Is there such a product that is a combo travel router and zigbee hub?
My wife and I are becoming snowbirds, fleeing the cold Ohio winter for a warmer climate down south for a month a more each year.
I bought a GL-iNet travel router for our phones, tablets, fire stick, and kindles so they easily connect to it at every place we rent rather than enter new wifi sids and passwords for each different location. It works great.
I would now also like to setup a portable, temporary hub with temporary zigbee contact or presence sensors to log and be notified whenever someone else enters any rental unit when we are out for a walk or sightseeing.
For example, yesterday we got notified from the property manager of the unit we’re renting that they need to come in to do an annual inspection of fire extinguishers. A temporary hub could log their entry if we’re out.
I know that I could buy a used C5 or C7 for a travel hub but that means packing another device and power supply. (Our vehicle trunk space is limited.)
A travel router/zigbee hub combo device would be ideal!
So in theory, as i have not tried this you can run containers on firewalla purple, orange small routers… You “can” run home assistant in a container on firewalla routers. Instead of going zigbee you “can” (cringe) run matter over wifi and they do make contact sensors for it.
I’m not saying I think this is a good idea, but as long as usage is light enough… it MIGHT work for your use case.
Really? So limited that the tiny hub puts you over critical mass? I'm sorry, but I really don't understand this at all. What if you find your combo unit and it is 8 cubic inches bigger than your current travel router, that's out as well then?
I just can't see where a 8 cubic inch hub and a usb power supply is going to break the bank on packing space. Just put it in your pocket or something.
Edit: My bad, the hub is only 6.55 cubic inches. Approximately 2.95 x 3.23 x 0.67 inches.
Highly unlikely. Can't imagine there's any demand for such a thing.
Besides, best practice is to put some distance between your wifi access point(s) and your zigbee hub to avoid interference. That wouldn't be possible with a combo router and zigbee hub.
As much as I dislike wifi-based home automation devices, they might be a solution for you. I assume you have a HE hub at home. Theoretically at least, a wifi-based door contact or motion sensor should be able to communicate back to your hub at home through the travel router. Then you could program whatever rules you like on a hub that's already familiar to you.
I recently purchased a Unifi travel router, and you can connect Unifi wifi cameras through it that connect back to your home-based Unifi Protect system. This accomplishes something very similar to what you're looking to do. I haven't bought the camera yet as we won't be travelling anywhere for a few months, but others have tried it and it works.
