I live on the fourth and fifth floors of a building but have a shared garage on the ground floor. I do not want to run Zigbee repeaters all the way down the staircase as this would use common power for personal devices, but I want to place sensors in the garage.
I do have a Cat6 PoE drop in the garage which is directly connected into my network and gives me Wifi (2.4 and 5G, running MyQ), I have an extra PoE port on the access point.
If I put a Zigbee hub hardwired into the same network as the C8 I have upstairs, will the Zigbee network be shared? Are there any Zigbee or Z-Wave hubs (besides another HE hub) that can connect via LAN and support sensors in the garage?
Or are there any WiFi only products that can join my HE environment?
My approach would be to use a Hubitat (powered with POE) and mesh the garage door sensors (or whatever sensors you plan to use) to your C8. @dennypage did some impressive work with POE switches and Hubitat (See here). I have 3 of these garage door tilt sensors and they have worked very well for a few years now.
Edit : I forgot to mention that I did replace the ball tilt switches in these garage door tilt sensors with mercury switches. (see here)
You’ll need a second Hubitat and Hub Mesh to use Zigbee sensors. That is a fine way to go.
What kind of sensing are you trying to capture? If it’s a simple single motion sensor one way may be through ratgdo for your MyQ garage door. Some of the Chamberlain button pads include a motion sensor that can be accessed by ratgdo.
