This week, on the Open Home Foundation’s Toolbox website, you’ll be able to flash a new experimental repeater firmware to your Connect ZBT-2 and Connect ZWA-2. Just a heads up that these haven’t been tested in large numbers and are still considered experimental, so there may still be issues. A few of the Nabu Casa team have been testing them on the Z-Wave and Zigbee networks in their homes, and the results are impressive.

For us, the software our products ship with is just the start, and they gain features all the time… aging like fine wine 🍷. Just before I launch into the whole thing, this story was just one of the several stories in our latest edition of the Nabu Casa newsletter. If you have our hardware, and love all these feature updates, get subscribed to hear all the cool new things you can do with them!

Repeat after me

When we launched our second-generation Connect line, we put a lot of effort into optimizing their antennas and bases to maximize their ability to hear and be heard by devices around the home. We also designed the devices to look great in the home, and this new experimental firmware makes them the ultimate Zigbee and Z-Wave repeaters. If you’ve ever had that one part of your home where devices give you the most trouble, this might be your dark spot killer 🔦.

You might ask how a repeater can help, and it's all down to how Zigbee and Z-Wave were designed. They are both mesh communications technologies for smart devices, and give mains-powered smart devices the ability to pass along every message they receive to nearby devices. Battery-powered devices don’t act as repeaters to save on energy, and some mains-powered devices don’t always have the best antennas, making them less than helpful at repeating messages.

A scenario where a dedicated Zigbee repeater can make a big difference

That’s where a repeater can massively help your network, especially one designed to be excellent at sending and receiving messages. One member of the Nabu Casa team has used a Connect ZBT-2 to turn what used to be a 3-4 device hop to the 3rd floor, into a 2-hop trip. They report that the devices that used to drop out every couple of weeks have become as responsive as the devices next to their Home Assistant server 🚀. A nice extra touch for the repeater firmware is the ability to completely control the light on the top of Connect devices. So even if you don’t have a need for a repeater, they’re great smart candles 🕯️, which come in two unique sizes 😉.

Just a couple of helpful things to note: If you do choose to flash this experimental firmware onto your Connect device, don’t worry, you can always convert it back to its original coordinator/controller firmware via the Open Home Foundation’s Toolbox website. When in repeater mode, all it requires is a Zigbee or Z-Wave connection and power; no network connection is required. Also, as these turn the Connect devices into generic Zigbee and Z-Wave devices, they can work with any network, even if it doesn't have a Connect adapter (or even Home Assistant) at the heart of it. You can pair them to most any network by pressing the recessed button next to the USB port.

If you’re wondering when we’ll make a Thread repeater, due to the commissioning differences with Thread, it's a lot more complex to do this with our current technology. It would probably be a better option to make a Thread border router firmware, but we’re still exploring if this is possible.

To get started using this new experimental firmware on your Connect ZBT-2 or Connect ZWA-2, visit the Open Home Foundation’s Toolbox website, or read our Connect ZBT-2 or Connect ZWA-2 support pages to walk through getting your device set up as a repeater.

~Carl at Nabu Casa