Sonoff Zigbee Bridge - Possible for Zigbee->WiFi->SmartThings?

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
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While rummaging through AliExpress for some cheap temp/humidity sensors tonight, I stumbled across the Sonoff Bridge. Did some googling and found some old threads here, but nothing recent or definitive on how or even if it works with ST.

Question is - can you connect ST to the Sonoff Bridge via Wifi? And if so, can you then connect devices to the bridge and see and/or control them via ST

I have a detached building on my property that I can’t reliably get a zigbee signal to. I’ve tried strategically placing unecessary devices to serve as repeaters but it’s just too far away with too many RF blocking materials between the two buildings. But I do have reliable wired/wifi connected between both.

Is it all possible to do what I’m describing?

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Possible, but not locally, so probably not the way you were imagining.

You will connect your Sonoff Zigbee devices to the Sonoff bridge.
Connect the Sonoff bridge to the eWeLink app.

After that, you will be able to add the devices to your SmartThings account using the eWeLink cloud to cloud integration. Here are those directions.

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Is there a reason you don’t want to use the Sonoff Zigbee devices directly with a SmartThings/Aeotec hub? The Station might be a good choice for the setup you describe. There are edge drivers for quite a few of the different models now. :thinking:

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I have a similar situation at camp.

My shed are too far for ZigBee and Z-Wave to work reliably even with adding repeaters where physically possible. But I have fairly good WiFi in the shed.

My solution was to add a SmartThings Station in the shed so I could use ZigBee or Matter devices. I got the Station on sale last fall for about $40.

Another possible solution would be a Tuya Matter Bridge. This would bring your ZigBee devices back to ST locally. These bridges require an Ethernet connection to a router. Tuya matter bridges sell for $25 to $40 when on sale. They go on sale the 1st few days of every month.

Sonoff also has a matter bridge but it is about $100.

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I imagine you refer to the Sonoff iHost which is an ‘always on computer’ device, as is a Raspberry Pi.
This brings in locally all the Sonoff LAN WiFi devices with Matter, but not all WiFi devices.
It also has Zigbee radio, although as @JDRoberts comments the Zigbee integration is far superior on ST, with all the community drivers available.
I have one which I bought more for other characteristics.

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Interesting. How reliable is that setup? I don’t know if I’m a huge fan of adding another cloud service in to the mix, but if it works, it works, I guess.

As I mentioned in the original post, the reason for needing a “remote” hub solution is that I can’t get a reliable signal to the building where I want to put these sensors. I’ve tried just about everything feasible to repeat it there and it’ll just never be reliable.

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So the ST station is another hub? Does it “merge” with your main hub or do you have to treat it like a completely new location and keep them separate?

I’m looking at the Tuya matter bridge now. Seem like it’d work. I’d rather it be wifi, but easy enough to get it wired there.

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In 2022, SmartThings said they were no longer going to develop their own hardware, and they partnered with Aeotec to begin selling a “works with SmartThings” hub under the Aeotec name.

However in 2023 Samsung released a new Samsung-branded SmartThings hub model, the Station. It’s less expensive than the V3, but it doesn’t have a Z wave radio. So Zigbee, Matter over Thread, and WiFi. It’s also a phone charger and has some Galaxy-specific features. It lists at $89 but is often on sale for 60 and sometimes even for about $45. So even at full price, it is now the least expensive SmartThings hub.

It comes in white or black, and sometimes just one of the two colors is on sale.

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It’s also packaged with or without the wall plug. Although you can save some money by getting it without the wall plug, it turns out that it works best with its own, so I would say go ahead and get the one that includes the Power adapter.

It is very fast charging for a galaxy, pretty fast charging for other android phones, and slower charging for iPhones, but it does charge them eventually. It also doesn’t have a magnet to hold the phone in place so you have to make sure you have it angled correctly when you put the phone down on the charging pad.

We have one at our house. I was going to send it back because the app still isn’t voice accessible, but one of my housemates liked it as a phone charger so we ended up keeping it.

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At the time of this posting, it looks like the black one is on sale again.

https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-SmartThings-Station-Wireless-EP-P9500TBEGUS/dp/B0BRNST1JB?th=1

SmartThings is much better at multi hub set ups than it used to be. You can just add the station either as its own location or into the same location with your current hub. You can include devices from both hubs into the same routine, although that may make that routine run in the cloud, it depends on a bunch of different variables.

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I have my v2 and Station hubs on 1 location at Camp. Automations use devices connected to 1 hub are local. Automations using devices connected to 2 hubs are cloud based.

I have not tried the Tuya bridge because I was able to get the Station for a good price.

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Just to be clear - when you use the hub + station, do devices connected to both hubs show up under a single location in the app or do you have a location for each hub? Are you able to, say, set routines that involve devices “talking” between both hubs? As in - sensor connected to that station can trigger a switch connected to the main hub?

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With the v2 and Station all devices are in 1 location and can be used in Routines. Routine with devices connected 2 different hubs are possible, but they are cloud based.

It works nicely.

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This is now a common use case: a sensor in an outbuilding connected to hub A triggers an alert light connected to hub B to turn red in the main house. :sunglasses:

Or a sensor connected to hub A in an outbuilding triggers the outdoor lights connected to hub B in the main house. So the main house lights come on as you exit the outbuilding and walk across the yard.

Both hubs are listed in the same location in the SmartThings app, for convenience sake.

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OK, i’ve been out of the loop for a while. The last time I looked in to this, you couldn’t use two hubs linked in the same location. You had to have to locations and they were completely independent. I finally got around to setting up a bunch of my devices in my “new” house after I removed them from my old place that I sold almost 3 years ago. A lot has changed since then!

Sounds like my best solution would be to just set up another hub at the “remote” building then. I’m currently using my old V2 hub, but have the newest one in my cart on amazon…just haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet. Sounds like for the easiest path, I should also pick up a station for the remote location and use that to control everything there.

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As long as you don’t need Zwave in the outbuilding, the station should be a good option.

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If I did want z-wave, is there anything stopping me from using 2 V4’s (or whatever the current AEON version is called)?

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You can use 2 Aeotec hubs if that works best for you.

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It’s still a V3, it’s just branded as Aeotec. The Aeotec model was essentially just a clone of the SmartThings V3, there weren’t any technical improvements.