If I wanted to run openHAB on a spare XP box I have lying around, and I wanted to control some cheap Cree Zigbee bulbs, what hardware do I need for the PC to talk to to get on the Zigbee radio circuit? I see a selection of Z-Wave USB sticks. But, it’s unclear if the uncovered Zigbee sticks I see are the Zigbee equivalent.
It feels like I’m missing something obvious in the architecture.
Having typed that, the similar topics box suggests that openHAB cannot control Zigbee devices out-of-the-box?
Zigbee is not supported on OH1. It is planned for OH2 but I don’t know the status but I think it isn’t done yet. It isn’t a matter of hardware as even when OH 2 does support Zigbee it will require one of those Zigbee dongles you see, it is a matter of software to control those dongles which is in work for OH 2 now.
When it is supported it should work just fine from Windows or any other supported platform. Though I would highly recommend you either isolate your XP box from the Internet or install a recent Linux on it or something.
How low level does openHAB have to get to support Zigbee? Is the issue simply that nobody has yet written a high level binding to any Zigbee interface device?
I’m aware of the security issues with XP. The machine will be dedicated to this task.
Does anyone here have a Linux recommendation for circa 2005 hardware?
If Zigbee works anything like zwave it isn’t a matter of getting low level but a matter of implementing every message that every device can send and receive plus maintaining a database that tells OH what devices support which messages. For zwave this took a monunental effort and updating the database is a constant activity.
Pretty much any linux distro will run on that machine. I recommend one of the Debian based distros so you can use apt-get to install OH. I use Ubuntu. If you want a more Windows like desktop Mint might be more up your alley.
I don’t know my way around here. Is there a thread or discussion area that’s handling the Zigbee stuff? I’d like to get advice on hardware from there, if I could. And, I’d be willing to contribute some time to beta the software.
As stated, Zigbee will be supported in OH2 - the binding needs a bit of work due to all the recent changes in ESH, but it will be supported there using the TI dongle.
Is there any way I could get a copy of the work in progress? Is it on GIthub? I’m just looking for basic functionality. A few light bulbs, a few wireless switches, an appliance module and possibly some lamp modules.
