Zigbee Range Woes

[wise flame]

So I run zigbee lights and switches in the house...all good. I now want to get it into our games room, which is around 10meters away from the house. Nothing works, so i guess its out of range....the walks around huge stones, so very thick.

Ive got a zigbee bulb as far to the edge of the house i can, as I know the act as repeaters....but that hasnt helped.

Does anyone know a way to extend the range....or a device which is known to boost the signal? I have ethernet to the building, and its on the same ring main if that helps.

Any suggestions appreciated.

[proper lodge]

Set up a separate zigbee2mqtt instance in the game room and it'll create a separate network that you can connect into mqtt

[wise flame]

im using a sonoff zigbee dongle in the house....to do what you have said would i need to scrap that?

[rocky leaf]

No, But i would rather just extend it rather than setting another instance.

[wise flame]

I basically want to do it the simplest way posisble without messing with the existing setup

[rocky leaf]

buy a zigbee usb extender or just some devices what are smth like a router.

I have a usb underground

In a little box

Connected with a long usb (power)

[subtle raven]

i have a zigbee bulb in my outdoor lamp that acts as a router to the front garden. one more bulb outside that game room and you could have your connectivity.

or you could use 2 sonoff sticks flashed with router firmware. feed them usb power, stick them in waterproof boxes and mount them outdoors at each end

[rocky leaf]

Just what i wanted to say!

[wise flame]

The sonoff stick sounds like an ideal solution. would that be 2 of these;

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004941136388.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.2.7e5dwhP7whP7qZ&aem_p4p_detail=202502140112434085024537181630003367075&algo_pvid=11327e09-64f1-4e89-9543-f702bfab5967&algo_exp_id=11327e09-64f1-4e89-9543-f702bfab5967-1&pdp_ext_f={"order"%3A"1067"%2C"eval"%3A"1"}&pdp_npi=4%40dis!GBP!19.28!16.88!!!23.52!20.59!%40211b819117395243633878949e1556!12000031096232408!sea!UK!2106027660!X&curPageLogUid=j0DnmM68hWIV&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch|query_from%3A&search_p4p_id=202502140112434085024537181630003367075_2

[subtle raven]

something like that yes. unless someone here is really good with these, you could ask over at the zigbee2mqtt discord exactly which hardware and software versions to go for. i know there is a P dongle as well as the E, and not sure which is the newer/recommended for this

i have a back garden with not-great coverage and a mailbox that is borderline (yes i have a door sensor on my mailbox lid). So I am thinking to dig out my old sonoff dongle and do the same. for me indoor placement will probably be ok, i just need to mount it in the corner in one of my kitchen cabinets.

[wise flame]

ahh thank you so much

[rain river]

The P is not recommended - the E is fine

[steady wave]

easy fix for you, buy a hue bulb for nearest bulb location to back of house, then place one in the games room... I know it sounds like a brand specific or fav post but its not, I have a hue iris in living room, and upstairs at back of house then a bulb in my shed 12 meters away and they work for me, infact the hue iris lamps despite being over priced are like some kind of zigbee super router for me, one of them has 9 battery devices attached to it.

[wise flame]

Thanks guys thats really awesome advice 🙂

[wise flame]

hope someone can help, i ended up buying 2 sonoff usb dongloes....here;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B6P22YJC?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

however I havent been able to flah them with router firmware.

Ive installed the devoce driver from silicon labs, and it shows up in device drivers, but when i run the python script to backup, I just get a timeouterror.

i also tried the only tool to see if i could get comms with the dongle via this...

https://darkxst.github.io/silabs-firmware-builder/

It also times out.

According to device manager its running on Com6, and ive adjusted the python command accordingly, to

python -m zigpy_znp.tools.nvram_read COM6 -o nvram_backup.json

but it just times out.

Does anyone know where i might be going wrong?

[wise flame]

i dont understand why im struggling so much. i have a zigbee bulb thats 6 meters and two pains of glass away from eachother and they wont connect.

[steady wave]

I have been using a combee 2 for zigbee and a HA connect for matter and never had any issues with zigbee, but all my bulbs are hue and they are silly overpriced but they are excellent range extenders as well as routers.