I thought I was on to a winner. I’ve ordered a few Xiaomi sensors from China (reed switch, PIR sensors) and was going to connect these up to my Hass Pi with zigbee2mqtt. I had also ordered the wherewithal to build the dongle.
But I guess I was too hasty. I now read that ONE zigbee2mqtt dongle connected up to my Hass Pi in my basement would not on its own provide enough coverage and I’d likely need one or maybe two more zigbee routers dotted about the house.
This I could live with, but now I’ve found out (too late, my bad) that zigbee causes WiFi interference. Arrrr… this I very likely cannot live with! I need to use 2.4Ghz WiFi.
Can anyone chime in with their own solution to this problem, if indeed it is a problem for you?
At this point I’m thinking I’ll just stick the lot on eBay when it finally lands from China Post…
But that takes me back to square one. I realise wired sensors are the ultimate answer but I don’t really have that luxury.
I have been using Zigbee (Smarththings hub) and 2.4Ghz wifi (ESP8266 devices) together for a while with no problem. May be specific to your hardware?
To be honest, I now have mainly wifi control over everything and don’t use zigbee with HA. I have wired sensors connected to ESP8266 boards that then relay signals over wifi.
Another alternative is to get a cheap 433Mhz bridge (e.g. Sonoff RF bridge) and use 433 Mhz sensors. Advantages: cheap, easy to set up, battery efficient - especially if you are just after reed switches and motion sensors.
I have about 25 aqara xiaomi zigbee devices, about 40 wifi devices (pc’s included, but also lots of sonoff switches) and some Bluetooth connections (also use the BT Monitor for presence detection).
Zigbee, Wifi and BT use the 2.4 Ghz band but running along fine. Also using Hass.io.
But some tips: place the zigbee2mqtt stick (cc2531) not too close to your Pi. Add a usb cable , e.g. a 1/2 mtr, to the cc2531 so it’s not too close to the Pi or your access point.
Wifi, zigbee and BT have all their coverage issues. Don’t think about these networks in the same way. Zigbee is defacto a mesh network, so it’s behavior gets better with routers (area coverage and network stability).
Mains connected zigbee devices normally work as routers (e.g. zigbee lamps). Or use xiaomi power plugs, cc2531 flashed as router or the new Ikea Tradfri signal enhancer (= zigbee router) as routers.
As long as the zigbee channels and wifi channels don’t overlap, you will be fine. You might want to do a wifi scan to see what channels are in use so you don’t use a channel a neighbour is using and cause issues.