Sonoff has launched a new and economical USB adapter. With it you will be able to improve your home automation control unit by adding support for the wireless communication standard Zigbee 3.0. An ideal complement if you have built the system around a Rasbperry Pi.
Sonoff's new Zigbee 3.0 gateway
We recently talked to you about Home Assistant Amber, a home automation control unit based on Raspberry Pi and created by Nabu Casa that already had basically everything you needed to control the different connected devices that you might have in your home. All this without depending on third-party bridges and even Internet connections, because the management was done locally.
Well, although that would be the ideal option for most, it is true that right now it may not be the one that many can acquire. So an option to enjoy all those home assistant advantages is to install the system on a Raspberry Pi.
By installing Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 you can enjoy everything, although you will need some extras and one of them is a Zigbee gateway or bridge. Because it is the most popular standard among the majority of connected devices, as well as one of the ones that offers the most advantages over other competitors, such as Z-Wave or the control options via WiFi or Bluetooth.
Sonoff has released a new USB adapter supporting Zigbee 3.0. Thanks to it you will be able to enjoy everything that the latest version offers for a very low price. Because this little dongle costs only 9 euros. In addition, it incorporates the odd addition to make it as efficient as expected.
The main features of the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 adapter are:
- Z-Stack Firmware 3.x.0
- Support for ZHA and Zigbee2mqtt
- Antenna for greater coverage (gain +20dBm)
- USB extension cable included
As you can see, an interesting and attractive solution for economic reasons for everything related to home automation and maker themes, in which you build everything you need to not depend on more limited hardware solutions. Of course, to take advantage of it, even if it is not very complex with the number of guides that are published on the internet, you will have to do some research on how other users have been using previous versions.
Turning the Raspberry Pi into a Zigbee bridge
As we have mentioned before, thanks to this USB adapter or other similar ones that already existed, it is easy turn a Raspberry Pi into a Zigbe compatible bridge or HUB such as those that can be sold by manufacturers such as Aqara, Philips Hue, Ikea, etc.
The advantage of creating it on your own using a Raspberry Pi is that you can customize it much more, squeeze much more out of it. It is true that it is not that easy, there is no development team behind that simplifies each step and makes you only worry about creating a user account, entering the data and little else.
Still, they are worth keeping in mind. Because only sometimes is how you can even create home automation solutions that would otherwise be much more complex and even expensive. And if you combine all that with the rest of sonoff products, such as smart switches, etc., you can have a more efficient smart home.