As a homeowner with a growing interest in smart home technology, I’ve recently taken on the challenge of expanding my ZigBee network to cover every corner of my house. I’ve been using ZigBee, Mosquitto, and Home Assistant (HA) for a while now, and while the setup has been working well, I’ve hit a snag when trying to scale it up.
I started with a good USB dongle from slae.sh and later upgraded to the LAN/PoE-based SLZB-06. Both have served me well, but as I added more devices, I realized the need for a stronger network. I decided to purchase another SLZB-06 coordinator, thinking it would seamlessly integrate into my existing setup.
However, I quickly discovered that running multiple coordinators wasn’t as straightforward as I hoped. It seemed like I needed two separate instances of ZigBee2Mqtt, leading to two distinct ZigBee networks. This wasn’t the elegant solution I was aiming for, especially as I planned to add even more coordinators in the future.
After some research and experimentation, I found a temporary workaround by running one coordinator with ZigBee2Mqtt and the other with the edge version of the same software. This allowed both coordinators to coexist within my Mosquitto and HA setup, though it felt a bit clunky.
I’m now curious to know if there’s a more streamlined approach to managing multiple ZigBee coordinators. Would it be better to stick with a single coordinator and rely on routers for expansion? Or is there a way to have multiple coordinators work together more harmoniously within one network? I’d love to hear your thoughts or any brilliant ideas you might have to simplify this setup.
This journey has been a great learning experience, and I’m excited to see how I can optimize my smart home setup further. Whether it’s through better coordination of existing hardware or exploring new technologies, I’m committed to finding the best solution for my home automation needs.