Zigbee USB Dongle on a remote router

Configuration Zigbee
1

I have a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle directly connected to my Home Assistant instance and it’s working great. My problem is I want to have some devices to let me know if the garage doors are opened/closed in a detached pole building. I have a separate router for wireless that is connected by a buried ethernet cable, with router setup as a repeater. This too works great as I stream my Spotify via Volumio with no issues. My current ZigBee dongle won’t reach the new devices, so could I add another USB dongle to the remote router?

2

Unfortunately not possible like that, at least not at this time. The ZHA integration does at this point not support multiple Zigbee Coordinator adapters at the same time and you can unfortunately not either at this point have multiple ZHA integration components instances installed and running inside a single Home Assistant core instance at the same time.

See questions and answers as well as suggested workarounds like installing a Zigbee2MQTT instance at the remote location just for the devices there → Multiple ZHA integrations possible? - #2 by Hedda

Alternatively try to build out your Zigbee network with more and stronger Zigbee Router devices, see:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#using-router-devices

and

https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy/wiki/Generic-best-practice-tips-on-improving-Zigbee-network-range-and-general-stability

Checkout Sonoff ZBDongle-E and ZBDongle-P flashed with with Zigbee Router firmware instead:

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3

As stated, if ZHA, you can only have one instance with a single coordinator.

Possible options of you can’t extend the existing zigbee net:

  1. For just a few devices, consider wifi/esphome/tasmota devices.

  2. Some manufacturers make HomeKit compatible zigbee hubs(Aqara, Zemismart). Zigbee devices are exposed via wifi as HomeKit devices, and can be locally controlled with the HomeKit Controller integration.

  3. In the next month or two, see option 2, but replace HomeKit with Matter. Aqara has committed to bring Matter support to many of their existing Hubs(M2, E1, others) and a new M3 hub is on its way.

  4. Set up zigbee2mqtt as a second zigbee network using the add on with an ethernet connected coordinator.

  5. Run a standalone zigbee2mqtt instance. If you have a spare Pi, Pi Zero, or similar, you could place it in the garage and use a USB coordinator.

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4

I think I figured it out. I’m using an IKEA Tradfir plug as a router. Works good now.

I didn’t understand that only units running mains power can become routers. Battery operated are just end-points.

Thanks for the help all :+1: