Hi all,
It’s an easy question, but I have my Raspberry pi Zwave hub up and running, but been new to this, I think I’ve made a mistake.
The price difference between Zigbee and Zwave is quite high, all this I found out after I’d set up my hub. But, does anybody know if I can use a Zwave AND a Zigbee dongle in my pi at the same time to obviously give me a lot more flexibility.
And if I can, can they work together, ie can I use a Zwave device to trigger a Zigbee device.
Thanks in advance A
Zigbee and Z-Wave can coexist, yes. The abstraction of the gateway allows you to make rules where devices from different ecosystems interact.
Hi Martin
Great news, thanks for your help here it’s very much appreciated.
Sorry but does this mean I just plug the Zigbee dongle into my WebThings pi along with my Zwave dongle and it will work out of the box. Plus, my first application is to build up an alarm system for the house and garden using Zigbee, but also do a host of upgrades to my caravan, water levels, lighting, burglar alarm, maybe self leveling of it.Plus I did make a Bluetooth motormover controller, I’d like to replace that too. Hope you don’t mind me asking for some more help again, but I’ve read once set up, the WebThings doesn’t require the internet to actually work, is that correct?. I’m new to all this and learning fast, well I think I am😁, so thanks so much for your time. Alex
As far as I know, yes. Though I’ve never used Z-Wave with the gateway myself and there is probably always the caveat of depends on your exact dongles/hats and that more distance between the two antennas is probably better (so an USB extension cord might be helpful).
Yes, it doesn’t need internet, however you will want a local network to access it, if you want to interact with the UI.
Hi Martin
Thanks for your reply it is very helpful.
Great, I might give it a go and I’ve made note about the extension for the dongle so once I’ve done it, I’ll probably put whatever happens here on the forum so others can read it.
Thanks again
Alex
Hi @lodgemoorlad1,
It’s definitely possible to use Zigbee and Z-Wave at the same time using WebThings Gateway, I’ve been doing that for years.
Zigbee (2.4Ghz) and Z-Wave (~900MHz) use different frequency bands so are unlikely to interfere with each other (you’re more likely to see interference between Zigbee and WiFi/Bluetooth, but I personally haven’t had issues).
Hi bfrancis
BRILLIANT!!! Thanks for your reply.
My Zigbee lights and dongle are due today. You’ve got me fired up with this so I’ll be giving it a go later.
My WT experience just gets better .
May I ask you another question while you’re here. My dongle is a Conbee II. Do you know if this or maybe another manufacturers dongle will communicate with the IKEA Zigbee devices , if so do they work out of the box without the IKEA hub?
Hi Martin
Great, thanks for your time and information. Really appreciate it.
This is a big plus as it’s going to give me far more choices of devices and as it happens the Conbee II dongle should be here today. But knowing they should be ok both plugged in together helps a lot.
Thanks again
Yes, ikea devices work just fine - in fact almost all Zigbee certified devices should “just work”, that’s the idea behind the zigbee certification at least. Of course the adapter for the gateway has to support the specific kind of device it is, which it doesn’t for all.
With zigbee you can usually only have one “hub” per mesh, so you can’t use the conbee 2 and the ikea hub (or hue hub etc.) to talk to the same device, you can only use either or.
Hi Martin
Thanks for your reply.
At the moment my Gen5 is plugged into my pi WT and works fine. My new Conbee is also plugged into my WT pi and when I set my IKEA outlet to pairing and hit the Plus on the main screen, it searches but can’t find the outlet.
So, is my dongle broken, do I need to do some setting up, is the outlet broken?
The log shows no Zigbee device connected. If you have any ideas what I can do I’d really appreciate it. Thanks
Have you tried a factory reset on the outlet?
Hi Ben
Thanks for the suggestion, but yes I’ve done that several times to make sure I’d “really” reset it.
Where I am now is I’ve contacted Conbee and they have asked me to burn their image onto and SD card and stick it into a pi and run their phoscon app to check the dongle out.
Not found time to do that yet unfortunately, but hopefully later today or tomorrow.
Just a quick random question, I removed the Zigbee add-on as I wanted to make sure I’d got a clean start because I noticed a “0” just below the drop-down where you pick your dongle manufacturer.
Not sure if it should be there or not so I just removed it and reinstalled it. But it’s still showing “0” ( not blank but “0”.
Anyhow, I’ll check the dongle and see how it performs. But thanks again for your advice it really is helpful.
A