity of the Environment sensor.
I have been looking at Home Assistant recently. I am hopping that I can bring additional value with my sensor to this community.
The sensor is Zigbee sensor that measure Pressure, Humidity and Temperature of a room using Bosch BME280. It also have ambient light sensor based on TEMT6000.
I think what is unique about the sensor is that the sensor is configured as Zigbee Router. The Zigbee radio comes with dedicated power amplifier. As a router, the sensor require 5V DC power from a phone charger.
It also come with a LIPO/LI-on battery backup. This will help with your Zigbee mesh as you build your Zigbee infrastructure.
I also design the sensor for DIYer so that it can be expanded. There is one digital input, digital output and analog input. It also has Serial expansion so that It can interact with Arduino to handle complex sensors.
In Home Assistant, I have tested the sensor using Zigbee2mqtt. I am able to get most of the functionality of the sensor. I am able to get the main sensor Temperature, Humidity, pressure, light reading. I am able to get Binary Input which I connect to a PIR sensor. I also can control a relay/switch. I have a few functionality in the expansion area that need more work. I would also like to take this opportunity to reach out to the community if I can get some assistant to further improve the sensor integration to Home Assistant.
I am aware that there are some battery powered alternative Zigbee sensor that have similar feature with what I make. One important question is why make another one. My answer is that as a user of home automation product myself, I found battery powered devices is a hassle to maintain. Once pass certain number sensor that I have own, I got lazy on replacing the battery. Yes, some of them have a long battery live. But, as a figure, once I passed owing 40 of battery powered sensors, I always behind when It come to replace my battery.
This is where my journey started. I am looking and start thinking that some sensor does not have to be located at specific spot. Contact sensor have to be next to a door. But, temperature,humidity and pressure sensor can be tucked somewhere in a room near an outlet.
As thing progress with my Zigbee knowledge, I see another feature that a sensor could benefit. If I have these sensors through out my house, why not make it a router? I can kill 2 birds with one stone. I can monitor my rooms and make my Zigbee coverage better.
The next feature is battery back up. As a replacement of battery powered devices, it has one weakness in the early iteration of the sensor. When the power is out, It will stop working while the battery powered sensor that it replaced still working. Therefore, I build a battery backup system in the module for this reason. Depending the battery capacity that you use on the battery, It can provide temporary power between 1 hr to 1 day.
I just got a word that the support for zigbee2mqtt for this sensor has been added on the github. Thank you to Koenkk for the prompt response to my pull request.
I just want to update you that I am offering the sensor for sale so that the community here can start to play around with it. The sensor has been tested and developed using other Zigbee compatible hubs. I just started to explore its integration in HA. I am sure there are plenty to learn. At this point, the Zigbee2mqtt driver support the basic Light, Temperature, Humidity and Pressure sensor reading. The sensor can do more than that. I will try to bring the feature in parity as in other hubs if possible. As previously mentioned, the sensor should help you improving your Zigbee Mesh. It has battery back up feature that is useful in the case of power outage.
Just FYI, I am US based. Ebay charge multiple shipping for more each sensor. I will be happy to refund the shipping cost after the first sensor up to 5 sensor. I will ship them together in one box. If Ebay is a hassle, please feel free to reach out and PM me.
I bought a couple of your devices a bit over a year ago. I’ve now made the switch to HA and I’m struggling to get these to pair via Zigbee2Mqtt. Can you advise how I put them into pairing mode?
Hmmm, the module model is RES001. It is rather old one. When I work on to get the module, I did it on RES005. RES001 may shave a subset of clusters in comparison with the current RES005 model that I tested with Zigbee2Mqtt.
I do not have the Zigbee2MQTT code on top of my head for all the code. I remember that there are some configuration/code that map model number to the driver. If you want to spend some time, you may be able to adjust some of them to support model RES001.
My recollection is that the porting should be reasonable. It is not like Groovy driver in ST. Zigbee2MQTT has a very good design. There have maps of device clusters and attributes. You just have to add for this model.
I am sorry that this is taking longer. I am not able to find my emails about the commits. There are a couples of them.
I do get some fragments of the code on the emails. The code the changed to add support is on zigbee-herdsman. It is mostly in device.js. There should be model number RES005 and KMPCIL. You maybe able to track back the changes that is needed to support the Environment Sensor.
Hi, what is the working temperature range of your device? If I built a suitable enclosure would it operate also outdoor, in temperature range of about -40°C - 50°C?
What are the value ranges of the measurements.
Thanks in advance
I am using Bosch BME280 for environmental sensor. It’s specified temperature range is -40 to 85 degree Celsius. You can use enclosure. Please make sure that you have air flow. Any temperature sensor need air flow. The one that I make specifically need air flow because the Zigbee Radio is always on. There is continuous heat generated by the radio.
If you search the zigbee-herdsman-converters there doesn’t seem to be code for the RES001 as compared to the RES005 which I have pointed to the PR for. You could probably add RES001 via an external converter. See Support new devices | Zigbee2MQTT
