ITEAD (Sonoff) is releasing a zigbee 3.0 bridge and zigbee motion/contact/temp-hum sensors

I was reading this article earlier.

The bridge doesn't interest me nearly as much as the mention of their zigbee sensors. If those sensors are genuinely zigbee 3.0 compliant, they should fall back to ZHA 1.2 and work with HE.

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They've already released a zigbee basic and a zigbee mini plug.

https://www.amazon.com/SONOFF-Zigbee-SmartThings-Amazon-Needed/dp/B082PSKRSP

https://www.amazon.com/SONOFF-BASICZBR3-Controller-Compatible-SmartThings/dp/B07ZPRXMMD

The great thing about the hub is, it has an ESP8266 Chip for the wifi side of things. So, there's a good chance that custom firmware will eventually come out for it too. It might be possible to use the bridge as fake Hue Bridge or similar type of device. Especially if it's cheap.

Best thing is though...a BIG source for cheap devices has bought in whole hog for zigvee. :+1:

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I have one of the smart switches and it works fine with my Hubitat.

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Nice. Those are both just $17 CAD ($12 USD) here.

Whatever you may think abut the technical merits of Zigbee versus Zwave (and versus 433 aka Lutron), it does appear that Zigbee is winning the race. The market will decide.
Remember, Sony had the "better" product in Betamax, and it still lost.

Sony never lost. Until about 10 years ago, Betamax was heavily used by professionals for archiving.

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If you knew (with certainty, or with great confidence) who the winners were going to be, doesn't it make sense to align yourself with them? Certainly in business, that's the prevalent business strategy.
Now, you may question the confidence of the statement "zigbee will be the eventual winner of the 'protocol' wars."
That's a very legitimate question. Furthermore, there is also the question of how soon zigbee will be the eventual winner.
What's the probability of the first statement? I don't know - and I'm not sure anyone knows with any degree of confidence.
In the meantime, Hubitat is in a very strong position - being able to handle (with great efficacy) both protocols. Furthermore, there has to be a "long" transition time, due to the fact that there are many smart home categories that have entries from only one protocol.

They lost. That market was a small fraction the total market and income that the VHS market was.

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You think? Nearly every professional content creator using them until 2010? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Having worked in professional editing rooms - yes, I do think they lost. For every beta deck we had we had 5x other decks, not to mention media.

But I don't have solid financial numbers to prove it one way or the other. So I'll just say it is my opinion. Take it for what you paid for it. :slight_smile: It doesn't really matter in the end.

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True

I will 100% agree that beta was NOT the abject failure many consumers think it was, though. Sony still made it a profitable technology.

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Luckily for Sony, those beta decks cost 5-10 times as much as consumer VHS players made by JVC and the like. So while they still lost, the loss was more palatable .....

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So, I found some more info....it appears that Tasmota is already updated to use an ESP8266 chip and Zigbee module as a Hub. And the new Sonoff Zigbee bridge is using an ESP8266 as the controller in the bridge. So, it would seem that there will be a version of Tasmota you'll be able to flash directly to the new bridge to run another Zigbee network.

https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Zigbee/

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Sonoff zigbee sensors are already on sale:
https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-snzb-02-zigbee-temperature-and-humidity-sensor.html

https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-snzb-03-zigbee-motion-sensor.html

https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-snzb-04-zigbee-wireless-door-window-sensor.html

https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-snzb-01-zigbee-wireless-switch.html

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Nice!

Curiously, only the contact sensor has specs indicating it is zigbee 3.0. Both the other sensors just mention zigbee as the transport, with no indication of protocol.

I ordered the temperature/humidity sensor, motion sensor, and button (or as many apparently like to translate this, "wireless switch"), so I'll see if any of them pair. I'm hopeful because the manual for some say things like:

The device can work with other gateways supporting ZigBee 3.0 wireless protocol. Detailed information is in accordance with the final product.

(e.g., the temp/humidity sensor manual)

Whether they will work with any generic driver or whether I'll know enough to figure it out if they don't is another story... :slight_smile:

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If I can order these domestically I'll get one of each :slight_smile:

EDIT: I can't find any of these products for sale in Mainland China, I've e-mail Itead and asked if they can sell domestically or have a recommended partner store here. These look fun so I really would like to get my hands on them.

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Once @markus is on the job you know you going to get good drivers :wink: . Would love some feedback when someone gets these as I have a lot of Sonoff products in my house and they have worked well. Only one I have a bit of an issue with is the Sonoff basic Zigbee switches, and I dont know if it is the Xiaomi sensors and this device that don't play nice. They seemed to be fine with the Smartthings sensors but as soon as I added the Xiaomi sensors the Zigbee routing table kept changing.

Please let us know when you have these and give us a review.

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The range of the Sonoff Zigbee Switches are a bit on the short side, they route Xiaomi/Aqara rather well, but if there is not also something with a good range and sensitivity like an IKEA Repeater nearby the signal from the Sonoff device may not reach the rest of your mesh.