I have a SmartThings V2 hub in my cabin. The cabin is 3 stories. I have the hub on the 1st floor closest to the dome water valve shutoff. I also have 3 TP-Link Deco M9 Plus mesh wifi pucks- one on each floor of the house. These use Zigbee. I would like to place the SmartThings leak sensors on all 3 floors. They also use the Zigbee protocol.
Will the Deco M9 Plus act as a repeater/extender for all all zigbee signals and help the range of the SmartThings hub reach the leak sensors on the top floor?
WiFi mesh repeats only for WiFi. Zigbee repeats only for zigbee. The TPLink WiFi system cannot help the zigbee devices – – in fact, there is a significant danger of them making it worse as Wi-Fi and Zigbee operate in the same band but Wi-Fi is much stronger and will tend to drown out zigbee.
The zigbee which is in the TP Link deco system forms its own zigbee network and will not integrate with your SmartThings hub.
You need to get zigbee home automation devices to act as zigbee repeaters and which will be connected to the network established by your smartthings hub. One of the most popular is the IKEA Tradfri plug-in pocket socket. It works well with smartthings, is quite inexpensive when purchased directly from IKEA, and is available in many countries where smartthings is supported.
(You might be able to connect smartthings brand leak sensors to your TP Link system, but then they will not be available in the smartthings app. Zigbee devices have to either belong to your TP link zigbee network or to your smartthings zigbee network. They cannot belong to both.)
Thank you for the thoughtful answer. I will stop by and get a few of the Ikea Outlets. My place is 2100 square feet, 3 stories. So more tall that wide. Do you think 1 outlet per floor would be enough? or should I get 2 for the second and third floor as the hub is on the 1st?
Also, I used to have a huge setup at my home before selling the house and most my gear. All I have left is the hub and starting over from scratch. All my old devices, routines, ect are still on the hub. I basically need to nuke it and start over. Not sure where to start.I have a v2 hub and I think I need to continue to use the SmartThings classic app?
ZigBee protocol says ~90-100 feet line of sight, but when you add walls, electronics, WiFi interference, etc. it’s RARELY going to get that in practice. I use a general rule of no more than 30’ between repeaters in my house and 20’ for anything traversing to the garage or outside. (stucco acts as a faraday cage, who knew?)
So in your case, if the hub was on the 2nd floor, in theory you’re going to be covered vertically, but I dont know what’s running between your floors to cause interference. In practice in your situation I’d probably try to get the hub as close to the middle of your second floor as possible, then put one of the plugs JD mentions as close to directly above the hub and another directly below, then build out your mesh per floor with those plugs and the hub as starting points.
Some would say its overkill, but I’ve found repeaters are like bullets in Zombieland - Rule 2: Doubletap… You think it’s dead (technically it was before you shot it), one more makes 100% sure
The TP Link deco m9 forms its own zigbee network With itself as the primary coordinator.
The zigbee profile that it is using, ZHA 1.2, only allows for one primary coordinator per network.
The question that the OP had was whether the deco M9 could act as a repeater for devices connected to a zigbee network established by their smartthings hub.
The answer to that is no, because you can’t have two primary coordinators on the same ZHA network. It has to be one or the other.
So the deco M9 can act as a Zigbee repeater, but not for a network established by a smartthings hub.
