Thanks again.
So, when using Zigbee you can only have one homegear-gateway?
I thought about placing homegear-gateways or zigbee-routers all over the house to have a decent coverage.
But maybe I misunderstand something…
The zstack can be configured to work in three ways:
- coordinator (this is what homegear connects to and what homegear/homegear-gateway will try to init). This one has routing capabilities but also many others, as security, managing nodes and so on. This is the one responsible with initializing the network, allowing devices joining in or making them leave the network. In principle you can have zigbee network without a coordinator, but I would advise against that.
- router. This one is capable of routing, as the name says, but it’s also misleading, in the sense that many devices out there are also routers, if they are connected to the main power (that is, they are not the battery/sleeping kind). You can of course have a device with only routing capabilities, I think that’s the case with the device from your link. It’s useful if you want coverage and you cannot or don’t want to install devices that do more than routing in that place. But that kind of device does only routing and nothing else (unless it’s also an end device and does whatever functionality has that specific device).
- end devices. Those are the ones that do not have routing capabilities. Besides the sleeping ones, there might be some powered from the grid that miss routing because they needed the memory for implementing something more complex… otherwise with zstack routing comes ‘for free’ and I don’t see a reason why one wouldn’t use it for a device, unless, of course, it’s battery powered and goes to sleep.
So, for a single zigbee network, you would use one coordinator connected to homegear (with or without homegear-gateway) and perhaps several routers such as yours (they are not connected to anything except the zigbee network, of course, so it’s of no use to install homegear-gateway there) for coverage, and of course, the zigbee devices. Typically you don’t need zigbee routers that have only that single functionality, since you may use zigbee devices that also have routing capabilities (smart plugs or something like that).
You may need more than one zigbee network, for example if you have a lot devices, in which case you could use more than one coordinator, one/homegear-gateway or even a couple (or more) connected directly to a single homegear host (but this scenario can rise some issues when pairing, as in the zwave case). Unless you have many zigbee devices, this is not a so typical case.
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Thank you very much for that detailed explanation.
Hopefully I will have time to test as soon as I get back.
Cheers!
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Please let me know of any issues you encounter.
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Is that the case because you need to pair to a coordinator but can only apply the pairing command to the family?
Yes. pon will put in ‘pairing mode’ all ‘interfaces’, that is, all connected coordinators. In consequence, you have no control which ZigBee network will be joined by the device.
A solution to this is to have the stick(s) you don’t want temporarily removed until you pair the device, either physically or in the config file, but this is kind of messy.
I think it’s nicer to have different coverages for different ZigBee networks and have the coordinators connected to homegear-gateways (one more can be of course connected directly to homegear).
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