Hi all,
I just received a Sonoff Zigbee Bridge which I flashed with Tasmota+Zigbee2Mqtt. What I originally wanted to achieve is to extend the Zigbee range inside my home. I know, that Zigbee packets are being repeated by a permanently powered zigbee device, such as this zigbee bridge.
What I want to know now is, do I have to add this bridge to openhab (OH3) as well or will it now automatically repeat zigbee packets to my MQTT broker (which is installed where OH3 is installed, too)?
Thank you!
I’m no expert on this and will probably say something wrong but I don’t think it works like you think it works.
Yes, packets will be forwarded by a powered Zigbee device, but only those packets on the mesh the device belongs to. If your Zigbee Bridge device isn’t a part of your openHAB Zigbee coordinator’s network, it’s not going to route any messages for that mesh network.
So either you need to move all your devices to the Sonos and then all the integration with OH will be through MQTT. Or you need to add the Sonoff to the same network as the openHAB Zigbee coordinator (which I guess it’s possible to have multiple coordinators in one network) in which case the Zigbee2Mqtt part is irrelevant. All the messages will arrive via the Zigbee mesh.
Zigbee routers do just that - they route within the mesh - they don’t just rebroadcast everything they receive. Routing is handled in a number of ways, but what @rlkoshak said is 100% correct and the device needs to be part of the network to participate.