Zigbee Coordinator Experience | Home Assistant | Page 1

prisma sierra Sep 20, 2025, 2:40 PM

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Hey fellow tinkerers! I've been using Home Assistant for a little less than a year and in that time I have blown through half a dozen Zigbee Coordinators in search for the perfect one only to end where I started. I began with the official SkyConnect (ZBT-1) but quickly went in search of something with more signal range so I jumped over to the SLZB-06. I began noticing sluggish behavior and quickly deduced that maybe it was the Texas Instruments SoC, so I tried the SLZB-06M which uses the same SoC as the ZBT-1, but I could never get the ZHA network to stabilize with devices consistently not responding. I knew I wanted to keep trying the Silicon Labs SoC's so I also tried the SLZB-06MG26 which as the latest and greatest from Silicon Labs. Again, I could not get my existing network to behave properly.

This only process went on for about 2 months. In that time I tried enabling source routing, adjusting the Zigbee channel, messing with the transmit power, and along the way those tweaks seriously improved the reliability and responsiveness of the SLZB coordinators. Well, this past week for nothing other than the itch to keep tinkering and bordem, I took out the ol' ZBT-1 and gave it a try. I migrated the network over to it and updated the firmware. MY GOD, the ZHA network was nearly twice as fast as before. Chalk it up to various tweaks and maybe some more mature firmware.

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TLDR: Fancy zigbee coordinators are neat, but nothing beats a mature firmware. ZBT-1 has been great.

honest bronze Sep 20, 2025, 4:59 PM

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Yeah, one thing to remember is that in a zigbee mesh with a decent number of routing devices, the antenna on the zigbee coordinator isn't actually that important. It just needs to be able to communicate with several nearby devices. This is why the SLZB-06 series is useful - if your HA box is located somewhere kinda far away from your zigbee devices, the SLZB-06 lets you relocate the coordinator closer to the devices.

mighty forum Sep 20, 2025, 5:03 PM

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I know it’s generally considered obsolete but I’ve no complaints about my combee 2. Had it running for 2.5 years now on ZHA. Upto 101 devices now. Maybe I just got lucky. Am in a fairly quiet area without too much wifi “noise”.

honest bronze Sep 20, 2025, 5:05 PM

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i think the main advantage of the newer coordinators is that they're based off SOCs with more ram, which potentially allows them to manage a larger mesh. The rest is up to firmware improvements.

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i've heard of some cases where a zigbee coordinator with higher gain antenna can actually hurt the zigbee mesh. some possible explanations for that are that further away devices can pick up the signal from the coordinator, and either try to talk directly to the coordinator (which has trouble hearing them) or maybe there's more issues with overlapping transmissions.

prisma sierra Sep 22, 2025, 5:42 PM

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This is true- the additional antenna gain does nothing for you if the receiving device cannot respond. In all things with RF/wireless, there’s more value in whispering than shouting.

mild pivot Sep 22, 2025, 9:29 PM

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I had no issues with SLZB-06 Zigbee so far. Previously I was using Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB and it was just fine. Only reason I've switched to SLZB was possibility to plug it elsewhere.

quaint swift Sep 23, 2025, 4:48 AM

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Happy with the SLZB-06 and Zigbee2MQTT. No problems and works like a charm

#Zigbee Coordinator Experience