r/ZigBee

I found a good deal on some Yoolax Zigbee-based smart blinds. Saved a few hundred dollars cheaper over the closest Z-Wave based equivalents I could find.

Nearly every Zigbee-based blind also comes with an accompanying remote, so I thought (naively) that their remotes would also be Zigbee-based and function via direct device binding - like the Z-Wave blinds I saw and the single Zigbee blind I already own (Ikea Fyrtur). Direct binding at the protocol level for a device installed into my home has real appeal - the device keeps basic functionality even if I move out, all while not being tied to a proprietary remote that may eventually get lost or broken.

However, I found out the remote for my Yoolax blinds (like many cheap-to-mid-range Zigbee blinds) is actually an old 433hz RF remote - and more than that, the Zigbee protocol is particular about how blinds should be controlled.

A window covering device following the spec ought to implement the `window covering` cluster to communicate it's state and take commands. This sounds fine, but it also means the device won't communicate via the `on/off` cluster or the `level control` clusters, which is what 99% of Zigbee remotes expose as an interface (since those are used to control lights, switches & dimmers). There are Zigbee blinds out there that can receive commands via the `on/off` & `level control` clusters to workaround this incompatibility, but this doesn't appear to be a widely adopted convention.

For my use case, I was dismayed to only find 3 Zigbee remotes that actually act as a client of the `window covering` cluster:
- now-unobtainable Ikea E1766 remotes for the Fyrtur blinds
- remotes from Somfy (expensive)
- remotes from Profalux (expensive and impossible to find in North America)

So, if you're out there thinking about Zigbee smart blinds, and you care about direct binding their remote controls, I strongly recommend some close research of the device you're buying, or just getting Z-Wave motors instead.

(Z-Wave handles this better at the protocol level, all cover devices are required by the spec to respond to the equivalents of the on/off binding & level control binding.)

Hi,

I’m currently reconsidering my smart home architecture and was wondering if separating Zigbee from the automation platform itself is the better long-term approach.

Right now I’m running a fairly large Zigbee network (110+ devices) in Home Assistant using ZHA and I’m thinking about moving the Zigbee stack into its own dedicated Proxmox LXC/VM using Zigbee2MQTT + MQTT.

The idea would be:

Zigbee devices
→ Zigbee2MQTT (dedicated container/VM)
→ MQTT
→ Home Assistant / Homey / other platform

My reasoning is that this might give me more flexibility to switch between platforms later without having to rebuild the entire Zigbee network or re-pair everything again as my device stack is heavily Zigbee-focused.

For example:
- Today using Home Assistant
- Tomorrow maybe Homey
- Later maybe something else

Questions:
- Is anyone here running this kind of “decoupled Zigbee architecture”?
- Does it actually make switching platforms easier in practice?
- Are there downsides I’m not seeing?
- Is Zigbee2MQTT stable enough long-term as the central Zigbee layer?
- Does this approach introduce any noticeable latency or slower responsiveness for automations?
- Would you recommend Ethernet coordinators over USB for this (currently using a Conbee ii stick which I wish to replace)?

Interested in hearing experiences from people who intentionally separated Zigbee from their automation platform.

Thanks!

Hello community!

I love the Zigbee2MQTT frontend map, but I always felt it was a hassle to leave Home Assistant just to check my mesh health. I wanted that same clear visualization directly on my Lovelace/Dashboard.

Using the D3 library and some heavy AI "vibecoding," I created a custom card that renders your Z2M network. This is the first release, focusing on showing the active backbone routes currently in use.

GitHub:https://github.com/lubomir-moric/ha-zigbee-mesh-map

Current Features:

• Displays Z2M mesh topology directly in HA.
• Clean, D3-based rendering.
• Focused on backbone connectivity.

I have plans to add UI configuration in the future, but I wanted to get this first version out to the community. Let me know what you think!

https://preview.redd.it/ee21e4bgjx0h1.png?width=513&format=png&auto=webp&s=17108e3196dcb6f0c9a4c41b6fc88ec90d2d9db8

So I have a smlight SLZB-06 based zigbee Cordinator that is powered over POE and I access using zigbee2mqtt and it has always been very reliable, more much reliable than any zigbee usb stick.

But lately we’ve had more power outages than usual my networking rack powers down automatically and obviously the zigbee Cordinator goes down too. Home assistant is run from a proxmox node.
But for some reason when it all comes back up automatically, the zigbee network is never responding in home assistant. I would think the zigbee Cordinator would come up before home assistant as the Cordinator just needs power and home assistant needs proxmox to come up and then start home assistant.
I can fix this relatively easily by doing a POE recovery to cycle the zigbee Cordinator and then restarting home assistant a minute later. But for the life of me I can’t figure out why it doesn’t come up correctly in the first place. It’s difficult to diagnose as I’m rarely home when it happens

Any ideas?