Help out a Newbie

Hi there,

I am a complete newbie and while searching for possible uses of a Raspberry (I have one Pi 3B running as a DAC with IQAudio) I stumbled on OpenHAB and it was immediately love at first sight.

Apart from the server (I’ll source a Raspberry 4 8Gb) and having decided to adopt a Zigbee Mesh, I am a little confused on the various Zigbee Gateways available.

I have made up my mind on the Phoscon Raspbee II (I believe the Zigbee 3.0 issue will be fixed soon). Is there anything else I can consider not requiring additional hardware to flash?

For the moment I’ll start with two temperature / humidity sensors from XIAOMI to be placed in both bedrooms. The idea is then to play around with Verisure and Netatmo and integrate with radiator valves and then slowly extend.

Any suggestion on Gateways would be more than appreciated.

Riccardo

Welcome!

I tagged this thread as Zigbee in order to get comments from our excellent developer. I do not use Zigbee personally but use his Z-Wave binding.

Thanks Bruce, I am still trying to get my way around!

I prefer to start with Zigbee just as a matter of cost, as things will progress eventually, I’ll make the choice or have them both.

1 Like

If you use Phoscon, you will need the Deconz binding.

Here you can look up which devices are supported

Welcome to openHAB

Get the 4 gig one and run the 32bit OS. Do this if you are a beginner to Linux. The 32bit os has trouble using zram on the 8gig.

1 Like

Thanks Jens,

looks like I’ll have to go for a CC2531 based gateway which is USB. I found this in Amazon that seems to be pre-flashed and works ok:

I am just a tad worried by the fact that it says a maximum of 20 devices, I’d say it is ok as a starting point, before I’ll reach more than 20 sensors I’ll be an OpenHab expert!

The given limits usually refer to Zigbee end devices such as switches or sensors. When you add more routers to the Zigbee mesh (light bulbs act as routers) you can connect more end devices to your mesh network.

The Conbee2 is the USB variant of the Raspee: ConBee II Overview
It has a very good range and works well with openhab via Deconz binding.

Thanks Jens, there is cospicuos number of sensors for the Conbee2, you’re right. I am so confused at this point!

Thanks for the lightbulb tip, considering at least one light bulb per room it looks like I can overcome the limit. I’ll give the CC2531 a try!

Thanks Denominator for the tip. I’ll keep that in mind.

I run CC2531 with zigbee2mqtt. It’s simple and reliable. More than 1000 supported devices.

In the end I chose the Phoscon Card directly mounted on the Raspberry, and I couldn’t resist getting the 8Gb one.

If I find this is too much of a hassle, I’ll step down to the 4Gb one and use the 8Gb as a Media Center or for anything else.