In my Home Assistant quest and simplifying (not sure if that’s actually happening) and getting more control (aka less reliant on the cloud and 3rd parties) I’ve been playing with Zigbee.
Zigbee is quite cool because it’s a mesh network. As I used it before with my Philips Hue bulbs, I was eager to expand and play with Zigbee.
First thing first. Not all routers are equal. I’ve got these two smart power plugs as an example (Grey and Blue colour, v2 with HomeKit support) and they act weirdly. They don’t seem to route sensors properly, and randomly turn off whatever is plugged in.
The one that seems to work reliably well is this orange Zigbee plug.
Compared to my bulbs (more on that here) the sensors do detect them the two aforementioned power plugs, and do connect, but generally little to no data flows. I’m not entirely sure what the issue is (bad antenna, bad routing software) but the consensus on the internet seems to be: add more routers, don’t trust some routers (Ikea and Hue seem decent), and not all endpoints are very smart and pick the best router (so may need to repair or force it to join a specific router). Unlike WiFi, in this case it seems that more is better.
When setting up the network, it’s also recommended to first set up and pair the routers and then the endpoints (battery-powered sensors).
And the network takes a while to stabilise (and all routes to be learned). Some people even suggest waiting one or two days for the dust to settle.
Moving routers screws up a lot, too. I've had sensors stop working (and refusing to pair again) after moving some routers and turning some off -- routers that weren't used by said sensors. So really odd stuff.
As always, with Aliexpress, it’s very much unclear what the brand/model is, but according to Z2M, all three are TS011F, but two of the three are definitely different (has Apple Homekit support and the plugs are bigger).
The energy (kWh) and Power (W) reporting works well, though, on all three models.
Can see when a charger is plugged in, and charging a MacBook Air.
I’m buying EU plugs because I’ll be relocating back to Europe in the next 6 months. So I’m slowly getting rid of my UK smart plugs and replacing them with EU plugs.
Note that these plugs are not approved for (official) sale in Belgium though: child safety is not up to spec and the grounding is not approved (i.e. needs to be a pin).
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