I’m wondering if Mikrotik have any plans or interest in developing a wireless access point or module that supports Zigbee, like some of the Aruba access points do.
There’s currently very few options on the market, and most of them are expensive, poor quality, or DIY hacks.
Zigbee would indeed be nice since it’s an open protocol/standard (in contrast to Z-wave and Apple Homekit)
I currently use a CC2530 USB-stick to control my devices via zigbee2mqtt. Works OK but range is not that great.
Do you mean something like what zigbee2mqtt does? I’d love to see this!
Another option like other commercial gateways (Aqara, Tuya, Ikea etc.) wouldn’t add anything to the market but another incompatible system. Every manufacturer has his own line of products with own cloud and nobody wants to have multiple Zigbee gateways at home. Also it sucks if your fine-tuned heating system stops functioning because your ISP has few hours unavailability.
Unfortunately zigbee2mqtt is written in node.js so porting it to RouterOS would be impossible considering limited resources available on most Mikrotik hardware.
I’m afraid that developing and maintaining own solution would be too resource consuming for a company that has plenty of work in backlog like Mikrotik has.
Yeah, a Zigbee AP would be very nice. +1
Agreed about zigbee support
Yes, I would also like to see a zigbee gateway/router from Mikrotik - for example, wAP R with a zigbee module, just the same as for LoRa.
With both PoE-in and power jack it could work either wired or wireless, depending on current installation.
Why not just use a Raspberry Pi with a ZZH! and zigbee2mqtt ?
Or a Sonoff ZigBee bridge with Tasmota on it…
Isn’r RPi a little overkill for a zigbee coordinator only?
It is ok if you host an automation server on it at the same time, but that’s not always the case.
There are even better all-in-one solutions for that purpose, but I would definitely like to have a PoE-powered gateway/router as a separate device.
No ethernet, no PoE-in.
Tuya has wired gateway, but still no PoE (so an additional splitter is needed), and also it doesn’t work with zigbee2mqtt.
And more to that: all that usb sticks and aliexpress stuff doesn’t feel nearly like an industrial-grade solutions.
On the other hand mikrotik already has almost everything ready: reliable platform, rugged case, extensive powering options, SNMP/DUDE monitoring, scripting language aboard, and lately even MQTT support.
Echo Plus has one integrated ZigBee hub inside
Would love to see this!
I also think, this will be an nice idea.
Preferably as 802.3af with the option of an external antenna.
Another approach is for Mikrotik to make miniPCIe (or M.2) with Zigbee/802.15.4/BT/etc support. They do this with LoRaWAN models, so then any existing model with expansion slots can be enabled for LoRa, either at the factory (like wAP-LR8) or by user.
I think this could be quite easy if the USB lines are also routed out on the plug-in module.
This would be possible, for example, in co-operation with dresden elektronik, who build the ConBee III.
However, I am not familiar with the official approval process for radio technology.