Smart Home | Home Assistant | Zigbee research

💭 Thoughts

I want to have:

an HA instance deployed to my k8s cluster made of 3 Raspberry Pi nodes
a mesh of Zigbee devices covering both floors of my house
minimized interferrence with the 2.4 GHz band Wi-Fi channels

🔎 Findings

a Zigbee network requires a device called coordinator
there may be only one Zigbee coordinator per network
there may be several separate Zigbee meshes, with dedicated coordinators each
several Zigbee coordinators/networks can be plugged into HA, which makes working with any device from any Zigbee network transparent and coherent
Zigbee meshes may have nodes called routers, they are able to forward messages from other nodes; the routers are typically grid-powered, the battery-powered devices don't usually perform routing due to energy-saving considerations; an example of a router can be a lightbulb or a dedicated stick
coordinators can be built into SOHO routers/APs (like Eero) or be dedicated devices like smart home hubs or sticks; the sticks can be connected to HA using USB or network (over Wi-Fi or Ethernet); the sticks can be powered through USB or PoE
having HA running on a Kubernetes cluster means that its container may migrate between physical nodes, ending up on ones that don't have a Zigbee stick plugged in; using a stick per node is not an option because they are typically coordinators, meaning they serve different meshes; some sticks can be turned into routers so that there could be one coordinator; another limitation is that the underlying node hardware is not normally exposed to Kubernetes Pods and requires extra set up to get it working
using a network-connected device is benefitial since all the nodes can then talk to the same coordinator over the normal network; that coordinator can be plugged into remote locations away from the network rack that could be used to improve Zigbee mesh coverage; using PoE to power it also enables reducing the amount of cabling needed
a popular Zigbee stick is SLZB-06 — it is hybrid and can work in either coordinator or router mode, it can also be connected via USB, Ethernet or Wi-Fi with access through a web UI, and is powered by either USB or PoE, it's also a product of the Ukrainian quality design and has an open-source firmware: https://smlight.tech; it's recommended by Zigbee2MQTT — a popular method for integrating Zigbee with MQTT; docs: https://smlight.tech/manual/slzb-06/; WebUSB flasher: https://smlight.tech/flasher/#flashingFAQ
it has another version — SLZB-06M — that makes use of a more powerful underlying chip with the pottential to support the Matter standard in the future; it has support for ZHA, which is a native method for integrating Zigbee devices with HA, but Zigbee2MQTT consideres the support experimental: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/#experimental; besides, there's no open-source firmware to be published and the new firmware remake blobs are tagged as alpha-quality dev-releases: https://github.com/smlight-dev/slzb-06-firmware/issues/69#issuecomment-1849878230
the SMLIGHT folks recommend buying the sticks via AliExpress from within the EU: due to modern-day logistics challanges and the fact that this marketplace bundles the import duties like VAT, reducing the bureaucracy
regularly wired light switches can be extended by Zigbee relays that fit right into the original switch sockets; this allows controlling the light using both the normal switch and IoT integrations through HA; it also works with 2-3-4-way switches where a single light is controlled by multiple separate toggles
the relays usually need a neutral wire to be available
bookmarks dump:
ESP Home based solutions may be more flexible (like having local failover logic when the network is down): https://esphome.io

webknjaz/smart-home-mesh.md