Probably I will need a second router to connect to substitute my ISP router (which will then act only as a gateway) and so be able to have VLANs and isolate an iot network from home lan.
So I will have iot device connected in the bacside and frontside of my home and separated in vlans from my computers and phones.
I will need to to be able to have a wan and separate voip and tv using the vlans (as the isp uses it).
As I am planning for future iot devices, it would be great to integrate other mesh netwoks like zigbee or zwave (for devices of that type) and BLE if it is possible.
Of course all that wihout beign a professional router of 500€.
I will need advice on how to connect the analog phones, I suppose somedevice would be needed. Having a phone centralite and being able to answer phone from a phone app would be great.
In a router, bluetooth support is unusual, and ZWave / ZigBee very rare. Those requirements are going to limit yourself a lot. I would consider using external USB dongles instead.
OK, thanks for your recomendations.
A dongle would be a good alternative, to use a dongle, or put the ble in another iot device (now I am experimenting with tasmota).
I suppose that zigbee or ble would not stress wifi network too much, an usb 2.0 would be enough for a zigbee or ble dongle to bridge iot devices?
Can a single dongle provide BLE, zigbee and zwave bridging?
If you have two zones at home with 2 wifi AP and routers, do you need a zigbee dongle in each of the or just one for all?
And last question:
A recomendation of a dongle and a good router not expensive, I am not goini to ask for 6GHz as it would be too expensive, but 5. A couple of cores prefered, and 1 Gbit 4 ports at least. 10 Gb in some port would be great, but I don't have any 10 G device now, and ethernet infrastructure does not much that speed.
Thankyou, so I think I would avoid 10 GBit.
I prefer keep it as simple as possible, with few gadgets, and stay in the 100s range or less.
That nics have only 1 or two ports, ussually, so i would need a 10 gb switch too.
I already have a 1gb switch, a openwrt route and an isp router. In order to improve the net I will hve to add another openwrt router and let isp router just as gateway, and may be some other gadgets for iot connection.
Too much device just to get connected.
I'm currently using an ESP32 (with ESPHome) to act as a BLE-to-MQTT-over-WIFI adapter.
As far as I know, Zigbee and ZWave are similar but competing solutions; you will probably need a different adapter for each protocol.
Even if they use the same frequencies, both Zigbee and ZWave are independent of WiFi; I do not see the relation between the number of APs and the number of dongles. If you are worried about coverage, bear in mind that both Zigbee and ZWave have their own mesh protocols; you should need just one dongle (per protocol).
Thank you.
Yes I am using ESP32 too, but with tasmota that seems quite simple to get working with mqtt and sensors like BME280 to measure temperature and to control switches.
Yes quite long ago I used zigbee in a project (it has changed a lot since then).
The dongle has not to be a proble, if there are usb dongles.
I thought that some routers could have integrated it with the radio (using an appropiate controller).
But it won't be a problem to use a usb and limiting the router selection so much is not a good option.
I have now a RT3200 and a Fritz!box 440. The RT3200 only has one usb 2.0 (a pity for such a nice device).
I just did not want to complicate myshelf with other protocols, mesh generation and distribution of the devices at home to get good reach from one to another...
I have tried tasmota with a BLE valve.
It works well, but has some limitations, as the valve does not let you program all of its features, it integrates with tasmota only through BLE adverticements.
What valve with zigbee do you recommend, not too expensive (BLE costs about 20€) ?
Many of them are quite more expensive and they use an app that has to be connected to the cloud.
I have isolated a VLAN for iot devices. I don't one them to connect to internet or be accesible from outside.
Yes something like that.
But it is more like an acces point for wifi, zigbee etc.
It has no switch... and I don't know if it is openWRT compatible.
I have a good router now, with a usb port and another one with more usb ports.
So it won't be difficult to add zigbee to them, I suppose, or with other gadget connected to ethernet.
But I am not sure if for just controlling a few valves in radiators, I need a zigbee system.
I was testing BLE valves with an ESP32 with tasmota to convert it to MQTT and provide temperarutre measurement.
I would like the system to work with MQTT and as independent as possible, and use openhab or other system to visualize and control it from an interface, but would like it to work with no central controller and be able to do basic control from a buttom in the esp32.
Right. I think there is a limit to how many features it makes sense to cram into a single box. FWIW I have pretty much the same requirements solved by a combination of an RPI4 with a zigbee dongle, a ZyXEL GS1900-10HP switch and a couple of Unifi 6 Lite APs. The switch and APs run OpenWrt. The RPi runs Debian with zigbee2mqtt, home assistant etc
This is much more flexible in every way. The cabling mess is still limited by powering everything from the switch, using a PoE hat on the RPi.
But there is no info about the zigbee module except that it's unsupported even by stock firmware (so far). Safer to go for a known supported USB stick.
Then get something that will run zigbee2mqtt and one of the recommended USB sticks. Currently I believe that's anything based on the TI CC2652x chips. See https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/
I don't think OpenWrt necessarily is the easiest system to run a node.js application like zigbee2mqtt on. As mentioned, I have Debian on the RPi4 I am using for this.
You are right may be that the best point to use the zigbee dongle is at the central controller.
But I am not sure about zigbee being all that good for my case.
I don't want a lot of IOT devices for controlling lights and things like that.
At the momento I only want to control my radiators in a good way with temperatue sensors in an esp32 device that acts as mqtt gateway and provide the temperature of a zone (each radiator has its own controller with a setpoint that opens or closes valve).
Another esp32 would control the central heating relay (there is just one for all the house) and keep it opened as long as one radiator demands it or the temperature in given zones (two by now) is bellow the threshold.
May be zigbee radiator valves would be better than bluetooth and let you more control than the cheap BLE ones I have.
But they add another layer of complexity and you depend on another more device being working correctly (the devices with zigbee2mqtt, although it seems that tasmota can do zigbee2mqtt too, and I can centrilize it in the heat controller).
zigbee is better that BLE for these things because it builds a mesh network out of every node except the battery powered ones. Add for example a light bulb and you improve the network redundancy and coverage at the same time.
The support depends on device and firmware, and I don't know about radiator valves, but you can often "bind" zigbee devices together to let them control each other directly. A common example is binding a button to a light bulb. You can still control both button and bulb from the central coordinator and get state updates etc. But if the coordinator goes down, then the button will still be able to toggle the light. Or whatever function you bound it to. See for example https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/binding.html
Well yes, the zigbee mesh is reliable as a wireless system.
But it is wireless. I find wiring more reliable, and if you can connect but wire it will be much more easy and reliable.
Of course you need wireless to be able to connect the valves or other devices. But ir the can get an access point near them that is wired to the home lan, it will be at least as reliable as a pure wireless mesh.
I have no doubt that zigbee is great when you are planning to install many devices in many places, but it is not the case, for now just the valves in the radiators.
And it introduces a bit more complexity.
The zigbee valve version are more expensive and the cheap ones come with software connected to the cloud, which I don't want by no means.
Many routers have USB. I've been running Domoticz on OpenWrt (WNDR3800) using OpenZWave with a USB dongle for years. Although now I need to package ZWave-JS-UI for OpenWrt because the old OpenZWave library is deprecated...