Expandable Zigbee Repeater Solution (With Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and Light sensors)

Iman,
What zigbee sniffer are you using and how do you use it? On the topic of zigbee repeater, I have two keen vent hub which I assume can be used as repeaters if the ethernet is not connected. Does any one use them? I dont know if there are really working at all.

thanks,
chin

Hi Chin,

The USB port is not for sniffing. It is used for powering the Zigbee module.

I use CC Debugger + cc 2530 to sniff the packets. This is rather cumbersome setup. If you want Zigbee sniffer, you should find something else that get your data into wireshark. Once you get your data to wireshark and find the network key, understanding what is going on will be easy.

I do not have keen device. I do not know how to comment about it.

One of the reason I made the dth, I want to have some visibility of what is going on in my reperater. The neighbor info tell me that my repeater is capable to see 13 different devices.

Out of that 13 neighbors, the repeater sees 3 of them as children. The child is a number of end point devices( typically battery powered) that connect to my repeater. These kind of device is extremely optimized so that it only know its parent and communicate any packet through its parent. This should tell me that my router is routing from at least 3 devices to eventually the coordinator (in this case the Smartthings hub).

Zigbee is a complex protocol. I am hoping that the information that I show can give some peek of what is the module is doing without going into sniffing the zigbee packets.

Thanks
Iman

I received the repeater today. Thank You. I am waiting for the antenna. I will let you know how it is working when I get it set up.

Thanks @iharyadi for sending these. Just hooked up both of them:

I will likely find a better way to mount theseā€¦but this is my current setup.

  1. Garage
    In my garage I currently have a SmartThings Outlet along with a ZigBee Lock, Z-Wave Lightā€™s (3 of them) on the opposite exterior wall from the repeater, and a Iris Keypad. I have have a bunch of Z-Wave & Z-Wave Plus devices a few feet away from the repeater. Interference - WiFi access point in the garage & on the opposite wall I have my Solar City and Power Meter gateway that both operate on ZigBeeā€¦so plenty of interference. And I have a dashcams in my cars (parked in the garage) that broadcast Wi-Fi.

IMG_1117IMG_3940

  1. Dining Room
    This is installed behind the curtains (high up) adjacent to my Aeon Z-Wave repeater. Hoping to use this to improve the ZigBee performance of my ZigBee door contacts and water sensors.

IMG_3939

Since I just mounted theseā€¦I donā€™t have any child devices yet but I will keep you posted when they do show up.

Endpoint devices is very sticky. If those devices already connected with other router and assuming the connection is good, they will not try the new router. You can leave it alone for a few days. If none of your devices are not making connection to the new extender, you do not have issue with range in the first place.

You can force connection to the extender by shutting down all other zigbee routers and smartthing hub for 15 to 20 min and leave the extender on. This is a trick that I learn here as well. However, if this is the case, why force a good connection of a device to different router?

The connection (especially in the garage) isnā€™t that reliable. Devices frequently go offline. When it works great! But usually it doesnā€™t.

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In that case, lets just wait. I hope when a device goes out of connection it will reconnect with the the extender.

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Iā€™m in Iman! Will see how it does, already the bulb turned on at sunset that was giving me an issue.

Thanks for the update.

Iman,
Thanks. I received it too. Iā€™ll try it out as soon as I find a pigtail antenna. Iā€™m thinking of salvaging one from a broken laptop wifi card.

chin

Notebook anntena would work. Just pay attention to the gain efficiency of the antenna. I can use some help to get feedback from people using different type of anntena. I am glad you are going this route since I personally have not tried notebook anntena.

I am still waiting for the antenna. It seems that these antennaā€™s are on a slow boat from China, literally. I checked a couple of sites and they all say delivery expected from mid May to June.

Wow, that long time to wait. You do not need to get exactly the anntena I got. As long as the connector fit and the impedance match, they should work. I hope this open up more choices for you.

I any case thanks for the update. Let me know with your progress.

I got this one

Highfine 2 x 6dBi 2.4GHz 5GHz Dual Band WiFi RP-SMA Antenna + 2 x 35cm U.fl / IPEX Cable for Wireless Routers Mini PCIe Cards Network Extension Bulkhe https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GMBUS8O?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

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Just make an antenna. All those ducks are is a piece of wire wound (sometimes) around a flexible core. They should be cut to the correct freq. but often are not, at least on the cheaper ones.

Get any cable with the correct end, SMA, I think and stip back the coak and shield to show the center, or solder a piece of wire to the center that is cut to the correct length.

Look up the Zigbee freq, there are tons of how to cut to the correct length charts online.

  • Ham for years, built antennas since I was a teenager in the 60ā€™s. -
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@Kamran,

Do you see any devices shows up on your setup? You may need to refresh the devices to get the latest diagnostic values.

Thanks
Iman

I got two children connected to my garageā€¦and devices in my garage have been working great! I moved the other one from the dinging room to a bedroom with a ZigBee Ceiling fan that wasnā€™t communicating with the hub. The fan started working after I placed the repeater in the room but it shows 0 children.

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I forget to mention how to reset the module. If you guys need to reset the modules, there is a momentary button on the board. The following is the procedure.

  1. Remove the module from any power.
  2. Press the button while the module is unplugged from power.
  3. Plug the module back to power supply and keep the button pressed.
  4. Wait for 2 seconds. Then release it. Wait for 10 seconds. Your module should be reset. If it is needed, you can unplug and plug the module back to reboot it. The last part should be optional.

On the other hand, If the module still have connection to the module in smartthings, removing it from the smartthings app will also factory reset it.

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Thanks, The fan most likely is a router device as well since it is not a battery powered device. A router connecting to another router may not be counted as a child in the zigbee stack on the module. It is definitely one of the neighbor.

I just received my antenna and I am trying to hook it together with the pc board. I have never dealt with these types of connectors and I am not sure about them. Do you just press them together and how much force should be applied? I donā€™t want to break anything.