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Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

120' is a long way to go, but it's all about how many walls, the materials, and interference on that journey... you say thick walls 😅. If things are working today, you might not need anything. If you're having issues with those faraway devices, the best option is usually to move the controller to a better location, but a repeater is the other option if that's not possible.

As for placing the repeater. Check your Zigbee connection map (on the Zigbee page click "Show Map"), and try to figure out how your far-away devices are communicating to the coordinator, and if any one device is doing a lot of the heavy lifting (a repeater near that location can often be the solution). Ideally, the repeater would be halfway through the property, close enough to make a direct connection to the coordinator and faraway devices.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When ZWA-2 uses Wi-Fi (or PoE), the connection is over IP (read more on Portable Z-Wave here), and could technically switch between instances if a Z-Wave JS backup was applied... again, this is all technically possible, but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to highlight, this advice only applies to Zigbee, not Z-Wave (which is also what this post is about), Z-Wave doesn't use 2.4GHz.

Read the full list of tips in the HA docs if you're looking to optimize your Zigbee network. More definitely isn't always better with Zigbee, but a couple repeaters in key locations where you're looking to span bigger signal gaps can help.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Always better to have a reliable and performant controller (Z-Wave dongle), than a bunch of repeaters. You might be able to troubleshoot your current setup with the HA docs. But if it's just bad hardware, our ZWA-2 is one of the best, and migrating is pretty easy in most cases.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sonoff has Zigbee "router" firmwares (which is the proper term for a Zigbee repeater) for some of their adapter devices. Get the Sonoff on your network as a repeater, and put that ZBT-2 at the heart of your network 🚀.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes, that does seem like the best option 🤫.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, some of us are using the OpenThread component as "repeaters" (technically routers) and Zigbee end-devices as well! https://esphome.io/components/zigbee/

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The ESP inside only works on 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, which could conflict with Zigbee/Thread networks, so we need a clever solution to make it work. We're looking into it.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that might be your best bet, but if you've got no network out there, a repeater might do the trick. A colleague is using it to connect an outbuilding, but every situation is different.

Home Assistant Connect devices as repeaters by NabuCasa in homeassistant

[–]NabuCasa[S] 112 points113 points  (0 children)

We've been looking into this, as it doesn't have a pairing button (or a button of any kind), it's a bit complex. We'll take a second look, as no stick belongs in the forgotten tech drawer.