Dear guys,
does anyone know if there is an alternative to the Zigbee Bridge Pro that is supported by ihost for local sync?
I wish I could turn off the wifi and reach my zigbee devices anyway.
I found many wired zigbee devices in Aliexpress but I don’t know if ihost can support them.
Thanks for help.
Fabrizio
If you have any old devices you can put the Tasmota firmware on them. The iHost can do basic Tasmota device types and they can work locally using MQTT. By wifi I assume you mean the global wifi and not your local wifi.
The iHost can work without wifi. I have a Zigbee plug it controls attached to the Ethernet router it is attached to and if I program a power off it turns back on the router. If you want the device to work even if the entire network is down I think you need a Zigbee device (or maybe matter) device. Don’t know if iHost and NS Panel Pro can communicate without a wifi network though.
If you are just trying to setup a second Zigbee network then get a Raspberry Pi 3B+ or 4, a power supply, SSD and a Sonoff Zigbee USB dongle. They can communicate by Ethernet. There’s not currently a formal link between the iHost and the Pi that I k ow of but you can just put Home Assistant on the Pi, install an MQTT broker and talk between the iHost and Pi using MQTT. I think you can probably even use the USB dongle E for Zigbee and Matter and then share devices from the iHost to the RP/HA, but I’ve asked here if the dongle-E can be flashed with 3rd party firmware to do both Zigbee and Matter (it contains the same chip as the “sky connect” that can do both and costs more).
Hi Eerke,
thanks for your advices but I just want to find an alternative to the Zigbee Bridge Pro, having a wired LAN connection, to be able to use the zigbee network without needing WiFi, and maintaining the (important) functionality of local sync on iHost.
E.g. I found this on aliexpress (having wired LAN connection) and I wonder if it’s supported by Ewelink to do local sync on iHost:
https://it.aliexpress.com/item/1005005722610683.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2ita
I am not clear on what you want to do. The iHost creates a Zigbee network without wifi being on: you wish a device that connects over Ethernet that creates a second Zigbee network but connects to the iHost using Ethernet? I do not understand why you want a second Zigbee network.
I have a second Zigbee network because I had a home assistant setup that preceded the iHost on a Raspberry Pi4, but it does not need to be a 4. I can communicate between the iHost and the RP by Ethernet using MQTT. I could probably communicate locally via eWeLinkCube using Node Red on the home assistant too but I haven’t set this up yet.
I just want to connect all my zigbee devices through a zigbee bridge which is connected to my home network in wired mode instead of WIFI mode.
your zigbee devices are connected to the iHost, you should be able to connect the iHost with a cable instead of wifi (and, therefore, don’t need the bridge)
If you use the bridge, you would be moving all your devices from the iHost Zigbee net into the bridge’s Zigbee net
iHost is connected by Ethernet port and creates a Zigbee network with local scenes. You already have an iHost?
I have an iHost by I didn’t know that it does also zigbee network. How do I connect zigbee devices to iHost without the zigbee bridge?
OMG!!! Maybe I found it!!! Now I try to add a zigbee device directly to iHost. If it works, I can take out the Zigbee bridge! Thank you!
The iHost contains a Silicon Labs ?EFR32MG21’ Zigbee/thread radio. It can currently create a Zigbee mesh network and hopefully in the future a thread network.
Thank you! I added a Zbmini L2 and it works like a charme! Now I have to check if, turning off the internet connection, I can reach it, using mobile app on same wifi!