Improving Zigbee Signal Coverage from an Upper-Floor Apartment to the Basement

[median wharf]

Hello everyone,
greetings from Germany.

I live on the 5th floor of an old building and, after several basement break-ins, I would like to extend my Zigbee signal downwards and install 2–3 sensors there.

I am allowed to use the old chimney shaft, which already contains pipes leading to my apartment. That means I have an access hatch in my apartment to the chimney.

At the moment, I have a semi-working solution. Inside the chimney there are two TUYA USB repeaters: one fairly high up that receives the signal, and one much lower down. This can work, but it also fails quite often.

That’s why I wanted to ask whether there are “by now” better solutions available. Alternatively, I could possibly add a third TUYA repeater in the middle.

I am using a Sonoff stick.
I cannot bring powerline (DLAN) down there.

Maybe there is some kind of wired repeater solution, and instead of Zigbee I could use ESPHome?
In the sense that I have a Wi-Fi receiver up here, which then sends the signal via a 10 m cable through the chimney to a transmitter at the bottom?

(The sensors are limited strictly to my own basement. I am using one vibration sensor and two door contacts: one for the door itself and one for the frame, in case someone tries to rip out the entire door (big-city things). None of this is intended to monitor, surveil, or control anyone, nor can it process more data than what is necessary for my specific purpose.)

[slim epoch]

Put an ethernet cable down the chimney, at the end you can put a smlight slzb-06. Power it using PoE

[dry tundra]

you cannot extend zigbee via a wire.

[slim epoch]

It will create a new zigbee network but that doesn't matter

[dry tundra]

you could do something like this but you would need to set it up as a 2nd and seperate zigbee network.

[slim epoch]

Yes, sure but why would it have to be a single big mesh?

[dry tundra]

I don't disagree, just setting expectations. also if your using ZHA then you would need to run the 2nd network on z2m as zha doesn't support multiple networks (yet).